[quote name=\'cweaver\' post=\'133615\' date=\'Oct 5 2006, 07:17 PM\']
There's a Marshall Hollywood Squares floating around with a verbose lawyer who can't just say he agrees and disagrees, he just launches into a discourse about the question. Eventually we figure out why: He's having trouble understanding most of the questions and is trying to articulate them out loud. Ironically he's a lawyer. That irritated me, and noticeably irritated McLean Stevenson.
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That guy annoyed me, too. I always thought, though, that the reason he deliberated so much was because he wanted to be on-camera longer. The lawyer definitely came out in him: A few times, he listed the exact circumstances under which he would agree with the celeb. I noticed that during that episode, it seemed like they went to a commercial break awfully quick. I wonder if they told him to speed it up on the answers.
Actually, as much as I love Peter Marshall, I never cared for him tipping off strategies during the game. It happened most often during the Secret Square rounds, when he told the contestants which celebs they could choose and still win the game. Or, even worse, if a contestant missed a block, he always said, "I might have gone to Karen Valentine to block." Nothing like telling the opponent exactly where they should go on their next move. And you might say, "Oh, the next move is obvious," but check the "Legends of Rock 'n' Roll" episode that's on the circuit. The male contestant misses an opportunity to block, but then his opponent misses seeing that she had a chance to win. Pete never said anything to either of them -- probably because he missed it himself.
Finally (for now, anyway), a few things got on my nerves in the various "Password" incarnations. One, whenever Allen Ludden or Tom Kennedy would say "Five seconds, Mary" or "There goes your time" or (a second time) "Pass or play?" The contestants and celebrities have been told ahead of time how much time they have to make a decision, and if they go past that, too bad. I know there have been times when the player was distracted by the reminder and the buzzer went off. I think Robert Donner actually took Tom Kennedy to task for this. And on the last years of P+, when someone gave a correct answer after the buzzer, almost without fail, Tom would say the exact words "Whatever you said, it was late" -- something he never said if it was a wrong answer. This would inevitably tip off the other team to what the answer was. (He also did this quite a number of times on "Body Language.")
Okay, I'm done. I think. But just for fun, I'll add one of Lemon's pet peeves: that Heather Davis wasn't a contestant on every game show every day in the '80s and '90s.
Brendan
