With Howie Mandel on Deal or No Deal and Bob Saget on 1 Vs. 100, the game show trend du jour is using comedians as hosts. Comedians are used to ad-libbing and interacting with audiences, lending their performance a less cheesy quality than, say, your Todd Newtons or Wink Martindales. But the choice of comedian is important, lest you saddle your show with a [shudder] Louie Anderson. The mind still boggles at that decision. So traumatic were the Louie years that the producers of Family Feud ultimately replaced him with an actor, Home Improvement's Richard Karn, instead of another comedian. And when Karn left the show, the producers tapped Seinfeld's John O'Hurley-- who at least has hosting experience from the short-lived Celebrity Spelling Bee and the revival of To Tell the Truth. For the new game show Show Me the Money, the producers went with what can only be described as a Hail Mary play and tapped William Shatner to be the host.
When you hire Shatner, you know you're getting a guy who not only has the image of a buffoon, but who has given in and embraced that image to make it his own. You're hiring high camp, on a show giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not the direction I might go, but ok. When you hear that Shatner's hosting, you might expect the producers to have crafted the show around his particular style and talents, giving him ample room and opportunity to ham it up and grab attention. But you'd only be half right. As last night's premiere proved, Shatner is relaxed and not afraid to goof with the contestants, but in today's market a marquee host and big money are apparently not enough. After all, Howie Mandel doesn't open briefcases himself-- he's got two dozen attractive models to do that for him. But models just stand there and look pretty. What game show viewers really want to see are sexy, gyrating dancers, and ABC delivered.
Shatner is joined on stage by thirteen "Million Dollar Dancers" who strut their stuff on three levels of platforms. Each platform-- and dear God, I'm not making this up-- is equipped with a gleaming pole for the dancer to incorporate into her routine. Shatner and the thirteen beauties dance their way in and out of commercial breaks.
It's like High Stakes Laugh-In.
The structural problems of the game itself (the contestant has three choices of questions to answer at each level, but can choose to pass on two of them with no penalty and no dramatic tension) are dwarfed by the absurdity and cheesiness of the presentation. The models on Deal or No Deal are unnecessary and the gameplay is brainless, but at least it's sharply assembled. This things looks and feels like what it is-- a slapped-together knock-off of a successful format that fails to appreciate what made the original successful. Ultimately, what keeps Deal or No Deal on the air isn't the array of fashion models it trots out each week, it's the drama of watching someone push their luck and either hit it big or walk away disappointed. Show Me the Money strips all of that away, leaving us with... Shatner meets Solid Gold.
Show me the moron who greenlighted this turkey.
Posted by Peter at November 15, 2006 05:53 PMHa! Great review! While I love me some Shat, he just doesn't have Howie Mandel's charm. Shat is more like that crazy uncle you love seeing get drunk and act and talk crazy a couple times a year, but you'd hate to have to live with him. Howie..yeh, I could live with Howie. And Deal Or No Deal, the game itself, works boatloads better than SMTM. I won't even get into Saget's show, which works on NO level.
Posted by: barb on November 16, 2006 05:35 AM