Tonight's Million Dollar Password was the perfect combination of bad celebrities and bad contestants, identifying the importance of contestant coordination and celebrity coordination. The latter is hard; I know that finding stars who could effectively play Pyramid doomed the Osmond version in my mind (ugh, not Coolio again). Password had been doing well up to this point but tonight's episode was definitely step in the wrong direction.

 

posted by Brad @ 9:14 PM   11 comment(s)

Let's Make a Deal has always offered pretty standard pricing games. Today they played their reverse grocery game where you have to guess 4 items within a $10 range. Except the fourth item was something totally bizarre...a home blood pressure machine that featured, among other things, "automatic cuff inflation". Fancy!

 

posted by Brad @ 11:19 PM   1 comment(s)

GSN segued into the 1984 run of Let's Make a Deal this week, and they appear to be running the episodes in tape order, so we're seeing the very first ones from this version. And man are they rough. First off, the budget is slashed, so the cheap door in the Big Deal is usually under $500. The models have no idea what they're doing. The announcer Brian is flubbing his copy. And in today's episode Monty himself looked lost during the Big Deal. Sigh.

 

posted by Brad @ 10:55 PM   8 comment(s)

The Mole pretty much bombed on opening night, debuting last in its timeslot against mostly rerun competition. I loved the first two runs of The Mole, but even though they made the went back to civilian contestants, and even though the format didn't change whatsoever, I just couldn't get into it last night.

I'm not really impressed by the new host, I thought the two stunts dragged and weren't that interesting, and most importantly, the contestants weren't engaging at all. I'm happy the show case semi-normal people and not just a bunch of pretty faces, but personality-wise I wasn't blown away by them.

I will give the show another shot, but with last night's rating I wonder if ABC will do the same.

 

posted by Brad @ 12:31 AM   0 comment(s)

Million Dollar Password started strong last night, winning the biggest household share of the night and even winning its timeslot in 18-49s (albeit with a 2.2 rating in that category). Check out all the details at The Futon Critic.

 

posted by Brad @ 2:44 PM   4 comment(s)

All in all I was very impressed with Million Dollar Password. When you have a legendary game like that being brought back you have to worry about how well they're going to serve the format. The game moved along at a fast clip and the rules structure, while a bit much upon hearing it the first time, becomes pretty obvious as the show goes along.

Re-using the Password Puzzle concept of Password Plus/Super Password may have helped to break the monotony of what is a simple and (to some) repetitive format, but I don't think the show lost anything by not including it. The high stakes of the bonus round and the tough restriction on time and number of clues really made the bonus round my favorite part of the show.

If I had to find one detraction, it would have to be the skill of the contestants and to a lesser extent the celebrities. I guess I consider myself an above-average Password player, so I was surprised to see so many words get bungled (how can you not get "Ohio" with 3 clues?)

All in all, definitely worth another watch.

 

posted by Brad @ 11:10 PM   12 comment(s)