There are two game shows that have a special place in my heart. The Price Is Right taught me how to count before the age of two. And any of the permutations of the old Dick Clark-era Pyramid make me stop and watch even now. I don't record the show now (I don't even know if it's on GSN), but if I were to come across an episode randomly, I'd watch it if only to get to the Winner's Circle.
I firmly believe that the Winner's Circle is the greatest part of any game show in the genre's history. There's tension, the teamwork, the sense that you're playing along, and that relentless series of 60 chirps that only seem to get louder and louder as the time shrinks. When the Osmond-era Pyramids came along, I never liked them. The game format was virtually identical (6 in 20 instead of 7 in 30 in the front end). But I immediately knew why it didn't work for me. There was no Winner's Circle postmortem This happened when someone didn't win. The buzzer would sound, there'd be that brief "awwww" from the audience followed by the clap. Depending on how much time they had, Clark would come in and dissect what went wrong. There'd be thinking of clues, yelling from offstage or the other players. If someone had given an illegal clue, he'd usually explain what happened and why (this, of course, led to Vicki Lawrence once calling a judge an asshole). In any case, it was the cherry on the top for me. Yesterday, over at Grantland.com, Bill Simmons did a brief write up on his remembrances of the program: in particular, the postmortem. He linked to a 1979 episode of the $20K edition featuring David Letterman. Suffice to say, Mr Simmons comments would align more with Mr Marousek's attitude toward Mr Clark than mine. http://goo.gl/I9gp9 -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
