I was recently reminicing on a particularly harrowing contest on the game show Scrabble (the infamous four screwups in trying to spell “mosquitoes”, which I’m convinced was largely responsible for the return to just having to know the word) when I hit on this question.
Have you ever seen a parody or somesuch of a game show where one or more contestants continually screw up even the most slam-dunk answers, and the host slowly goes ballistic? Mad Magazine did a feature on this once, and I’ve seen this on Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs (for some reason, Alex Trebek seems to be a popular target). Has this ever really happened? Or is it one of those best-case-scenario urban legends…you know, where it’d be funny if it did happen, and it possibly could, but it never really has.
For the record, I’ve seen hosts get flustered, bewildered, stunned speechless, etc. at some particularly juicy foul-ups, but never angry.
The producers of Hollywood Squares pulled a great April Fool’s joke on host Tom Bergeron last month, when they sent in two ringers as contestants. Both were actors; the woman played a ditzy housewife who was so nervous she would start crying when she missed a question or the stars made a joke, and the guy became increasingly belligerant and obnoxious as the show went on, insulting his opponent, the stars and Bergeron. Neither Bergeron nor the stars knew what was happening, and could only look on in horror as the normally jovial proceeedings slipped out of control. When the joke was finally revealed, Bergeron looked so relieved, and congratulated the staff on the best April Fool’s joke he had ever seen.
I’ve seen Bob Barker get pretty upset with “The Price is Right” contestants. It’s pretty rare, though. Usually, he is pretty patient, but one time in particular I remember him explaining and explaining the rules/strategy to this one person who just wouldn’t listen. So at the end he was just frustrated and even a bit angry as the correct price was revealed.
I can’t remember which pricing game it was, but I remember him saying pretty sharply, “OK, let’s look at the price. Did you win? No, of course you didn’t.”
Have you ever seen SCTV? They did a pretty funny parody of Jeopardy.
Eugene Levy as the volatile Alex Trebel, and John Candy, Andrea Martin, Martin Short and Joe Flaherty as the clueless contestants on Half Wits.
Many years ago I attended the taping of Tic Tac Dough. Before taping started, everyone was told how the game works and they even played a few rounds to enforce the point. One of the contestants selected just did not get the show. Wink Martindale and the producers tried their hardest but she just didn’t get it. The whole show was dumped after an hour and a half, it normally took about 40 minutes to tape a half hour show. After taping the fifth of the five shows taped, some folks were asked to stay on so the screwed up Wednesday show could be retaped. I watched all the shows a few weeks later when they aired, Wednesday’s show was an obviously patched together show. They actually made the ditzy redhead look like she knew what she was doing too.
The time I saw Barker get made, they were playing the Skee-ball game(this was in the late 80’s). This lady was so dumb, she didn’t get the concept at all. Finally, Bob threw the balls for her and she watched and approved of his action.
These are some of my favorite sketches. I was fond of the Celebrity Jeopardy with Will Ferrel as Alex Trebeck. The Sean Connery in that sketch was hysterical, also funny were Keanu Reeves: 'I know kung fu" Alex: “For the last time, NO YOU DONT” and Nicholas Cage, who somehow managed to lose his podium
I saw an episode of Family Feud once, I think it was with Richard Dawson. In the final round, where a contestant has 15 seconds to answer 5 questions, one of them was “In which month does a pregnant woman begin to show?”
The intention was for an answer which would reflect how long a woman has been pregnant – like 3 months or 6 months – that her figure becomes noticably that of a pregnant person.
This lady was so flustered that she answered “September”.
The host cracked up, as did the audience. He told the judges to stop the clock, which they did, and after a while they restarted it and continued with the other questions.
They (NBC?) just broadcast the 5th installment of their “The Most Outrageous Game Show Moments” series. They had the above “September” answer on FF, plus tons others.
If you watch Jeopardy enough, you know that Trebek is a seething cauldron of boiling rage just waiting to explode (like all Canadians). He gets so snippy with contestants sometimes.
Wasn’t there another joke played on the host of Hollywood Squares besides the one mentioned?
They sent in two ringers and one of them claimed the other guy had peeked at the answers and threw a fit and I think it was John Davison as the host got all flustered before they revealed it was a joke…I don’t know if this was another April Fools joke on him or what.
I think that one was for some show on TV where they pulled gags on various movie/TV stars…the gag ended with the enraged contestent shoving the other off of the raised platform that they sit on(which was several feet high)…the second contestent was a stuntman who fell to a cushion below.
And on FF, Richard Dawson often had to stop the clock when people gave ridiculous answers.
There is also the infamous Alex Trebek promotional recording or Jeopardy, where among other things he says, “dollars, dollars, dollars, dollars” in various shades of mid-western dialect for later editing. Then, suddenly, he goes off, spouting, “Fk you! Fk you! F**k you! And him, too!” If it’s not real, it was done by a good impersonator. It was regularly played on some stupid afternoon radio show (complete with a dubbed-in Jeopardy soundtrack) in the DC area about ten years ago.
