I was not raised like most kids of my generation. According to my mother, I taught myself to read by scanning through newspapers and picking out stories that interested me. There are home movies of me at age 4, inside my bedroom, pointing at posters on my wall of Neil Armstrong and Abe Lincoln, and reciting facts and dates like I was some sort of damned history professor or something. In first grade, Mom and I thought it would be "fun" for me to memorize Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and recite it in front of my classmates. I'm not saying this stuff to tell you how smart I am -- if I were actually as smart as all that, I wouldn't be a 25-year-old Wal-Mart cashier still working on her undergraduate degree. I'm saying this stuff because, looking back, it's a wonder that I have things like friends or social skills.
But most of all, I was raised on the good old-fashioned game show. And I loved them. Still do. And the mid-to-late-80s, those oh-so-loveable Regan/Bush years, were chock-full of good ol' fashioned game shows. Dick Clark was doing the Pyramid, Bob Barker was in his 9th decade of doing The Price is Right, you had Dawson and Coombs doing Family Feud...needless to say, I'm getting all misty just thinking about it. And despite the fact that our cable box offers us a station called "The Game Show Network," it's woefully lacking in quality.
With one massive exception. In recents months, I have fallen in love with the many incarnations of Gene Rayburn's Match Game. Everything about it seems, you know, right. From the cheap production value to the washed-out-but-still-endearing "stars" to the music which dates it with pinpoint accuracy, it's everything a game show should be in my mind. Observe, if you will, the might and majesty of the Match Game:
I choose this clip, not because it's the funniest or raciest out there, but because it proves my point better than any I could immediately find: there is no way that five minutes of this show would be allowed on today's airwaves, let alone on network TV! In Primetime! I dare you to watch an entire episode of this show (which you should anyway, because it's honestly a fantastic show) and try and transpose that 70s mentality into a 21st century society.
No wait, I can. This is what you get:
As soon as you hear the phrase, "politically incorrect," it's time to switch the channel. This is what happens when you try to be mediocre and fail miserably. And, honestly, this is what has been happening over our airwaves, circa 1998. Louie Anderson doing the Feud? Followed in quick succession by Al Borlan and J. Peterman? Drew Carey telling people to "Come on Down"? Taking a great show like Press Your Luck and tuning it into Whammy? 90% of the Game Show Network? DONNY OSMOND??
This is what I'm talking about. It's our generation's Catch-22: we complain about things so much that everything gets reduced to a non-offensive pile of crap; since it's crap, we complain about that. I'm glad Gene Rayburn's not around to see this. I could extrapolate, and make a point about how this is indicitive of our society, but really, I'm just pissed about the game shows.
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