[quote name='DrBear' date='Jun 22 2008, 11:58 AM' post='188669']
[quote name='chris319' post='188664' date='Jun 22 2008, 07:58 AM']
Does GSN even have the rights to MG '98?
Deity forbid. With apologies to Mandel Ilagan, '98 should be banned from public exhibition. [/quote]
OK, I'd like to see his episode...annnnnnnnd that's about it.
That episode, and one featuring a contestant named Matthew are the only real highlights of the show's short lived run. Matthew was the heavy set guy with a yamulca on his head. Judy was doing some weird hand motions, sending "vibes" to Matthew, and Matthew sent her "vibes" back, making VERY funny facial expressions. Michael did a Jack Benny-like take and commented "for a moment, Matthew was channeling something REALLY weird" I only have to say that if the contestant is more interesting and funnier than the panel, the show's in trouble!
Another noteworthy contestant was Sarabeth Rothfeld. At the point she was on, the show was really barreling downhill (at this point the set was changed to the greyish purple set, which IMO was when the show started to degrade in quality further) with censored answers, more blatant "cheating" with the panelists literally huddling together to all come up with the same answer, and I think there was also an answer that her opponent gave that got a lot of leniency in terms of matching. For the record, she won her game, but lost her Super Match.
The producer of MG 98 called us during GSC9 and said the CBS O and O's hated the first set, said it was much too bright, so they redid the set and consequentially had to redo the intro, which they didn't want to do. IMO, while the intro was a little too long, I liked the concept of the set pieces falling into place while the audience seated themselves. They should've just introduced the panel and the host, and that's it.
He also said it was Pearson that insisted on rewriting the questions to have fewer possible answers for more matching. They didn't think Match Game had enough matching. He also said that if MG had been renewed, it was possible that they were going to revert back to 6 panelists and restructuring the questions.
For the record, Jay wanted 6 panelists and 3 rounds, but apparently there were some timing issues with adding a 3rd round (IMO it could've been done if the intro was shortened and they cut away some of the answer writing time... one of the flaws with the answer writing time was that Michael just kept repeating the question over and over. Gene did it right. Read it ONCE to the panel, maybe again if needed, but if a panelist was stuck, Gene just let them have the question card to read to themselves. On the original version, sometimes funny things happened while the answers were being written. The audience doesn't really need to hear the question more than twice! The set was built and the format was already set when Jay was brought on to the show. For me, there were too many missed opportunities for spontaneous humor on MG 98.
