Sat, May 10, 2003

The Game Show Network. It's a genius idea. It's like Nick At Nite for game shows, or ESPN Classic or whatever. They just show reruns of wonderful old game shows like the original Allen Ludden Password, with the creepy voiceover "The password is..." and Match Game with Charles Nelson Reilly. It's perfect entertainment. You can't turn it on and not find something great to watch.

And it's a perfect profit-generator for the network. There's no production cost on the shows. Presumably Ludden's adorable widow Betty White gets a pittance per airing in residuals, but that's hardly expensive. Until someone came along from marketing and said that they were missing a key demographic.

So? Maybe I am the only person 18-49 who can't get enough of the old Dick Clark $25,000 Pyramid but that's okay. Nobody would tell ESPN Classic that they need more sewing shows. You pick your niche and you appeal to it. Who's advertising on GSN anyway? Mostly phone-order inventions and medical insurance for the elderly. Do you really need a younger demographic? They decided that they did. So now they have original programming.

Originally, it was almost all hosted by the despicable Todd Newton, but now they've expanded a little. (Thank heavens.) Not that the quality of the shows is up. Russian Roulette is overproduced and the trivia questions are pathetic, just like The Weakest Link. And Newton's re-make of Press Your Luck is positively embarrassing. Cram, however, has a cute premise and is kind of a guilty pleasure because of how silly it is. They give their contestants a stack of reading material and 24 hours to study it and then quiz them afterwards in funny ways. But the standout is Lingo, which is a re-make of a word quiz type show.

Lingo is by no means great; it certainly doesn't stack up against the classic shows, but it is fun to watch because, like Pyramid (or, as I like to call it, The 'Mid) it's fun to play along at home. The contestants are trying to guess a five-letter word, and they are told when they have a letter right and whether it's in the right position. In this way, it's kind of like a mix between hangman and Mastermind, which is one of my favorite board games. On top of that, they've added a stupid Lingo board, that's kind of like Bingo. And, Chuck Woolery.

Which is where it gets ridiculous. And its absurdity reveals the true purpose of the show, as with any of GSN's original programming – to fill time. For some reason, it seems to be difficult to come up with clues or something because the producers of Lingo clearly want to get in as few puzzles as possible. The exhausting process of drawing Lingo balls after every successful solution eliminates probably three puzzles per show. Plus, if you should actually get a Lingo, you have to wait for a dopey animation of a new lingo board resetting. Then, every time anything at all happens, Woolery has to do a recap. "Recap: it's 25 to 50." (Someone wins 25 points by completing a puzzle.) "Okay, so to recap: it's 25 to 75!" Their scores are right there on their tables! Who's not following this?? Clearly, it's just to waste time.

Add to that the Jeopardy!-style chat session after the first commercial break, but with four people instead of three, and you only have time for about two puzzles per show. For some reason, Woolery spends forever with each contestant rather than quickly chatting a few seconds with each team. And that reason is... to waste time. Lingo is not a show to watch without TiVo. There are minutes and minutes between chances to play. (Of course, with TiVo, it's a five minute show.)

What I also find interesting is how poorly the puzzles are run. As contestants spell out their guesses, someone is typing them into a computer, so they'll show up on the graphic and the computer will tell the contestants which letters are correct and which are in the right place. Great. But does the guy at the computer have to be a narcoleptic, drunk second-grader? The letters are typed in so slowly that, at times, it actually costs a team a puzzle. They're up against a clock, but they can't guess until their last guess pops up on the board. It's really weird to watch.

On top of that, Woolery seems to have no concept of how the show works, despite the fact that it's all he does. He has a little screen in front of him, too. Couldn't that prompt him as far as what to say next? The show operates in a fairly simple pattern: Contestants are given the first letter, and guess words. If they get it right, they draw Lingo balls and start a new puzzle. If not, or if they guess a word that's longer than five letters or doesn't exist, play passes to the other team. Couldn't be simpler. Yet Woolery is constantly lost. It's comical, really, if it weren't so sad. He must be on some sort of pills. He actually eats time off a team's clock by saying. "Here's your first word. I should say, here's the first letter of your first word." This, while they're trying to guess the damn word! And every time they get a puzzle, he's lost. "Okay, on to the other team. No, wait. You have control. Oh, first reach in there and grab some Lingo balls." Get with the picture, Chucko!

Why is it that because Chuck Woolery used to host game shows he now hosts game shows? Where is that rule written? Can't we have some new guy, or better yet some washed-up actor the way they cast center square on Hollywood Squares? I'd much rather see Anthony Edwards or Breckin Meyer up there. Woolery seems to feel like he has to justify his existence so he's blabbering non-stop. There's this uninterrupted stream-of-consciousness commentary on the game, which is probably what trips him up when something actually happens. Say you have the following board:

E v e r y
E n t e r
E A s e l

(Capital letters are in the right place, underlined letters are in the correct word but not in the right place in this guess.)

You only have a few seconds to guess another five-letter word, or play passes to the other team. Also, you're trying to get clues about what other letters might be in the word, even if you don't get them all in the right places. It makes sense to guess something, even if you know it isn't right. But if you guess "Early," Chuck will pitch a fit! "Well, of course that won't be it because you know there's not a Y in there and you also know there's no R, but I suppose if that's what you want to guess, man I don't know – it's your scene." He just goes on and on! There are so many reasons to try a guess you know isn't perfect, but he still has to sit there and rant. I guess it gives us a distraction while the gimp kid with the bad eye is trying to type in the guessed word with the tongue depressor they've lashed to his stump hand. ("Early" would've given you "EArLy" in case you're playing at home.)

So, that's it. The show is insane and Woolery is psychotic and nothing makes any sense. But I have to go now, because I want to go watch last night's Lingo on TiVo.

Example Puzzle Solution: EAGLE

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