If you haven't seen this clip of the creepiest Wheel contestant in history, watch it. The first three minutes are the best. Pat looks baffled and Vanna looks like she wants to run in fear.

 

posted by Brad @ 10:54 PM   8 comment(s)

What a bizarre Temptation episode today. The champion blew everyone out of the water, winning $134 - $35 - $29. She got a 25-letter Fame Game with three letters revealed and buzzed in on nearly every toss up (almost always right).

Then she gets the easiest Super Knock Off yet -- Liz Taylor's husbands. The Knock Off answers are ridiculously wrong -- Joe Dimaggio and Strom Thurmond among them. And she proceeds to pick Joe Dimaggio first. What the hell?

 

posted by Brad @ 9:32 PM   4 comment(s)

The All-Star Family Feud DVDs are available for pre-order at Amazon. I'm not as stoked as I am for the later releases in the game show DVD series (civilian Feud and, giggity, Price is Right), but studio master quality shows on DVD are nothing to sneeze at.

 

posted by Brad @ 12:34 AM   3 comment(s)

Some worrying news -- Alex Trebek is in the hospital after suffering what the AP calls a "minor heart attack". Click on the article link here.

 

posted by Brad @ 1:11 PM   6 comment(s)

GSN is airing promos for How Much is Enough, another bizarre entry in their original programming fare. While it's far less embarrassing than Without Prejudice, it really reminds me of Friend or Foe. Another game designed to test people's personality. While the first few airing will surely be interesting, these games tend to wear thin pretty quick.

Also, did anyone else notice that the bonus round looked like some crazy dueling game of Magic #?

 

posted by Brad @ 11:54 PM   2 comment(s)

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)

Fox has been running Moment of Truth promos like crazy on their NFL broadcasts today. They really are pushing this show, and it looks awful. Is this the direction game shows are going now? Do we have a new emotional humiliation genre? This and Without Prejudice appear to be the two most disgusting games to appear on sets in ages. The Chamber would be an improvement over this!

 

posted by Brad @ 2:19 PM   8 comment(s)