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.
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