New Buzzr lineup effective 9/30

[chrisholland03]

The...Hollywood Squares....Match Game....Comedy Hour or whatever they call it.

[Mr. Matté]

Odd bit of trivia, and I think I'm right about this.  There appears to be only one week of MGHS shows in which all eight guest celebrities are still alive.  That would be the special St Elsewhere week that aired in March of 1984.  It featured seven of the younger cast members (including Ed Begley Jr and Howie Mandel)...and 70-year-old Norman Lloyd.  Lloyd turns 105 next month.  Probably.

I had thought of that too but I think the second-to-last week has all of the non-Rayburns still with us: Marty Cohen, Alex Cord, Didi Conn, Audrey Landers, Judy Landers, Michael Lembeck, Anne-Marie Martin, Jimmie Walker - https://web.archive.org/web/20041207145746/http://www.matchgame.org/episodeguides/matchgame/mghs84.html

[daveromanjr]

The...Hollywood Squares....Match Game....Comedy Hour or whatever they call it.

I heard him say that last night and it was painfully easy to read between the lines. 

[calliaume]

Odd bit of trivia, and I think I'm right about this.  There appears to be only one week of MGHS shows in which all eight guest celebrities are still alive.  That would be the special St Elsewhere week that aired in March of 1984.  It featured seven of the younger cast members (including Ed Begley Jr and Howie Mandel)...and 70-year-old Norman Lloyd.  Lloyd turns 105 next month.  Probably.

Way off topic, but given the size of the cast and how long it's been since the show aired, the cast members have an astonishing longevity history.  I count only three cast members of the 25 from the first two seasons of St. Elsewhere that have died.

I wasn't able to watch last night, but my impression when MG-HS aired (and I do recall watching the St. Elsewhere episodes) was that the theme weeks were nice promos for the shows in question, but they sure didn't help with game play.

[Chelsea Thrasher]

What's honestly surprised me most in watching MGHSH is how much I'm enjoying the Hollywood Squares portion of the game.  Awarding cash for every square captured? Love it, and feel it gives each question true meaning - and turning the game into a straight Q&A is a fun change as someone who generally loves quizzes. I'm also finding Bauman super enjoyable; he clearly wants to be there orders of magnitude more than Gene, with honestly his biggest sin as a host appearing to be "he isn't Peter Marshall"

As a separate thought: Squares got brought back twice in the 80s, and it's interesting to see just how fundamentally different the two versions really are.  The HS portion of Hour is easily the most pure Q&A the format has seen (to the point of paying out per question), while Davidson's run later in the decade would go full variety show with demonstrations, musical numbers, Richard Simmons workout routines, monologues, and then, oh yeah, a quiz somewhere in there with a couple games per show if they find time.

[chrisholland03]

The...Hollywood Squares....Match Game....Comedy Hour or whatever they call it.

I heard him say that last night and it was painfully easy to read between the lines. 

In fairness, it appeared he couldn't read the cue cards and ad libbed it.  But yes.   

What's honestly surprised me most in watching MGHSH is how much I'm enjoying the Hollywood Squares portion of the game.  Awarding cash for every square captured? Love it, and feel it gives each question true meaning - and turning the game into a straight Q&A is a fun change as someone who generally loves quizzes. I'm also finding Bauman super enjoyable; he clearly wants to be there orders of magnitude more than Gene, with honestly his biggest sin as a host appearing to be "he isn't Peter Marshall"

I feel the same way.  Although I do think giving the celebrities some material would have improved it.

[SuperMatch93]

Turning the game into a straight Q&A is a fun change as someone who generally loves quizzes.

My hunch is that they made it Q&A because of the success of Tic Tac Dough; perhaps they wanted to replicate that a bit?

[catnap1972]

Regarding the complaint about "How stupid it is to award the square to your opponent on a crucial (game winning) question if you get the question wrong", IDK I have my own "get the hell off my lawn response": "SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH--DON'T GET IT WRONG THEN!"

[SuperMatch93]

Regarding the complaint about "How stupid it is to award the square to your opponent on a crucial (game winning) question if you get the question wrong", IDK I have my own "get the hell off my lawn response": "SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH--DON'T GET IT WRONG THEN!"

Exactly. People may think it's unfair, but it's really just an extra wrinkle.

[JMFabiano]

Last night's MG/HS rerun....their version of the YOU FOOL! episode.  As only the winning questions for each round were answered correctly.

Charles is more or less himself during MG, more subdued during HS....hmmmm....

I wasn't able to watch last night, but my impression when MG-HS aired (and I do recall watching the St. Elsewhere episodes) was that the theme weeks were nice promos for the shows in question, but they sure didn't help with game play.

Wait'll they get to the NBC soaps week.  The one episode that was previously on the trading circuit was brutal. 

Love Ed Begley Jr. continually saying "I won't give a gag answer."  HDTV allows one to see the strings attached to him, and Mark Goodson lurking in the background ;-)

Nitpicky question: when do they switch from the MG/HS logo commercial bumper to the one with the silhouettes of Gene and Jon? 

What's honestly surprised me most in watching MGHSH is how much I'm enjoying the Hollywood Squares portion of the game.  Awarding cash for every square captured? Love it, and feel it gives each question true meaning - and turning the game into a straight Q&A is a fun change as someone who generally loves quizzes. I'm also finding Bauman super enjoyable; he clearly wants to be there orders of magnitude more than Gene, with honestly his biggest sin as a host appearing to be "he isn't Peter Marshall"

You're not the only one.  Watching the HS portion to me isn't the chore other people find it.  Only thing is it's MG in HS's body as you got people talking and joking over one another during questions.  Also some of the stars, mostly the comedians, spend a LOT of time telling jokes and doing schtick. 

I guess since we've seen worse hosts since, I am not turned off by Jon's hosting.  He's friendly, enthusiastic, and sometimes he even made me chuckle a bit!!  Could he have gotten better if the show got more seasons?  Maybe. 

Besides the perks you liked, I'll commend the producers of the show for making the miniature version of the Squares grid look as sizeable as the original.  And I said this before...the symbol filling the entire square should have been used by one of the other legit HS revivals.  I know, Hip Hop does it now....I'll leave it to you to decide how legit that is... 

I feel the same way.  Although I do think giving the celebrities some material would have improved it.

But then it wouldn't be "the only completely honest version of Squares"...yes, Bauman really said this (on Twitter, when the marathon in February happened)…

Regarding the complaint about "How stupid it is to award the square to your opponent on a crucial (game winning) question if you get the question wrong", IDK I have my own "get the hell off my lawn response": "SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH--DON'T GET IT WRONG THEN!"

Exactly. People may think it's unfair, but it's really just an extra wrinkle.

Yes, kind of vaguely like the neverending debate over Push Rule or No Push Rule on Card Sharks.  Want to see the chances of contestants bringing home more money?  Sure, it's not fair.  Want higher stakes and suspense even when an Ace or Deuce comes up?  (or save budget when you're the current CS, giving away potentially hundreds of thousands?)  It is, again, that extra wrinkle. 

Sidenotes :

I met Alison Arngrim at a movie/horror convention last Saturday.  For an autograph, I had a homemade 8x10 of a screengrab of the HS grid from premiere week.  She not only remembered the show, but very much fondly did so.  Even forwarded a picture of the photo to Phil Proctor on Facebook.  Nice lady too, by the way.

I'd say something about the chopped fee plugs (here and elsewhere), but if we get those instead of credit crunching, what the hey.

It's a shame that Lost and Found wasn't the usual pilot episode marathon, as I'd be down to see the MG/HS pilot if they indeed have it with all the other episodes.  Someone posted an NBC commercial for the premiere which used scenes from said pilot.  Someone on YouTube claimed to know how the "X/O" tabs seen there worked.  Apparently it was a change to the Head-to-Head....as they describe it...

1) You start with the Audience Match money.
2) Select a star, they choose between the X or O tab.  One has their name, the other a dollar amount.
3) Pick the dollar amount, it's added to the bank for head-to-head then you keep picking stars.  Until you pick the name, then that's who you play with for the bank you accumulated to that point. 
4) Clearing the board = $100,000 Head to Head Match with the last of the nine celebrities you pick. 
5) And yeah, that sounds real time consuming; moreso on a show where you want to fit in one decently-sized MG and HS game each.

Can anyone in the know confirm/deny? 

[MSTieScott]

What's killing me about the Match Game portion of Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour is this: The last season of the syndicated Match Game had only been off the air for a year. How are so many of the new celebrities so bad at it? It seems like if a celeb hadn't been on the '70s/'80s run, they had to start round one by giving an awful, awful answer that shows no comprehension of the game. Did nobody give them an example question to play?

Yes, the Hollywood Squares half is a straightforward trivia game, but that's the problem. The show is going from the lighthearted, semi-wacky antics of Match Game into a deadly dull, laugh-free trivia contest. Many of the trivia questions have only two choices and the celebrities often don't even attempt to be funny... so why are the celebrities even there?

(Or they book Fred Travalena, who tries to inject enough concentrated shtick to make up for the six or seven squares who aren't getting laughs, and it's overwhelming.)

This is only the second week, and just look at Gene in his square when it isn't his turn...

[chargeradiocom]

-Gene, to my eyes, was slowing down a bit. Maybe it was jitters from being in a new format with mostly new talent, but I expected him to do a bit better.
-Jon was good. If he had had more time to get comfortable in the role, maybe he'd be remembered more fondly.

You bring up a good point about Gene. While most of the criticism I see about MGHSH pertains to Goodson/NBC’s failures to completely grasp what made both shows work, or to Bauman’s shortcomings, Gene’s hosting here definitely had some issues too. He seemed easily frustrated. While it probably wasn’t the only issue, I’m sure the lack of chemistry & consistency with the panel was a big factor. And for him, it seemed that those frustrations came out as him seeming disconnected or even grumpy. I don’t have the psychology training to determine what all was going on in Gene’s mind, but that’s the way some people seem to be wired.

As for Jon’s hosting, there were definitely some positives there. I think he had a lot of things working against him that even Marshall would have had a hard time dealing with—Goodson’s failure to grasp all that made Squares work; some of NBC’s booking; even Jon himself still trying to get out of his comfort zone. Then there’s the Gene factor. It’s been said that Gene didn’t particularly care for Jon. If he could have befriended Jon & mentored him as a host, rather than taking a disliking to him, that might have helped him a lot. I don’t know if Jon would have even been open to that kind of relationship, but from my view as an outsider, it seems like it might have benefited all parties involved. (And I wonder if that’s what Goodson was hoping for.)

Lest I seem unduly hard on Gene, I don’t mean to be. I imagine that even though Match Game was “Goodson’s show,” Gene felt a sense of ownership of it—and rightly so, given that he’d spent so much of his working life with the franchise. I’m sure the way some things played out had to be frustrating to him. And for most of us, if we’d spent 2+ decades building something, only to see it dismantled due to manmade causes outside our control, we’d be highly frustrated too.

Anyway, when I’ve watched the show, I felt it was more ok-to-mediocre, rather than out and out bad. It will be interesting to see if they can keep viewers for it. (I imagine the fact that no version of Hollywood Squares proper has aired in quite some time may help.)

[Sodboy13]

What's killing me about the Match Game portion of Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour is this: The last season of the syndicated Match Game had only been off the air for a year. How are so many of the new celebrities so bad at it? It seems like if a celeb hadn't been on the '70s/'80s run, they had to start round one by giving an awful, awful answer that shows no comprehension of the game. Did nobody give them an example question to play?

Yes, the Hollywood Squares half is a straightforward trivia game, but that's the problem. The show is going from the lighthearted, semi-wacky antics of Match Game into a deadly dull, laugh-free trivia contest. Many of the trivia questions have only two choices and the celebrities often don't even attempt to be funny... so why are the celebrities even there?

(Or they book Fred Travalena, who tries to inject enough concentrated shtick to make up for the six or seven squares who aren't getting laughs, and it's overwhelming.)

This pretty much sums up my thoughts after two episodes. My head hit the couch last night when Round 1 gave a nice, direct question in "Dumb Dora was so dumb, she bought a BLANK for her roach motel," and two of the panelists responded by writing down the names of motel chains.

[TimK2003]

One thing that bothered me about MGHSH originally was how straight-laced Gene was when he was on the Squares side of the stage.  Since that was pre-GSN era, and only knowing of Gene's wilder persona on MG'7x, I was a bit disappointed in how different he was when not a Match Game host.  Now after seeing him on older panel shows and on the Original Match Game, it makes more sense now.

[WarioBarker]

Nitpicky question: when do they switch from the MG/HS logo commercial bumper to the one with the silhouettes of Gene and Jon?

Slightly complicated answer, mainly because it wasn't a direct change: sometime between March 26 (the episode from Lost & Found) and April 23, 1984, the logo bumper was replaced by a 20-square grid with 11 silhouettes. By about May 10, the grid was shrunk down to 12 squares and six silhouettes with Gene and Jon's heads put onto two of them.