Sunday, June 7, 2009

GSN Game Show Awards: Review

For a really good while now I’ve really been hoping that one day this genre would get its own award show to showcase the excellence of it, especially since the Daytime Emmys have really gone to pot (even the majority of soap fans showed disdain with last year’s ceremony) and last night, it finally came.

Howie did an absolutely incredible job. My favorite moment was when the letter S didn’t come up in Name It & Claim It. I loved him so much on this that I now have the desire to watch him do stand-up. And speaking of Name It… how the hell does someone go to something called The Game Show Awards and not know who Bob Eubanks is… and worse off not even know the name of the announcer of the program they’re attending? Even after Rich identified himself and when Howie said the name? Also I hate Survivor and even I know Jeff Probst hosts it. They deserved all the ribbing they got.

My other favorite parts where the moments when Mark Goodson and Monty Hall were honored. I loved Mark’s daughter’s response, including her saying “I AM a Mark Goodson production!” Didn’t realize Monty did so much for charity, and Mark’s tribute makes me wish we still had more of his shows on GSN. Match Game winning an award was nice too, and it was nice again seeing Joyce Bulifant, Patti Deutsch and Nancy Doussault… surprised Marcia Wallace did not appear.

As far as the sound not working during Bob Barker’s legend tape piece… after the stunt he pulled with Betty White, some would call that technical difficulties; others would call it pure karma. I choose the latter. And speaking of Bob, outside antics aside, the first sketch was pretty clever, which kind of makes it all the more sad. Because knowing all I do about him now, seeing skits like him appearing as God, putting his real persona in... it was just as if not more awkward than humorous.

One other thing to ponder… I did like Jeff Foxworthy’s acceptance speech, but I can’t believe 5th Grader won best show.

No comments: