One more time, just to be sure that Hollywood Squares is not good

I watched another hour of 2025 Hollywood Squares a day after the fact. 

No, it wasn't a fever dream, or whatever the kids call it. Nate Burleson is not a good host. He is if you want him to act as the life of your frat party rather than the emcee of a game show. 

Drew Barrymore as the center square plays the role of Drew Barrymore, which doesn't work well in a game show where she's one of nine celebrities on the panel. 

The celebs are trying real hard to be naturally funny, but nothing feels natural about it. Leslie Jones played the part of Leslie Jones quite well. She yells like she's mentally unstable, as if that is funny in and of itself. It never is.

Squares has always been the stomping ground of lower-tier entertainment... older comedians, longtime actors who aren't busy making movies around the world these days and other random public figures with varying degrees of significance. 

From what I can tell, Squares '25 draws a similar caliber of talent, even though this is a once-per-week prime time offering. I shouldn't be surprised. 

The difference is that this show really wants the celebs to banter with each other. Whoever is calling the shots wants the show to be more about the celebs interacting with each other, the host and the contestants than the game. It's a weird choice, but there's an audience for that. People like that they celebs are constantly trying to show how funny or clever they are, according to Twitter. 

It's 2025, we have different ideas of humor than we did in 1975. We can't get enough jokes about anatomy and sex. One of the Sunday night shows had a question for RuPaul about Tom Brady deflating his balls while he was an NFL quarterback. Squares has often targeted its questions for the celebs playing the game. A joke about male anatomy is the perfect question for a sometimes drag queen, enabling him to make a predictable joke about deflating his own balls. 

I don't remember who got a question that had something to do with a place called Dildo Island in Canada. The question wasn't toward gay television personality Carson Kressley, but he made sure to interject with a comment playing off the risqué nature of the question. 

Burleson continued to play the part of the jock at the frat party, showing why he's not really a broadcaster, despite the fact that's how he makes his living. 

And this, collectively is what some people want when they watch a game show.

If that's what people want to watch, then the show must go on, without me. 

I tried. I'm old. It's not for me. 

My previous writing about the show is here and here. 

X gets the square, and that's not a good thing

Given my disappointment with the 2025 version of Hollywood Squares, I looked back at what I wrote last May, when I learned of the forthcoming show. What did I say then, knowing very little about what I'd see, or how disappointed I'd be with the end product? That text appears in black. My 2025 comments, responding to what I wrote seven months ago, appear in red. Additional thoughts appear at the end in purple. 

The best news, perhaps, is that CBS is planning a prime time version of Hollywood Squares next winter. So far we know Drew Barrymore is going to be the center square, and that's about all we know. We don't know who will host or how it will be staged. Forget returning champions, I suspect, but expect bigger money than we've seen in the past, most likely. I was right and wrong. Given CBS is running the show in prime time, presumably once a week, it's not hard to guess that they'd not have returning champions. I didn't expect the show to be Million Dollar Squares, but I thought that the winner of a 30-minute episode would have a chance to walk home with more than $25,000. I would have thought $25K would be a second-tier prize in the bonus game, with a top prize of $50,000, or better. But CBS must have spent too much money to coerce Tyra Banks and Drew Carey to make an appearance.

I should be excited about such a development. A classic quiz show being reincarnated for the third time, or more, depending upon how you count versions such as Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour and Hip Hop Squares. 

I should be excited, but these days I'm expecting to be disappointed. And I was, but this wasn't exactly a bold prediction. Networks don't seem to want game show fans tuning into their game shows unless they're legacy game shows. 

I have said, time and time again, that I miss the days of the basic quiz show served with a slice of luck. Take shows like Hollywood Squares, Tic Tac Dough, Joker's Wild, Sale of the Century and High Rollers. They were all quiz shows in some way. Hollywood Squares was played for laughs far more than Tic Tac Dough. High Rollers and Sale of the Century had plenty of trivia mixed in with general knowledge questions. But the outcome of each game depended, to some extent, on an element of luck.

I enjoy simple shows like that. I like Jeopardy, and there's a degree of luck involved, but less so than the others. And that's the only one out there five days a week, not counting anything GSN is producing, which I don't have access to. 

We have some fun games in syndication at the moment, but nothing that's a classic quiz show, interjecting a tic-tac-toe board or dice into the outcome. I miss those. 

So I should be excited about Hollywood Squares. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. I hope they pick a good host, one that doesn't irritate me. I'm a broken record at this point. I don't want to watch a long-in-the-tooth comedian pretend to orchestrate a game. I just want a skilled emcee, a broadcaster who isn't trying to play to the crowd every chance s/he gets, or an actor who hasn't had a big hit movie in a while but would like a steady paycheck. So this surprised me. They didn't go with a Steve Harvey or an Elizabeth Banks. They went with a broadcaster, of sorts. CBS chose its knock off of Mike Strahan to host the show. Nate Burleson if a former NFL wide receiver who works as a talking head for CBS's NFL coverage and as a co-host for the CBS morning show. I can't say I see much of his work. I don't watch much NFL studio pre-game programming or weekday morning news programs. He might be really good, but I have no clue. But his career seems to be mimicking Strahan's career, as now Burleson is an emcee, too. But instead of being a traditional emcee, Burleson acts like he's hosting game night at his mansion, where his celebrity friends and his civilian friends all gather together to mix and mingle while Burleson makes small talk with all of them. So I got a broadcaster, but not exactly what I hoped for. Jimmy Fallon hosts the over-the-top Password farce on NBC. Jimmy Kimmel hosts Millionaire for ABC. The tone of Squares is a little too nauseating for my liking, so perhaps Stephen Colbert wouldn't have been the right fit for this show. But I can't imagine staging Squares with Colbert as host would have produced a worse end product. 

But I expect the worst. The few comments I've read about the new version of Hollywood Squares didn't exactly lavish praise on its choice of a center square. I don't think anyone considers Drew Barrymore to be quick-witted or naturally funny. She's had roles in comedy films, but she's not exactly telling knock-knock jokes in Vegas during her off weeks from her current talk show. She seems to have time for a second job, and somehow a prime time game show is the best way to showcase her talent. I'm skeptical. She didn't try to take over the show as its center square. She also didn't add the quick wit and sharp humor I hope for from the center square. That's not mandatory, of course, and Drew's performance didn't do much for me, but she wasn't the most painful aspect of the show, by a long shot. 

I hope to be pleasantly surprised, and I'm not rooting against it. I'm just prepared to be disappointed, because I'm a traditionalist who doesn't need gimmicks and over production to enjoy a quiz show where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen. But I get it, I'm in the minority. Wow, I'm brilliant. The show feels overly produced, as if they coached a certain tone out of the host, celebrities and contestants. It doesn't feel organic, and therefore I don't enjoy it. 

As annoyed as I am by the end product, I'm not surprised. And it's not a crime. 

I'm not a game show historian, but I know enough to know that the original Match Game was a rather straight forward game of matching words/phrases during the 1960s. The famous, beloved edition of the show debuted in 1973, and was less about wacky comedy questions and celebrity banter. But it wasn't winning over enough of an audience, and the humorous efforts of the show seemed to be connecting with the audience, so they dropped any pretense of formality in the game play and went wholly for laughs, and the show enjoyed a long run into the early 1980s. 

And lest we forget Family Feud. Richard Dawson interjected his humor as host back in the 1970s as a guy whose background wasn't in traditional radio and television broadcasting. Five decades later the show is a success because of the sexual suggestiveness of some of the questions and the comedy stylings of Steve Harvey. The show doesn't appeal to me, but it's doing just fine without me. 

All of that is to say that as much as I dislike what CBS is selling in 2025, it's not a surprise. There's no reason a new version of a game show shouldn't be tweaked for a different market than past versions of the game. And CBS chose that route. I may have hoped for an end result that was akin to what some of us enjoyed from 1998 to 2004 in syndication, but no such luck. 

This is not your father's Hollywood Squares. Or mine.

Hollywood Squares has me rolling over in my grave

I know the times have changed, and yet I'm still stunned. 

The new Hollywood Squared debuted earlier tonight, and it was more painful than I imagined. 

I could write a novel in making my points, but I'll try to stop just short of that. 

The show dates back to the 1960s, and has been staged in a few different formats. Game show historians can tell you all about each version. For our sake, we'll note that the last staging of the show ended about 20 years ago, aside from a couple of short runs of variants with an emphasis on hip hop or country music, produced for niche cable channels. 

When the average viewer last saw the show in 2004, or more recently on a FAST streaming channel via Pluto TV, it was very much the same as the long running original version that was highly successful from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. 

The 2025 version on CBS doesn't stray from the format, but everything about it in its effort to appeal to today's audience is hard for me to watch. 

I'm not geriatric, I'm not a prude. But I'm part of that tiny niche of game show fans who likes a good game first and foremost. Squares has always relied on humor and celebrity banter to entertain the audience, but I never felt it was the basis of the show. It wasn't Jeopardy, it wasn't an intellectual showdown between two scholars, but it didn't seem to pander to the audience with cheap jokes and prolonged foolishness. 

My gripes, in no particular order:

Host Nate Burleson tries too hard to be the host of a party more than the ringmaster of a game show. CBS loves him. He's a former pro football player who has succeeded as an in-studio voice for CBS coverage of the NFL. CBS deemed him a worthy broadcaster who warranted a seat at the table during weekday mornings as part of the CBS Early Show crew. I don't watch the network morning shows, I haven't watched more than a few minutes of Burleson interview news makers of the day, so I can't speak to why he's great or appeals to people who seek morning news from an old-fashioned network. 

Burleson seems to be the CBS version of Michael Strahan. Strahan went from the NFL to the FOX studios on NFL Sundays and eventually added ABC's Good Morning America and ABC's prime time Pyramid to his resume. Now Burleson has completed the Strahan trifecta with Squares. 

I am weird. I like my emcees to host the show, not lead a party amongst celebrities on a game show. This isn't game night at the Burleson home. But CBS thinks it should be. And they must really want Burleson to banter with everyone, as if we're all hanging out at his crib. His banter with both the celebs and the contestants doesn't have to be all business, but clearly they want him to carry on with everyone on stage. 

And his delayed response to a contestant, deeming the contestant's answer correct or incorrect, isn't great drama. It's just annoying. And if that's not enough, he seems to want to celebrate at points during show as if he's on the sidelines with his NFL teammates. I guess that's what people want in an emcee. I am not people. 

As for the celebs, they seem to have free reign to yuck it up, as well. They banter with each other while answering questions. I was a little surprised two or three of them weren't talking over each other consistently, trying to get their quips in during a question and answer. The celebs in past versions of the show often gave "zingers" as their initial response... a gag/joke response to the question. That has been a staple of Squares, and it hasn't changed in 2025, except now it feels like two or three celebs have to be part of every question-and-answer exchange.

The celebs are about what I expect. The show had a few not-so-young celebs among the 16 that appeared with center square Drew Barrymore, the only fixture among the celebs, during the two shows that were broadcast this evening. But it didn't feel like a geriatric collection. There weren't young celebs, most were in their 40s or 50s, I think.

Game shows have often been the stomping ground of faded stars, and this group didn't feel like CBS had dusted off a lot of forgotten celebs, but most of them felt like B list celebs, at best. And not to my surprise, it wasn't loaded with the stars of CBS dramas, sitcoms and soap operas. It leaned heavily on comedic talent that isn't busy helming a popular sitcom. 

And of course there were two or three celebs that I knew nothing about during each show, but that's not a shock. My days of having my finger on the pulse of pop culture is long gone.

The celebs carry on a bit too much, and sometimes had weird interactions with the contestants. The contestants, conversely, acted like it was game night at the Burleson household, and the celebs were their peers. It's a weird dynamic, and one the show obviously pushes. It's not organic, and that didn't make it more enjoyable for me. 

Barrymore, as the center square and the focus of the celebrity ensemble, didn't do horribly, and wasn't the most obnoxious celeb on the show, but she didn't feel like the right fit for the show.

As for those contestants, they baffled me. They were clearly told to rationalize why they agreed or disagreed with a celeb's answer, which I don't need to know. More than that, it doesn't make the game more interesting. 

And you assume they audition potential contestants for the show. Yet at least two of the four contestants appeared to not understand basic tic tac toe strategy, or didn't care enough to pay attention to how the game was unfolding. It was bizarre. 

The game play is painful. It's too slow because of all the clowning. The questions related to sex more than a couple of times, and the very first question had something to do with marijuana. (I didn't take notes as I watched.) There were questions about pop culture, but the show seemed to lean toward the cheap, tawdry topics. I'm not a prude, but I'm old enough not to find such topics to be hilarious. 

The first game awards the winner $1,000. On one show, that's all they could play within 30 minutes and still have time for a bonus round, giving the winner a chance at $25,000. On the second show they played a second game, which they did not finish. The winner of game 2 gets $2,500. So, if you get beat quickly in game 1, you can win game 2 and basically ensure you're the champion because of the ridiculous scoring system and the slow pace of the game. 

And not to my surprise, there's no returning champion on this show. 

Weird moment to note before I conclude. The show briefly acknowledged the recently deceased Peter Marshall, the host of the original Squares run from 1966-81, in the opening minutes of the first episode. Nice gesture, I suppose. I had to wonder what percent of the 2025 viewing audience had any idea who Peter Marshall was, given he hasn't been featured prominently on TV in the past 40 years.

CBS thinks there's an audience for the show, and it may be right. I'm not that audience, but a few Twitter comments I read during the evening suggested there are people who think it's great entertainment. 

I've said it before. I don't watch a game show to see the emcee do his comedy act. I watch it for the game. CBS isn't interested in attracting me, they want an audience who enjoys game night at a Hollywood mansion, minus the cocaine in the bathroom. 

So CBS takes a show that, minus the hip hop and country music versions that reached a niche audience in the past decade, hasn't been seen by broadcast TV viewers for two decades, takes a variety of mostly B list celebs, none of whom are today's fastest rising stars, and places them in a game show format that is going to be familiar primarily to people over 40. Is this what the 40- to 60-year-olds of today look for in TV entertainment? 

The show does not need 20 million viewers to be deemed a success, not in 2025. And networks don't skew young these days. I'm not convinced that those who enjoyed the traditional presentation of Squares in the past are going to enjoy this version. So who is this show supposed to appeal to, and are there enough of those people to sustain this show?

Game shows have become an appealing format to fill prime time hours on the networks in recent years. They're supposed to be cheaper to produce, and people don't flock to the networks like they did when J.R. was shot on Dallas in the '80s. So perhaps a more annoying, plodding version of the game will draw enough of an audience. I'm skeptical, but the bar is so low any more that this show might stick around. 

As I said, the show follows the classic format, yet it amps up all the secondary elements at the expense of what made the show appealing to game show traditionalists like me. If you don't really like game shows, then perhaps the latest Hollywood Squares is the show for you.

I have to think Peter Marshall was rolling over in his grave tonight. 

Buzzr's strategies, or lack thereof, baffle me

There are all sorts of reasons why things happen, and sometimes they make sense. 

Then I watch Buzzr and scratch my head. 

Buzzr has some sort of data that guides its decisions after nearly a decade, but I'm left scratching my head periodically. 

Here are a few of the decisions, past and present, that leave me baffled. I'm sure there are many decisions that confused other Buzzr viewers. And there may be reasons, known reasons, for some of those decisions. In the world of game show fandom, plenty of people will claim they know, and state their opinion as fact. Much like the rest of the world, I suppose. 

Let's start with a big one: Buzzr is now broadcasting The Price is Right for two hours every afternoon. 

Yes, this puzzles me. I'm not puzzled by its inclusion on Buzzr. I'm not puzzled by the time slot. What confuses me is why it took so long. 

 

When I first gained access to Buzzr, I was tickled. It had its many flaws and drawbacks, but it was geat news for me. But I was puzzled. Why wasn't TPIR included in its schedule, given the streaming service is owned by the same company that owns and produces TPIR?

I had theories as to why it wasn't part of the equation. Given the show was still in production, perhaps the agreement with CBS to broadcast new episodes year after year included a provision that no other outlet could stream old episodes, from any decade. That seemed far fetched, but I couldn't think of a better reason for Buzzr to resist broadcasting the most powerful game show in its catalog on its lackluster, fledgling game show outpost. (The Game Show Network licensed TPIR during a brief period early in its history, of course, although that doesn't mean anything 15+ years later.)

I figured there had to be a way to bring TPIR in some form to Buzzr. Wouldn't it be advantageous to have reruns of past Drew Carey seasons on Buzzr in prime time? You'd draw hardcore game show fans and TPIR fans to Buzzr in a way no rerun of Match Game or Card Sharks could. Sure, you might draw 10 viewers away from the latest season of Survivor on CBS, but I refuse to believe there was a serious downside to showing Carey reruns in prime time.

And if anyone thought that Carey reruns would somehow hurt CBS, then run old Barker episodes on Buzzr. 

I just couldn't understand why TPIR had no place in the Buzzr schedule. Then, much to the surprise of many, I believe, Pluto TV lands a 24-hour TPIR channel featuring Bob Barker's early '80s episodes. 

And yet, no TPIR on Buzzr. So weird. 

We all know how this ends. Pluto eventually adds a separate TPIR channel for Carey, which only seems to air Carey's first season episodes. I rarely watch, but I have yet to see an episode with George Gray as the announcer. 

And Barker episodes not only continue non-stop to this day on Pluto, just about every quirky Pluto clone seems to carry Barker's episodes. And they're not all carrying the same episodes simultaneously. Roku's version of a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, as they are known, so says Wikipedia, has the best Barker channel, as it skips some of the commercial breaks, while other FAST services seem to drop ads at every break in the show. 

And finally, after all that, Buzzr decides the time has come to add two hours of Barker TPIR to its schedule every afternoon. (Yes, there have been moments when Buzzr would show a black-and-white episode of the game from the 1950s...which bears little resemblance to the show America has known for the past 50 years. 

There are business reasons behind why Buzzr didn't drop episodes from its Barker/Carey catalog immediately, I suspect, but the fact it took about eight years and thousands of hours of non-stop streaming of TPIR on Pluto and other FAST services before Buzzr finally deemed it worthy of inclusion on its own network, I don't know. But I'd love to hear the answer. 

There are other odd Buzzr decisions that leave me puzzled, and I won't go in depth on any of those, but I'll list a handful of them in a future post. 

So much for that all-important Wheel of Fortune "continuity"

So it has been more than a week since people stopped watching Wheel of Fortune because they'll never watch it again so long as Ryan Seacrest is the host. 

Sure, Jan. 

People are weird. We all know that. Some claimed they'd stop watching, and maybe they will. I doubt that the show is going to lose many viewers because of a host change, and I suppose a few people are going to tune in for the first time in a long time because the host is new. 

A lot of us simply like the game, and like playing along. Only a bad host and a dramatic change in the overall production will drive us away. 

So I watched a handful of episodes thus far, and I have mixed feelings about it all. 

Foremost, Seacrest is just fine. Is he perfect? No. He knows how to host. He knows how to broadcast. Wheel isn't in his DNA, but emceeing is. He's not flawless in his delivery and witty banter. But he'll get there.

I read an article pointing out that during the speed-up portion of the final round, Seacrest didn't remind a contestant to call a letter before solving the puzzle when she asked if she could solve it. Pat Sajak usually would note to the contestant that s/he could pick a letter first and bank more money. So the woman lost out on extra cash as a result. Oh well. Seacrest will get better at that sort of thing as he faces it on a recurring basis. 

The hardest thing for me is just simple stuff. I'm not Sajak's biggest fan, but his style, cadence, etc. were familiar. Seacrest does everything just a tiny bit different, and it feels a bit odd. It's not painful, but I didn't expect it, either. I'll adjust, and after a while I won't even remember how Sajak did it. 

What bothers me is that they've really messed with the continuity of the show. I just can't sleep at night. 

I read the suggestion, more than once, that it was really important to bring Vanna White back to the show after Sajak's faux retirement, because it was important for Abraham and Agnes to see her familiar face. Without her, they'd be so confused and disoriented they'd turn the channel to a rerun of Card Sharks on Buzzr. 

People really think Vanna is that vital. You can't make it up. 

And yet, as critical as it is to maintain some sort of continuity for the poor, simple-minded viewers, they changed the set to some weird, freakish chamber of odd wheel shapes. The puzzle board has this odd array of wheels spanning behind it, and the elements are incongruous. Not significantly, but they're a bit uneven. I'm not sure what that accomplishes, but it's an odd look, if you notice that sort of thing. I didn't, but another viewer did. And now I can't unsee it.

Likewise, they have those same odd wheel shapes, in varying sizes, behind the contestants. I'm not losing sleep over it, but why change all that to coincide with Seacrest's first season if continuity is so critical?

They changed the video editing of the show, as well. Now we see isolated screen shots of each contestant's giant head under the puzzle board during toss-up rounds. No big deal, but damn, you've upset my precious continuity. 

Somehow they don't seem as interested in highlighting Jim Thornton, the announcer. They had made his face a part of every show at one point. Now I don't see him as often. That's awkward, and ruining the continuity of the show I use to love. 

I haven't been able to sit through 30 minutes of every new episode thus far, but I'm seeing less of Thornton, and the one time I recall seeing him, they did an awkward bit between him and Seacrest, promoting a show sponsor. This isn't uncommon, in-show sponsorships of game shows dates back decades. But this seemed new and awkward for a show that needs continuity to keep me from running away. 

I didn't care for the gimmicky bonus round promotion during the opening week of the season, either. The gimmick was that LG, the home appliance and electronics company, sponsored the bonus round, and was adding $10K to the bonus round prize. And in doing so, players got an extra letter, the G, as in LG, as part of the opening package of letters for the bonus round puzzle. No harm in that, it doesn't do much for me, other than disrupt the show's continuity.

And where are the cars? I haven't seen a car on the set. Did they get rid of prizes on the bonus wheel. Is it all cash prizes on the wheel now. If they said so, I missed it. I'm fine with that, but doing so in the fall of 2024 really hurts the show's continuity. 

Without continuity, the show is going to fail. Sorry Seacrest, you're a one-and-done guy. Not even Vanna will save you now! 

The good, Hollywood Squares, and the bad, Lucky 13

This week had good and not so good news in the world of game shows. 

The best news, perhaps, is that CBS is planning a prime time version of Hollywood Squares next winter. So far we know Drew Barrymore is going to be the center square, and that's about all we know. We don't know who will host or how it will be staged. Forget returning champions, I suspect, but expect bigger money than we've seen in the past, most likely. 

I should be excited about such a development. A classic quiz show being reincarnated for the third time, or more, depending upon how you count versions such as Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour and Hip Hop Squares. 

I should be excited, but these days I'm expecting to be disappointed. 

I have said, time and time again, that I miss the days of the basic quiz show served with a slice of luck. Take shows like Hollywood Squares, Tic Tac Dough, Joker's Wild, Sale of the Century and High Rollers. They were all quiz shows in some way. Hollywood Squares was played for laughs far more than Tic Tac Dough. High Rollers and Sale of the Century had plenty of trivia mixed in with general knowledge questions. But the outcome of each game depended, to some extent, on an element of luck.

I enjoy simple shows like that. I like Jeopardy, and there's a degree of luck involved, but less so than the others. And that's the only one out there five days a week, not counting anything GSN is producing, which I don't have access to. 

We have some fun games in syndication at the moment, but nothing that's a classic quiz show, interjecting a tic-tac-toe board or dice into the outcome. I miss those. 

So I should be excited about Hollywood Squares. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. I hope they pick a good host, one that doesn't irritate me. I'm a broken record at this point. I don't want to watch a long-in-the-tooth comedian pretend to orchestrate a game. I just want a skilled emcee, a broadcaster who isn't trying to play to the crowd every chance s/he gets, or an actor who hasn't had a big hit movie in a while but would like a steady paycheck. 

But I expect the worst. The few comments I've read about the new version of Hollywood Squares didn't exactly lavish praise on its choice of a center square. I don't think anyone considers Drew Barrymore to be quick-witted or naturally funny. She's had roles in comedy films, but she's not exactly telling knock-knock jokes in Vegas during her off weeks from her current talk show. She seems to have time for a second job, and somehow a prime time game show is the best way to showcase her talent. I'm skeptical. 

I hope to be pleasantly surprised, and I'm not rooting against it. I'm just prepared to be disappointed, because I'm a traditionalist who doesn't need gimmicks and over production to enjoy a quiz show where knowledge is king and lady luck is queen. But I get it, I'm in the minority. 

The not-so-good news is that we're also getting a brand new prime time game show this summer from ABC. This show, called Lucky 13, is a quiz show, the kind of show I should be welcoming, even if it doesn't feature a giant slot machine at center stage. It has a twist on the traditional question-and-answer quiz format, of course, and offers $1 million as its top prize. That sounds like a recipe for prime time success. 

So why am I disappointed by the news of a new summer quiz show? It will have co-hosts, Shaquille O’Neal and Gina Rodriguez. O'Neal is well known by anyone who has watched TV to some degree during the past 30 years. He strikes me as personable and entertaining, and he has done his share of NBA commentating in recent years. Given he's a multi-time NBA champion, he should know a thing or two about the NBA. 

But his broadcasting skills, or lack thereof, doesn't seem like a good fit for a big money quiz show. I doubt he's going to be smooth, and he's not a broadcaster. That's fine when he's talking NBA. When he's trying to emcee a quiz show, his lack of vocal skills is going to stick out like a sore thumb. 

Perhaps that's why he has a co-host. I have no idea if she'll take the lead, or fumble through the game alongside O'Neal. I couldn't have told you who Rodriguez was when I read the news. And I'm not sure I've seen any of her work. Perhaps she'll surprise me. Perhaps she'll dazzle me with her emceeing prowess. I'll wager $5 she doesn't. 

It might be a fun show, and the co-hosts may step up to the challenge. But it's disappointing to read O'Neal and Rodriguez will be at the helm of a new, big money prime time quiz show. 

Somewhere between my cautious optimism about Hollywood Squares and my inevitable skepticism regarding Lucky 13 is the news that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is also coming back. Jimmy Kimmel returns as host, because one job is not enough to pay the bills in Hollywood these days. It's unknown if the show is returning with another round of celebrities playing for charity or if Joe Public will actually get a chance to win life-changing money. 

It's a solid format that has been tweaked plenty over the years and continues to entertain, albeit to far smaller audiences than it did when it premiered in 1999. But the audience numbers have been good enough to encourage ABC to keep trotting Kimmel out there for another run. This is not the worst news we've had, certainly. 

Now who wants to bring back All-Star Blitz?  

In memory of Game Show Follies

I was a daily reader of a quirky game show blog called Game Show Follies. 

In the early years of the internet, I was a regular reader of a game show blog run by a guy named Steve Beverly. Steve has a diverse resume in broadcasting, and he is a big fan of game shows. As I recall, he launched his website to gather and disseminate all sorts of game show news in the late 1990s. I visited it frequently. 

Steve discontinued that website after several years, and despite my unwavering love of game shows, I didn't replace Steve's website with another. There were alternatives to get my game show fix online, but nothing seemed to capture my attention in the same way that Steve's website did. 

Until years later, when I stumbled onto Game Show Follies. 

I discovered it by chance one day during a Google search for some game show topic. A link to an entry at Game Show Follies was amongst the search results, so I took a look at the blog and soon became a regular reader. 

The blog had been around for years at that point, and yet I hadn't stumbled upon it until that day six or seven years ago. Whenever I found it, it took a while before it became habitual reading. But it became a daily destination within a few weeks or months. 

Game Show Follies featured one man's daily musings about the world of game shows, allegedly. The listed author's name was Casey Abell, and almost every day the author would post an article. Once in a great while s/he would miss a day. And once in a while s/he would post twice in one day. 

I never took notes, as I never considered I would reflect upon my years of reading, and commenting, on the author's daily postings. But I certainly wish I had saved screen shots of some of the most memorable, and ridiculous, posts in the long, glorious history of Game Show Follies. They were both brilliant and brutal. 

I wish I had screen shots because the blog's author dumped years of writing. After announcing, quickly and unceremoniously, that the author was retiring from the blog immediately, the author zapped thousands of blog posts spanning more than a decade, about a week after retirement. Erased from existence with a click of a button. Sure, I can probably find random memories from the blog at archive.org if I search for them, but that would require effort. No thanks.

I'm going to guess that most readers who perused the author's ramblings have wacky memories akin to mine. At times Game Show Follies was like a car accident. You couldn't look away. 

Early on I had a sense that the author of the blog had a penchant for talking down to her/his audience. It wasn't every week, but it occurred often enough.

I don't remember the comment, but the author's tone in making the comment certainly suggested the author was smarter than the readership, and that you were foolish for holding your opinion. 

So I came up with a stock response that I started using. I would comment on a blog post with some sort of response about how I don't know what to think about the subject, but perhaps I would be told what I should think... or something close to that. It didn't take long for the author to take offense to a redundant comment that suggested the author was arrogant in her/his thinking. I was quickly warned that my malfeasance would not be tolerated. 

What fun is it to be king or queen of your kingdom if you don't berate the peasants once in a while? 

The author liked to make assumptions and generalizations about readers, as well. (Don't we all?) If you didn't like Steve Harvey's shtick, if you didn't think sexual innuendo was hilarious, you had to be an "older is better" viewer. If you didn't like today's overproduced, overly dramatic games with hosts who think they're as important to the show as the game, you were a dinosaur who only lived for the past. 

It was an idiotic conclusion, but I was labeled as one of the "older is better" crowd in response to some comment I made, probably about Family Feud. The game is relatively dull, and has been for decades. With or without sexual innuendo, it's just not very entertaining until you get to the bonus game. 

There's no debating that a show I've found to be dull through multiple hosts is doing well more than four decades later with Harvey at the helm. I watched it plenty in my youth, but as an adult, it fails to entertain me. But I can't find a show to be slow and boring for decades unless I'm an "older is better" guy. 

Yeah, that's the kind of flawed logic that permeated throughout the blog for years. 

Conversely, I agreed with the author about its GSN knockoff, America Says. It took years for me to watch America Says, as I haven't had a cable television package for about 15 years now. But America Says is a lot of fun. It's a fast-paced version of Feud, the host isn't trying to do improv comedy during the show and the questions aren't filled with lame sexual innuendo. If I was 17, I'd find Harvey's Feud to be hilarious. I'm not. Irony, newer is better when it comes to the Feud format.

So how else was his blog both memorable and ridiculous? 

Comment moderation

I have accused the author of kayfabe, a wrestling term that means to present a staged performance as authentic. Pro wrestlers usually don't hate each other outside of the arena. They're working together and are often friends. But they want you to believe they really hate the other guy when they don't. That's kayfabe. 

The author had weird polices and procedures over the years when it came to moderating her/his comments. S/he contradicted her/his fluid policies periodically, which were published on her/his blog and treated at times as if they were federal law. I eventually accused her/him of hypocrisy. S/he was outright fraudulent at times in what s/he said and did when it came to her/his blog comments. Sometimes the only explanation was kayfabe.

When I started, there was no comment moderation, as I recall. If you submitted a comment, it showed up on the blog post. 

This allowed for a lot of idiocy, and readers long before me were already jerking the author's chain. I don't recall if s/he was deleting comments or not, but s/he did have a policy regarding profanity on her/his blog. I appreciated that, as it's really unnecessary in the world we live in, and it adds nothing to a game show discussion. It just doesn't. 

At some point, the author was getting hit with a lot of nonsense. I don't recall if it was insulting, offensive, profane or simply pointless. The author issued some sort of warning, which only stirred the hornet's nest. As more ridiculousness spewed forth, the author would respond with some silly comment like, "I'm really getting upset!" Seriously, that was the tone of the response. And I'm supposed to believe that the author's actions weren't kayfabe?

Well, that soon ushered in an era of moderated comments. No instant gratification any more, and the author was now the ultimate gatekeeper. 

Yet the absurdity continued. 

The author liked to cite her/his adhering to those terms and conditions of the blog, golden rules s/he proclaimed s/he would live by when it came to comments on the blog. These were nothing more than rules posted on the blog that could be applied arbitrarily when the author was in a cranky mood, and proved that the author was really just a hypocrite.

One of the rules was "no spam," or something akin to that. That's great, except there's no definition of what is or isn't a spam comment. I would submit silly comments sometimes just to see what kind of mood the author was in. Some of which I knew would be rejected. I'd type all sorts of nonsense, including claims about drinking and intoxication. 

I'd also pass along feedback, a news tip or send other info that wasn't important to have displayed in a blog comment. When I'd submit such info or feedback, I'd start the comment with profanity, and sometimes note the comment wasn't for posting. The author didn't edit comments before publishing them, so they wouldn't be posted. Worked out well for both of us. 

There were comments that weren't published, however, that were sans profanity. They'd be simple, vague comments. For a while I was submitting comments simply praising the great work. Nothing about the daily blog post, just a compliment. Eventually those stopped being posted, because the author deemed them to be spam. What a clown. Generic praise on a daily basis was spam? Kayfabe or hypocrisy. Take your pick.

When I deemed the author mentally unstable at one point, I stopped commenting for a while. Eventually I returned to making occasional comments. I posted some of the same ridiculousness that had been deemed spam months earlier, in part because the author had started approving ridiculousness from others that should have been rejected under her/his fluid, goofy terms and conditions.  

And to my surprise, my silly comments started to get approved. Why? Who knows, other than the fact the author was a hypocrite whose terms and conditions were fluid. I even commented that it was good to see hypocrisy was back in play, and the author approved such a comment. It had no relation to the blog post I was commenting on, but s/he approved it. Maybe dementia was starting to set in and s/he forgot the edict s/he had made long ago. 

I included a reference to hypocrisy in my daily comments for a short period months or years prior, as the hypocrisy in the author's actions showed up occasionally on her/his blog, and I had seen it multiple times at that point. One day I got the stern warning that if I dared to reference hypocrisy in the future, my comments wouldn't be approved. There's an old saying about the truth hurting. 

I wasn't the only person who was subjected to the author's fluid terms and conditions, for the record. 

And I get it. If you have a blog that is generating daily traffic, you're going to have to hassle with a bunch of crap, just as anyone with email has to sift through and delete spam on a recurring basis. It's hard to police every blog comment and apply your general rules and regulations exactly the same. That's human nature. But the author was bad at it. It was as if kayfabe was in play.

It was as if the author was trying to be a puppet master, using hypocrisy to evoke a response when s/he needed entertainment, logic or past precedent be damned.

As for why I stopped commenting for a while: As I said, the author seemed mentally unstable. And at one point s/he was outright fraudulent in her/his representation of me in the blog comments. So I decided it was time to stop commenting for a while. When somebody exhibits signs of mental instability, you give them space. (I'm sure s/he would say the same thing about me.)

I don't remember what irritated me about her/his actions, but I had been responding to the blogs on a recurring basis for a while, with no ulterior motives. Nothing about my responses was intended to get the author going. Whatever set her/him off, s/he reverted to her/his ridiculous ways. I didn't ignore that in my comments. 

S/he must have been rather angry, depressed or bored, because in response s/he printed portions of my previous comments that hadn't been approved for the blog, stuff I wrote just to see what level the hypocrisy meter was at on a certain day. It was definitely nonsense, which s/he would classify as spam. It would be out-on-context stream of consciousness based upon something unrelated I had just looked at or read, perhaps with alcohol and intoxication references peppered in.

Printing unpublished comments and trying to use them to mock me was her/his way of trying to make me look bad, ridiculous or otherwise. This wasn't the first time the author tried to misrepresent me in a blog comment. And I'm convinced that's what s/he was trying to do again. Hypocrisy and kayfabe aside, s/he wasn't an idiot. S/he may have acted like one occasionally, but s/he knew what I was doing when I submitted nonsense that was certain to remain unpublished. 

Instead of an intelligent counter argument to my criticism, the author opted for fraudulence. At that point I decided I wasn't going to comment for a while. 

If you see a person on the sidewalk as you're walking down your street, and that person is acting mentally ill, do you engage with the person, or do you try to give that person space and avoid contact if at all possible? I'm not a social worker, so I chose the latter. 

I kept reading the blog, I just didn't bother to comment. After several weeks, I disagreed strongly with a position s/he took on something. So I finally commented, ending my sabbatical. And how did the author respond? S/he tried to portray my comment as my typical response. Noting I had been absent, s/he bemoaned my contrasting opinion as if that's what I always did, as if I always disagreed with her/him.

I didn't resume commenting regularly at that point, but for fun one afternoon not long after her/his misrepresentation of me, I looked back at about a month's worth of her/his blog posts before I took my sabbatical. I commented on almost every blog post leading up to the sabbatical. My comments shared my memories of a topic or my opinion on the news topic of the day, but comments suggesting the author's opinion was flawed, wrong or pure idiocy were nowhere to be found. But yeah, I was always taking up a contradictory opinion to her/his opinions. 

Lying to the readers or lying to herself/himself: Only the author knows for sure.

I guess it wasn't kayfabe, as I'd have to have been in on it for it to be kayfabe. The author was simply a fraud on a recurring basis. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Funny stuff

Let's not forget that the author liked to act all high and mighty on a periodic basis. 

People would take cheap shots at her/him from generic Google accounts. Some readers had names attached to their account, but plenty did not. The author liked to ridicule those who didn't declare their full name on their Google account. If your name is Donald John Trump, you had better not set up your account to display your name as Dictator Donny, not if you wanted to contradict or criticize the author in any way. If you didn't spell out your name, you were chastised for criticizing the author. 

The irony in this is twofold. One, I had emailed the author a couple of years prior, passing along legitimate news fodder for the blog. My display name on the blog was generic, but I included my full name and made it relatively clear who I was in my email.

Despite the love/hate back-and-forth we had going, I never had contempt for the author. But I never got an acknowledgment of my email. The author would eventually claim s/he had never received it. 

But yeah, I was among the anonymous. 

The greater irony is that the author used a pen name, and admitted to it, if you can believe her/him. 

 "Casey Abell," we would be told, was a pen name for Ralph Abell. The author also provided links to a rather generic Linked In page under Ralph's name, and a link to a Twitter account that had no meaningful info, and had sat unused for some time. Ralph, as the author would frequently be called, may have still been lying about her/his identity, using somebody else's accounts and claiming that as her/his identity. That's far-fetched, of course, but not out of the realm of possibility. 

And Ralph had a couple of photos on the blog over the years, allegedly portraying Casey. A head shot and then a family photo. Again, doesn't prove anything legit, but it could have very well been the author. Once or twice I Googled Casey's name along with the Texas town s/he claimed to live in to see if there was evidence s/he was being honest about who s/he was, but little turned up when I did. 

At the end of the day I would have bet my $5 that the author was being honest in portraying herself/himself, but s/he was overly upset about anonymity on a blog, and for much of the time had portrayed Ralph as somebody named Casey. That's what you call a hypocrite, and that's why I refuse to rule out the idea that Ralph isn't a pen name, as well. 

There were a few other funny things when it came to the author. S/he was ripped by another blogger for her/his "laugh it off" response to women who are subjected to internet harassment. I never knew this at the time, but it was pointed out on her/his blog at some point by another reader. I don't need to weigh in with an opinion, but the fact that the author would get upset about stupid comments made toward her/him on her/his blog, yet once told women to laugh off such comments, is hilarious. And sad. 

Perhaps the funniest moment was when s/he referenced a celebrity from a long-ago appearance on The Dating Game. I think it was Farrah Fawcett. And somehow the author made it clear that s/he didn't realize Farrah had died years ago. That can happen, of course, but the way it read in her/his blog, and the flack s/he got for the comment months later was damn funny. 

Big fans

There were plenty of people who didn't think the author was particularly brilliant, or worth the time of day. 

Here's a comment I found from 2018 on a forum called Golden Road: 

"I've read some of his posts and his tone is mocking of pretty much the entire fandom. And not in a funny way- it's mean and rather stupid. He seems to actually despise game shows with terms like "moldy oldies" (any old game show), makes fun of buzzr on a regular basis for not being a "real network" and looking for the first sign of failure, takes constant shots at buzzerblog, the game show forum, golden road and game show garbage.

It could be he is jealous, because those forums he trashes actually have views and comments. Abell only has about two or three people actually reading his blog. Going back, the only entries with many comments are trolls and those insulting him.

Oh, and Casey, since you're apparently reading this, telling the whole world that you Googled me because I had a reaction to you that you didn't like is more than a little creepy."

The author did like to pick apart discussions on other forums and explain why those discussions were flawed and predictably biased. It was a strange obsession. 

I think the author had plenty of blog traffic. Was that 100 visitors per day or 500? Don't know. But it was far more than 2-3.

Whatever the readership was, I'd wager $10 that the majority of the readers wouldn't call themselves fans of the blog. 

The end

As ridiculous as so many of the author's posts and responses were over the years, I'm sorry to see her/him go. It was a daily commitment by presumably one author for many years. That's amazing. It's game shows, it's not important. But the author found something to write about and presented simple nuggets of info and opinion consistently. That's impressive. Sure, some of those nuggets were picking nits over opinions in another forum. But s/he did other, more creative stuff to fill the void, as well. If there was nothing current to write about, s/he would pull up a wiki entry about an old and/or forgotten game show and share a tidbit or two about what was written. 

Whoever the author was, whatever her/his motivation, I'll never know. S/he shared writing on a consistent basis, and I admire that. S/he was either a puppet master or mentally unstable. I certainly know which one I'd wager my $20 on. Despite that, I'll applaud the effort to put her/his writing out there, no matter how foolish or idiotic some game show experts will claim it was. 

I didn't expect the end to be so sudden, unless the author died. And maybe s/he has in the months since the blog ended. We'll never know. But it's a shame that years worth of effort were pulled from the blog a week after her/his retirement. Not every piece of prose needs to be preserved in perpetuity, but after all those years of writing and making it available, why pull it down now? (I can think of one possible, reasonable answer.) 

Whatever the reason, I had to spend a couple of hours memorializing the wacky, weird world of Game Show Follies. I started this weeks ago, put in a couple of hours of writing and still wasn't done. It took me months to finally sit down and finish it off. It is done. You might think that the author's blog wasn't worth five minutes of memorialization, and you might be right. But I'll never forget the weird, wacky world of Game Show Follies, and I will not be the only one. Now we can all look back and laugh, together, assuming anyone ever finds this blog post. 

Rest in peace, Casey Abell.