I had a very interesting day this past Saturday (Nov 5th) whereby I was able to see the afternoon taping of Match Game. I flew in especially to see it (thanks Delta for your cheap YYZ-JFK round trip flight) and was not disappointed. The celeb line-up was Jason Alexander, Cheryl Hines, Joe Lo Truillo (Brooklyn Nine-Nine I'm told), Ellie Kemper, Wayne Brady and Caroline Rhea. They were definitely a great panel - Caroline especially in seat six.
I was in line at 11:45 am, we were ushered into the lobby shortly thereafter where we milled around for about an hour perhaps while we waited for the early morning taping to get out. I would say the taping itself started around 2 pm and ended about 3:30. It was relatively quick and very enjoyable. Ellie Kemper's parents were in the audience and thus Alec made a running joke about having answers get dirty enough so they'd get up and leave.
I thought the writing was quite decent - there was only one question that I thought was crummy and most of the gimmies had two solid plausible answers. Alec didn't rely much on the prompter, and there was only one pick-up if memory serves. The only glitches were just that - the contestants' desk scoreboard going out once (it's run by Windows 10, fact) and the "rotating lights" going out nearest the panel.
The panel were in very good spirits and were happy to get up and dance during any stop-downs. As far as game-play I'm curious to see one thing play out because I really don't know how they can edit around it. We got a Dumb Dora question; I was quite pleased. Also I got chatting to one of the audience pages and she was nice enough to get me an answer card left over from an earlier taping: "We usually give these out for prizes but you're a great audience member so now you can add to your collection!" (I attended French-Canadian Match Game in 2010 and English-Canadian Match Game in 2013).
All in all a great taping and one that I would attend again. Haven't laughed that hard at a taping in quite awhile. Anyone know when Pyramid is back in studio?