[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Feb 17 2004, 11:33 AM\'] [quote name=\'The Ol' Guy\' date=\'Feb 17 2004, 10:26 AM\']caught only one ep. of Hackett's YBYL in Detroit. Hackett seemed a bit gruff with contestants and the humor was along the line of - "You're an organ grinder? How long do you grind your organ?" It would ask a lot of a host to be clever and classy 5 days a week. [/quote]
It's difficult enough trying to replace Groucho, but that wasn't the only problem with the 1980 revival of "YBYL." For some reason, the producers thought that making the Secret Words less "common words, something you see every day/around the home/you always have with you" would add to the entertainment (and Hackett made a running gag out of the fact that no one had yet to say the Secret Word). The "listing game" that replaced the quiz was also a letdown, although I'm sure the producers thought that straight Q&A wouldn't work in 1980. And the end game (pick an egg from Leonard the puppet duck, win a prize) was a snore.
Perhaps what hurt the show the most was Hackett's decision to go totally ad lib with the contestants. Groucho may not've needed the scripted material, but it was good to fall back on, and even with 156 more shows a season to potentially do than John Guedel's crew, they still could've done the extensive pre-interviews with the contestants that honed the material--and Hackett would've had the same comedic sense that Groucho had to depart from the script if something spontaneously developed.
And Ron Hunsmann simply didn't have George Fenneman's class. [/quote]
One of the Executive Producers of Buddy's You Bet Your Life was Bob Eubanks and Bob said in an interview: "Buddy didn't want anyone else to be funny on the show."
