Thanks to the writer's strike, my Tivo is leaner than Star Jones. That's why I found myself watching Winner Take All tonight on GSN's B&W Overnight slot. It's a shame it wasn't the Bill Cullen version. Bill could make any awful game watchable (he really only hosted a handful of shows that were actually good without him).

Instead, we got Barry Gray from the 3-month CBS daytime stint of the show in 1951. It's hard to imagine that this was the show that basically launched TV game shows as a genre. First off, the lockout device they used was an absolute nightmare. It never locked anyone out! Almost every question had a discordant combination of the "bell" and "buzzer", and on at least one occasion Barry definitely signaled the wrong person as the first to buzz in.

Secondly, Barry was just an awful host, trying and failing to land joke after joke while he puffed away on his cigarettes. Lastly, there was a bizarre 5-minute musical number in the middle of the show that seemed to have little to no bearing on the actual game. Two guys were talking about a horse race, a discussion that segued into one of the guys doing a tap dance routine with two different guys dressed as the front and rear of a horse.

I mean, I know television is an evolutionary genre, but this was definitely a cro-magnon game show.

 

posted by Brad @ 12:51 AM   3 comment(s)