| In the early days of television, programmers assumed men didn't watch TV during the day---they were out earning the bread. No, daytime television was the domain of women, presumed to be home raising kids. Operas sprung up around ads for soap powder; and for gals who really wanted to challenge their little brains, there emerged the old-time game show.
To a certain extent, this is still true, no matter what's happened to the workplace in the last 50 years. But there are two differences: every hour features several "personal injury" sleazoid lawyer ads targeting those home on disability, and soap-opera outfits have gotten just a tad racier.
Like cockroaches, game shows also still survive, but they too have mutated a little. They used to be hosted by intellectual (or at least intellectual-seeming) announcer-types. Take To Tell the Truth, which first premiered in the 1950s hosted by Bill Collyer. As time went on, it underwent a rocky downhill slide with Garry Moore, then Joe Garagiola, and then giant Aussie Gordon Elliot, before it disappeared.
Well, To Tell the Truth is back. Its new syndicated run started on September 18, hosted by John "J. Peterman" O'Hurley, who's cashing in while people still remember Seinfeld. O'Hurley, whom we remember as a soap opera villain before his reinvention as a character actor, makes a fine game show host. He has that deep-voiced quality that his partner in daytime crime, the whiny and inert Louie Family Feud Anderson, certainly does not have (Louie's been phoning it in for months).
O'Hurley is a throwback to the old-time smartypants game show hosts. The man does have a brain. His grammar is impeccable ("Patrick Duffy, for whom did you vote?"), as is his vocabulary. He throws around words like "echelon" and "cherubic"---and correctly, too!
Unfortunately, game show guests continue to slide downhill. The old To Tell The Truth had relatively brainy regulars like Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle, Bill Cullen, even Bennet Cerf. The millennium version boasts C-grade celebrity guests even Hollywood Squares turned down. We're talking Meschach "Designing Women" Taylor, Paula Poundstone, Dave "Full House" Coullier, and some unknown blonde from Baywatch Hawaii.
To Tell the Truth's "liars" include folks like the guy who buries people's ashes in space, a kissing expert, a "dating decoy" who spies on and traps wayward guys, and Jerry Marin, one of only eleven surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. He stood on the stage with two other little people, in their street clothes, forced to hold giant lollipops and say "I represent the lollipop guild." The non-Munchkin little people included the original Cousin It from the Addams Family.
Ah, showbiz.
O'Hurley's a great fit on To Tell the Truth. Maybe John Henson, currently languishing at ABC primetime since deserting E!, should try the game-show route. Take the floundering Louie Anderson off life support, and let Henson help O'Hurley snark up daytime.
Angry Girl
|
