The Best & Worst Of The 2014-2015 Season...

[TimK2003]

With the new 2015-2016 TV season beginning to occupy the airwaves this week, let's take a moment to look back on the game show genre over the last year.   What were the best and worst game shows of the past year among the returning group and the brand new shows?

The one I will start with would go under the Worst of the New Game Shows:  The Game Plane.
Under the Worst of the Returning Game Shows:  Millionaire
And for the Best of the New Shows:  Celebrity Name Game

Your picks???

[Thunder]

What else is there to choose from?

The Game Plane was made with low production values and was designed to be throwaway TV. Celebrity Name Game was made with high production values and was designed for prime time-slot syndication.

"Worst of the Returning Game Shows"? : Feh. Nothing really changed to the mainstays and they're still fun to watch.

[TLEberle]

What else is there to choose from?

I would absolutely plump for Penn & Teller: Fool Us as best new. It has no prize to speak of, but it is wonderful to watch a show where people get to do something that they clearly love, and there's no sense of antagonism or competition.

"Worst of the Returning Game Shows"? : Feh. Nothing really changed to the mainstays and they're still fun to watch.

It will ruffle some feathers in particular but too bad: Family Feud.

The problem which you alluded to is that there's just not all that much in the genre to discuss. This isn't 1987. You also bring up a good point: I prefer to judge things based on "did the show reach its own potential?" rather than comparing to other things. Game Plane did what it set out to do. For me personally Celebrity Name Game tripped over just about every hurdle. Jeopardy has changed from "the ultimate hard-ass quiz show" to "a quiz show that will strangle you with arcane rules but will give you hints in quotes to neuter the difficulty of each clue" but I still make time to watch every day. The only other game show where I do that on a regular basis right now is reruns of $25,000 Pyramid.

[Jimmy Owen]

Is "American Ninja Warrior" a game show?  That's a show I will watch when it's on.  Some of the new shows have been based on such flimsy concepts (Lie Detectors, Keywords, Boom) that I wonder how they got on the air.

Do cooking competitions fit under game shows?  We've got Chopped, Canadian Chopped, Guy's Grocery Games, Food Fighters, Master Chef, etc.

Jeopardy and Feud are still faves.  5th Grader underwhelming this year.

[Fedya]

For me personally Celebrity Name Game tripped over just about every hurdle.

For me personally, 500 Questions [sic] did it even more.

[Dbacksfan12]

Is "American Ninja Warrior" a game show?  That's a show I will watch when it's on.  Some of the new shows have been based on such flimsy concepts (Lie Detectors, Keywords, Boom) that I wonder how they got on the air.

Do cooking competitions fit under game shows?  We've got Chopped, Canadian Chopped, Guy's Grocery Games, Food Fighters, Master Chef, etc.

Jeopardy and Feud are still faves.  5th Grader underwhelming this year.

4/10. You're slipping.

[PYLdude]

For me personally Celebrity Name Game tripped over just about every hurdle.

For me personally, 500 Questions [sic] did it even more.

Yeah, but Celebrity Name Game was just badly executed from the word go. (So was 500 Questions, but that was only intended to be "special event" and not "the next best thing" material like CNG promoted itself as.)

I gave it a D- to start the year and it barely improved to a D for me by year end. Easily the worst syndie show since CS01 and it doesn't look like the changes are gonna improve it much. I'll give it one more shot to start the year, but...

[TLEberle]

Yeah, but Celebrity Name Game was just badly executed from the word go. (So was 500 Questions, but that was only intended to be "special event" and not "the next best thing" material like CNG promoted itself as.)

I gave it a D- to start the year and it barely improved to a D for me by year end. Easily the worst syndie show since CS01 and it doesn't look like the changes are gonna improve it much. I'll give it one more shot to start the year, but...

Today's $25k Pyramid rerun had a brutal names round. It's curious that a production company would think "yup, that will make for a compelling game show format that people won't suck at."

Not Even Close To Five Hundred Questions gets on the medal podium for worst of the year.

After I knew they existed on my channel tier I started to grab Chopped, Cutthroat Kitchen (possibly the greatest culinary game show conceived by man) and Guy's Grocery Games, and enjoy all of them.

I watch The Chase for the sheer volume of trivia alone: players are far too likely to play each Table Chase safely, and you can be assured that each contestant will get an unnecessarily vulgar question. Brooke Burns is also a bright spot and a fine reader but I think she cheerleads too hard for the team, veering into a valley girl uptalk at points.

I thought I would loathe Idiotest based on reading it and it's a slight format with hardly any game play but Ben Gleib carries it well and makes it a fun hour.

It's not a game show but holy crap do I miss Top Shot. It convinced me that if Jeff Probst ever wanted to quit doing Survivor that Colby Donaldson could take over.

[Sodboy13]

I glanced up at CNG today, and the category at hand was "Celebrities Who Have Gone Skydiving." If that's how you're operating, just drop any pretense of context and say, "Here's 10 random celebrity names, 45 seconds, go!"

Craig Ferguson is the only thing keeping that show afloat. Well, that and desperation for content.

[PYLdude]

I got to see some Chain Reaction for the first time over the weekend. It is much better than the last version, even if Psycho Mike makes it a little obvious that he's on book more often than not (capable host otherwise but that annoys me for some reason). And the bonus round is a nice touch. So that would get my vote for best new show.

The thing with CNG is that it could be so much better than it is and should be. But it just doesn't work. Incompetent players and celebs, a format that is about as close to ripping off Pyramid as you can get without the Bob Stewart estate suing their asses, a really crappy head to head round that doesn't need to be there, and a disappointing effort from an emcee who is plenty capable of carrying a show like he did for nine frigging years at CBS.

[Sodboy13]

To show that I'm not all negativity, I'd like to offer "Race To Escape" under the "Best New" category.

[TLEberle]

To show that I'm not all negativity, I'd like to offer "Race To Escape" under the "Best New" category.

Vigorous co-sine.

[TimK2003]

Another consideration for Best of the New would have to be "Sports Jeopardy" on Crackle (which, BTW is finally airing the Top-3 Tournament today).  They use less questions than it's parent show, but I like how Crackle & Sony decided to create a game show that was not for traditional cable or terrestrial channels and that they slowly (once a week) release new episodes.   

Not sure how well the show has been received or watched, but it was a nice little experiment to see if perhaps game shows could work in the streaming on-demand world.

[ChrisLambert!]

Re: Sports J!: they did pick up a second season, so it's doing well enough. (For Crackle, is that thousands of viewers?)

Personally, I fell off at about the 12th ep. It's got a ton of filler, and although I am a huge DP fan (listening right now, in fact), I never felt that he was making any attempt to improve his quiz-show hosting chops. I will watch the 2-part finale and see if my view changes.

[Jeremy Nelson]

My vote for the worst might be the entire Buzzr stable, but as a wise man once told me "They're making a YouTube video with the trappings of a game show, not the other way around".