By Eric Schoen
Are you as tired as I am of watching games shows with people dropping from high platforms featuring Ellen DeGeneres? Or Anthony Anderson and celebrities you are not familiar with on To Tell The Truth? Or Supermarket Sweeps with Leslie Jones far inferior to the original one with host David Ruprect.
What is it lately with game shows? We have hundreds of television stations to watch, and the pandemic we are in has us glued to the television set as we have nothing else to do. I thought game shows were a thing of the past? I would occasionally tune into the television channel Buzzr to watch old reruns of my favorite, Supermarket Sweeps.
Hollywood must be going through a brain drain bringing out the many game shows flooding the air. I’m not saying they are all bad. It just seems like the old staples are so far superior to the new offerings.
Today’s game shows are so bad that sometimes I turn the TV off and try and fill out an old fashioned Jumble. For those of you who have never tried one, a Jumbled puzzle is a word puzzle with a clue, a drawing illustrating the clue, and a set of words, each of which is “jumbled” by scrambling its letters. The object is to reconstruct the letters into a word that matches the clue.
Let’s face it. How many of us look forward to watching Jeopardy! at 7 p.m. after dinner? We are impressed with the smart people on the show who when given the answer know the questions to topics that, let’s just say we must have been absent from school the day when they were discussed.
With the death of longtime host Alex Trebek , we didn’t know who would be able to fill his shoes. They first brought on Ken Jennings, a personable guy who is the highest-earning American game show contestant of all time. Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on Jeopardy! with 74 consecutive wins.
Jennings is certainly a bright guy but he doesn’t have the personality of Alex Trebek. Trebek made us laugh and brought out unusual tidbits about the contestants. Though he hosted the show for years, he made us watch the show for what It is, never making himself the center of attention.
Jeopardy! has been trying out numerous celebrity hosts from Katie Couric to Dr. Oz to try to fill Trebek’s shoes. I don’t know if it’s me but they appear to be dumbing down the topics and answers. The guest host who seemed to me to be the best so far is egomaniac Dr. Oz. I don’t particularly care for his body of work and occasional quackery, but he was engaging with the guests and made the show fun to watch.
Weeknights we go from the brilliant minds on Jeopardy to spinning the wheel for dollars and prizes on another staple, Wheel of Fortune. Pat Sajak is our host and Vanna White turns the letters. I like them both but with computerization Vanna really isn’t ‘turning’ the letters. Somehow when she touches them they seem to go on.
Both Pat and Vanna seem to look younger every week. Similar to Trebek, Pat brings out the humor in tidbits about the contestants, the puzzles and with a brief dialog at the end. We would miss him if something ever happened to him, but he focuses our attention on the show and not himself. Did you ever see Pat make a fool of himself?
How many of us on a day off from work tune into The Price is Right. Host Drew Carey does a competent job, but I miss Bob Barker. Whether the host is Carey or Bob Barker or for you youngsters out there, Tom Kennedy, Bill Cullen or Dennis James, we are focused on the show and those playing it, not the host. The hosts never make themselves look foolish. They are classy guys simply trying to entertain us.
I was so looking forward to the remake of Supermarket Sweeps, a game show where teams of contestants attempt to secure the largest amount of groceries in a real supermarket. In the 1990’s original contestants were asked questions mostly related to items you would find in your local supermarket. As the show was taped in California regional brands were featured so it would be difficult for a New Yorker to do well.
David Ruprecht hosted the show from 1990 until it went off the air in the early 2000’s. He’s a simple guy who focused us on the contestants often making fools of themselves and the show. It was never on one of the big networks, always on a cable channel. It had and to this day has a cult following.
The remake of the show has Leslie Jones making a fool out of herself focusing the show on Leslie Jones and a cast of characters adding nothing to the show other than simply collecting paychecks. The original formula worked. Why do hosts feel like they have to act crazy to make us laugh? The remake only featured a few episodes and has not been renewed nor cancelled.
To Tell the Truth is a television panel show in which celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants and must identify which is the “central character” whose unusual occupation or experience has been read aloud by the show’s host. When the panelists question the contestants, the two impostors may lie whereas the “central character” must tell the truth.
The original host of the show was Bud Collyear, and the succession of hosts included, again for you youngsters Gary Moore, Joe Garagiola, Gordon Elliot and yes, Alex Trebek. Panelists included Peggy Cass, Bill Cullen, Kitty Carlisle Hart and Arlene Francis (who my sister and mother would see shopping at Loehman’s in Mount Kisco) and a host of television, newspaper columnists, actors and actresses.
The 2021 remake features Anthony Anderson and celebrities that all enjoy making fun of themselves instead of focusing in on which contestant is really telling the truth. Some of the occupations are interesting (one show featured the creator of the Squatty Potty) but the majority are uninteresting. Again, the host and celebrity panelists focus more on themselves than the show itself.
And what can I say about Ellen Degeneres. Her shows with people falling off of platforms and doing crazy things don’t cut the mustard with me. They seem like fillers for.television lineups that have openings in them. You might laugh for 5 minutes but the ‘shtick’ gets boring beyond that.
Go to Buzzr where you can find the original entertaining versions of these shows as well as Concentration, Password, Hollywood Squares, Match Game and many others. A new channel, Pluto will soon feature The Price is Right-The Barker Years…..Come on down!
Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @ericyonkers. Listen to Eric Schoen and Dan Murphy on the Westchester Rising Radio Show Thursday’s from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, go to WVOX.com and click the arrow to listen to the live stream or download the WVOX app from the App Store free of charge.
