Shows that hit the ground running

[Jay Temple]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jan 7 2004, 09:02 AM\'] [quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Jan 7 2004, 02:02 AM\'] Pyramid

Edit to clarify:  I'm talking about the whole franchise, not specifically the one titled Pyramid. [/quote]
Slight disagreement.  I say "slight" because I've already said in this thread that the truly classic shows didn't need much tinkering, and you're certainly right that the show didn't change THAT much over its run.

Still, especially when you compare it to other classics mentioned on this thread, early $10,000 Pyramid episodes didn't seem to quite have it together compared to later shows.  Perhaps there wasn't on-air "tinkering", but there was certainly a shake-down period before the show got to be as good as we remember. [/quote]
 I remember from the Pyramid Thursday eps that they seemed to have a lot more games not finish in time to stick to the  basic format of main game-WC-main game-WC.  I also remember a WC where, for "things you press," Edward Asner was acting out the ironing of a shirt, and the judges accepted the response, "things you iron."  When you speak of a shakedown, do you mean that they put an end to these things?  I didn't see enough of the early run to know.

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Jan 8 2004, 12:11 AM\']

I remember from the Pyramid Thursday eps that they seemed to have a lot more games not finish in time to stick to the  basic format of main game-WC-main game-WC.  I also remember a WC where, for "things you press," Edward Asner was acting out the ironing of a shirt, and the judges accepted the response, "things you iron."  When you speak of a shakedown, do you mean that they put an end to these things?  I didn't see enough of the early run to know. [/quote]
 Recall that the tiebreaker format of 70s Pyramid had contestants often playing two or even three or four tiebreakers on some occasions to determine a winner, thus sometimes facilitating the need to straddle maingames(earlier in the run), and carry over the WC until the next show(later in the run). A few contestants got screwed out of playing a WC round on Cullen's $25K version because of this. On that version, if they didn't have time to get to a second WC round, the two contestants split a $2500 cash prize IIRC(future celeb Constance McCashin was a contestant on that version and was a victim of that). The 80s version did improve on that with the "7 in the Fastest time" tiebreaker(of course, that didn't stop a 1983 episode with MIchael J. Fox from having a game with three tiebreaker rounds as the players tied at five or six twice)