'Million Dollar Password' @ Five Years

[The Pyramids]

Five years after its premier and cancellation, what are your thoughts about the show now? Did you feel it was a good remake, better than no remake at all or a poor effort. 

 

I remember feeling like the first when it was new but when I saw it on Saturday reruns on GSN my opinion shifted to the second.

[TLEberle]

Game was great. Too much money was on offer. Half of the celebrities were ill-equipped to play the game. The game, while not classic Password, was fun to watch and to play along with. I didn\'t care for Regis as host.

If it was a five-a-week thing where the winner played the money level for no risk, topping out at $100,000 I think it would have been a B-plus effort. As it was; C-minus all up. That said, I prefer Password Plus to Big Money Password.

[BrandonFG]

Wow where has the time gone? I haven\'t seen it in the five years since...I remember it being a decent enough revival (esp. given it was Fremantle), but it felt.....\"empty\", like it was missing something. Maybe I just wasn\'t big on it being so similar to Pyramid, or maybe I felt the end game seemed a little too simple, but it came across as rushed and half-baked. Polish it up a bit, and maybe cap the bonus game at $50K, and you\'re on to something as a daytime show (say, 3 out of 5 for $10K, 4 out of 5 for $20K, 5 for 5 for $50K).

 

Again, it was decent, but lacking. Regis\' voiceover dubs kinda annoyed me a bit too. I did, however, like that contestants had the option to give in the end game.

[geno57]

Between the 1960s and the early \'90s, when the first few Password incarnations aired, most Americans still had a decent command of the English language.  We even knew the difference between their, they\'re, and there.  Synonyms didn\'t throw most people if they had at least a basic education.  Furthermore, contestants weren\'t chosen mainly for their physical hotness, intelligence be damned.

 

Also, we were blessed with decent attention spans.  Since the game itself was fun and interesting, we didn\'t need huge cash prizes to make the show exciting.  The top prize in 1966 was, what? Five-hundred a game?  Even then, that was practically chicken feed.  And look at the top prize for a contestant on What\'s My Line? or To Tell the Truth back then.

 

The game of Password doesn\'t work, for me anyway, with all kinds of suspense, scary music, and excitement.  It\'s a frickin\' parlor game, and it\'s a good one.

[jjman920]

I thought Super Password was an excellent version of the show with actual big money pumped into it. I think that a version like that, with slightly raised values, would work today. Find some good celebrities and have at it.

 

I was happy to see Password return to television back then and I was more than happy to play along because it\'s one of my top favorites. It was a little too cold for me to really enjoy it. The set left me feeling empty since it looked like a large hallway with people on either side and three podiums in the middle.

[Jay Temple]

I agree with everything Travis said. I said at the time that it was a better revival of Pyramid than Pyramid.

[GSFan]

I was one of the \"contestants\" who worked on the run-throughs with the producers.  My buddy and I (we wore jackets and ties and were called \"The Suits\".  Hi, G. Are you on the board?) won the top prize, twice.  OK, so we did not win any money.  You can\'t have everything.  Where would you put it?

[TLEberle]

or maybe I felt the end game seemed a little too simple, but it came across as rushed and half-baked.

Here\'s where I disagree with my learned colleague: I thought re-purposing Cashword was a brilliant way to have a bonus round without going to the Alphabetics well again. (Mind you, I love Alphabetics as much as anyone, but I don\'t think it would work here.

What makes me sad is that decades ago Vanilla Password was on in prime time. These days it would never happen; you have to have music, sounds, action, jump cuts, ADR, all the stuff that was never seen in the old days. As great a game as it is, it\'s a relic of those old times and you\'d have to change it (perhaps even make it unrecognizable?) to fly today.

[The Ol' Guy]

I\'m with Geno. Password and What\'s My Line? were light entertainment games appreciated for the cleverness of the participants. Though it\'s a great game in general, would it have been a success in the 60s without the celebs as an added draw? If you had two teams of civilians only playing, then more money might be needed to make it a viewer grabber.  You had an excellent mix of witty celebs, smart civilians and an intellectual image host. I\'m delighted they gave Password another try, even with a million dollar format. Perhaps the element of Pyramid they should have used instead was the tournament option - rewarding the best players of the regular classic game over X number of weeks with chances at a later Million Dollar playoff instead of trying to give away a million every week. Let good game playing be the excitement - not cheesy lighting and mood music. But like Travis says...would that be enough today?

[That Don Guy]

What makes me sad is that decades ago Vanilla Password was on in prime time. These days it would never happen; you have to have music, sounds, action, jump cuts, ADR, all the stuff that was never seen in the old days. As great a game as it is, it\'s a relic of those old times and you\'d have to change it (perhaps even make it unrecognizable?) to fly today.

 

I don\'t know if it\'s as much that, as (a) more money (even if you adjust it for inflation, the bonus round wouldn\'t be more than $5000; who would be interested in that - for that matter, who would be interested in a daytime $5000 bonus round?), and (b) trying to find celebrities that people want to watch.  Then again, even 1960s-era primetime Password had to dip into the Broadway well (Inga Swenson, about a decade before Benson, and pre-Brady Bunch Florence Henderson).

[jjman920]

As great a game as it is, it\'s a relic of those old times and you\'d have to change it (perhaps even make it unrecognizable?) to fly today.

 

http://i.imgur.com/U5BesHf.jpg\'>For now, I\'ll take it on late-night television unchanged.

[Unrealtor]

I think that the attention span for playing games for the fun of it rather than the big money is there, but it\'s not long enough to work as a standalone half hour. Even people in my generation who are a couple years too young to remember any form of first-run Password other than MDP seem to like it when Jimmy Fallon plays it.

 

I\'ve often thought the same would apply to some British panel games like \"Would I Lie To You?\". All you\'d really need is a celebrity who\'s wiling and able to play along and you\'ve filled several minutes of show.

[MTCesquire]

That Ol\' Guy\'s post about celebrities being part of the original Password\'s draw got me thinking.  I was born in 1983, so by the time I got into game shows celebrities were for the most part limited to C-list status and below.  My understanding over the years was that the majority of celebs on the original Password were big names for their time.  My question is at what point did celebrities on game shows go from cream-of-the-crop A-listers to \"that guy with a recurring role on Obscure Eighties Sitcom That Was Canceled After 13 Weeks\"?

[PYLdude]

I guess also it has to do with how bright the star was at the time. Assuming that\'s why Michael J. Fox didn\'t do much Pyramid once Family Ties got so hot and he became a movie star.


Although didn\'t Corey Feldman do Wordplay at the height of his popularity?

[Bryce L.]

As a sidebar to MTCesquire\'s post, what would it take to entice honest-to-goodness A-listers to appear on celebrity game shows nowadays?