Related to Scott & Kevin's comments: to this day, I've probably only watched the original Twenty One for a minute or two at a time -- same goes for the Jim Lange pilot. Knowing the episodes were rigged, I didn't feel a desire to watch the choreography play out in real time. That's why I've always been curious how the game would go played under its original rules, legitimately.
-Jason
During the days of social distancing when we were all afraid to be in the same room, I set up a Zoom group where we played a different game show home game every night. We played the
Twenty One home game a few times...sending a player to the Waiting Room is the isolation booth, so it worked rather nicely as a Zoom game.
My recollection was that it played surprisingly well. The only drawback is that, played legitimately, ties happen FAR less often (I think just one in all the games we played over Zoom) so you don't get what this show was going for, the tension of seeing how long it will take for one player to emerge.
Interesting story about the Jim Lange pilot. I think we've established pretty thoroughly at this point that game show pilots are often rigged for the simple reason of presenting a good game in your sales pitch to a network. Michael Brockman, who was head of CBS at the time, was absolutely adamant that Barry & Enright deliver an unrigged pilot. His recollection was that he told them something to the effect of "Of all the shows you've done, this was the worst choice for a show to revive. The one thing I'm going to ask is that you give me legitimate games in the pilot, because right now, you have no track record or proof that this format works when it's played legitimately."
Barry & Enright delivered a rigged pilot anyway. Brockman was so annoyed by that, he passed and bought
Child's Play instead.
