GIVIN’ IT AWAY
Reliance on ‘rebranded’ game shows is a lazy summer ploy
Robert Rorke H ERE’S where we are this summer on TV:
A woman dressed as Little Bo Peep comes out on stage on “The Gong
Show,” the revival of a very old “talent” show hosted by the late Chuck Barris (premiering Thursday on ABC). Bo Peep puts a tarantula in her mouth and proceeds to play a harmonica. The horrified judges — Will Arnett, Ken Jeong and Zach Galifianakis — stare, mouths agape. After Bo Peep finishes her song, she opens her mouth and the tarantula crawls out, unscathed.
Throw up in your mouth a little? Designed for shock value, the stunt delivers, but beyond that, there’s not much entertainment value on “The Gong Show,” or any of the other game shows that have been exhumed from the TV graveyard like extras on “The Walking
Dead.” The networks, in a wave of cynical nostalgia, have also dredged up “The Match Game,” “To Tell the Truth,” “$ 100,000 Pyramid” and “Love Connection,” trying to justify their place on the schedule as a “rebranding” for a “new generation” that doesn’t watch TV anyway.
Reality check: All of these are cheap to produce and fill holes in the summer schedule, but there’s nothing creative happening here. And there’s more on the way. “Battle of the Network Stars,” a popular harmless diversion from 40-plus years ago, will have its premiere July 29 on ABC. So much for the era of Peak TV. For every “Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Crown,” there’s a batch of banal procedurals and, now, the scary game shows. When your best programming idea is to bring back “The Gong Show,” you, as a network, are admitting you’re out of juice and are flatlining. NBC, to be fair, has had a huge success with its physical prowess contest “American Ninja Warrior” and “Hollywood Game Night,” but at least they’re not resurrected shows featuring stars who need new agents. Fox has come a-cropper with “Beat Shazam,” a tedious music identification show hosted by career-endangered Jamie Foxx which draws only a 1.2
rating in the 18-49 demo. ABC is the worst offender, with six game shows, including the hit “Celebrity Family Feud.”
Ten years ago, people were excited by the emergence of a “summer season” of network and cable dramas that featured strong female leads and attracted good numbers. Kyra Sedgwick drew 8.8 million viewers to “The Closer” on TNT. The chemistry between Gabrielle Anwar and Jeffrey Donovan kept “Burn Notice” running for years on TNT. For the prestige factor, “Damages” won back-to-back Emmy awards for Glenn Close on FX. Although these shows eventually ran their course, each had a distinct personality and creative spark. But actors and writers cost money and the networks obviously don’t feel they’re getting a good enough return on their investment to set in motion a new wave of exciting scripted programming.
They’d be better off showing reruns of “Bewitched” than asking us to watch spiders crawl out of someone’s mouth.