Sports Guy Reviews GSN

[CaseyAbell]

Found an oddball comment from Bill Simmons, the irritatingly Boston-centric sports guru who blows warm air through the ESPN site. He was talking about a couple of GSN shows from last week:

"Ah, the Game Show Network. They were showing a $20,000 Pyramid episode featuring former Vegas star Bart Braverman as one of the celebrities. Even then, he was available. During the final Pyramid run, Dick Clark did his classic "Time's up... hey, I know you just lost $20,000, but lemme throw a few more clues at you in the smarmiest way possible, so you'll finally get the answer and feel like a complete jackass" routine. I used to love when he did that. If there was a God, somebody would have stood up and punched him in the face.

"GSN followed that baby with a vintage "Match Game" -- Brett Somers (stinking of nicotine), Chaz N. Reilly (not quite at his sailor-cap-wearing apex), Richard Dawson (with mustache) and Jimmie Walker (in his absolute prime) all in the house, which was like seeing the '27 Yankees in action. These shows (Match Game, Pyramid, the wildly underrated Joker's Wild and so on) deserve their own column, and dammit, they'll get one some day."

Of course, it was 100K Pyramid. But William is dead-on about the Oldest Teenager's wonderfully infuriating post-mortems. Dick just couldn't resist twisting the knife. Gave the show a memorable edge (no metaphorical pun intended).

Can't agree with the kudos for Jimmie Walker on MG. He made an unholy donkey of himself, IMO. Like too many guest panelists, he forgot that Match Game works best as an ensemble show and tried to grab face time with forgettable ad-libs. And by 1976 Dawson was regrettably past his MG prime and on his way to terminal obnoxiousness. Brett and Charles still shone, though, so the '27 Yankees comparison is at least partially deserved.

Is Simmons trying for a spot on this board with his bow towards TJW? Sorry to disagree, but in my opinion the B-E quizzer is wildly OVERrated in some web locales.

But we've hit that one a lick before, no? The URL for the entire column:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/040423

[inturnaround]

[quote name=\'CaseyAbell\' date=\'Apr 26 2004, 11:54 AM\'] Can't agree with the kudos for Jimmie Walker on MG. He made an unholy donkey of himself, IMO. Like too many guest panelists, he forgot that Match Game works best as an ensemble show and tried to grab face time with forgettable ad-libs. [/quote]
 Yes, but Walker was at HIS apex. Sure, it's wasn't a very high apex compared to the other Match Game panelists, but he never did get any better. It was all downhill from there.

[whampyl03]

(Match Game, Pyramid, the wildly underrated Joker's Wild and so on)

Kinda surprising that Simmons thinks that TJW is underrated considering the number of seasons it was renewed for back in the good-ol day.

Is Simmons trying for a spot on this board with his bow towards TJW? Sorry to disagree, but in my opinion the B-E quizzer is wildly OVERrated in some web locales.

TJW, and many other B&E quizzers may have been, and still are "OVERrated" in your estimation, but evidently somebody was watching judging from the renewal rates of the flagship programs.

[CaseyAbell]

I've gone around and around on the B-E quizzers too many times already. I do wish that GSN would slip TJW and TTD somewhere into the weekend rotation just to end some of the complaints.

[HYHYBT]

Why? Within a week people would complain that it wasn't the CBS version, or that it WAS the CBS version, they should have started at the beginning/where they left off, whichever they didn't, etc. Plus they shouldn't have bumped x show for it, but y instead...

I'd love to see TTD again, or the *real* Joker's Wild for the first time, but it's no good  getting something so people will quit complaining, either the same people will complain about something else or those who disagree with them will start up.

(and I apologize for the tone of this; it's been an annoying day and this board had nothing to do with it but I'm too sleepy to come up with a friendlier way of restating what's already written)

[CaseyAbell]

You'll notice I said some of the complaints (rueful smile). I gotta agree there's no way to end all of them, or even most of them.