Outrageous Game Show Moments - NOT that damn Newlywed game clip!

Cafe Society
1

This is about that “fight scene” they showed from Hollywood Squares - the one where that woman accused the other man of cheating and then shoved him off the podium.

Is it me, or did that whole thing look like a total setup?

First off, they start up the fight, and hostboy there is calling for some help from the crew. Nobody shows up as the fight escalates. Then, just before the woman shoves the guy off the podium, the cameras just happen to cut to a floor shot from below, so we can see the hapless idiot flailing all the way down. Then as the crowd goes apeshit, the woman, smiling, cuddles up to hostboy and whispers something in his ear.

Funny as it was, it looks more like a practical joke than an actual incident between contestants. Anyone else who saw it - what you guys think?

2

It was an April Fool’s joke. You can hear the celebrities and audience yell “April Fools” as the woman cuddles up to hostboy.

3

Yeah, I missed the April Fool’s part but I totally thought it was a set up.

BTW, I really enjoyed watching the show. There were some great funny moments. They hyped up the damn Newlywed clip too much though–there were others that were way funnier.

My personal favorite was a clip from a UK show where the contestants answer questions and get to reveal a square on a big board to see part of a visual puzzle. Anyway, in one square you see the head of a cartoony looking guy with a big smile on his face, and then down and to the left, a square is revealed that shows what is obviously cartoon guy’s hand, wrapped around something, rhythmically pumping up and down. The contestant and host start cracking up, and the show keeps cutting to a shot of the puzzle board and, clearly, cartoon guy is spanking the monkey. It was really funny…and finally the contestant gets the next square cleared and it turns out cartoon guy is actually holding a cane and doing a little dance. But hee! They kept showing it and the people were dying laughing. It was great!

4

I liked the one from the British Family Feud where the guy answered “turkey” for three questions in a row. Both the contestant and the host were barely able to stop laughing enough to finish the game. For some reason that cracked me up.

Oh, also the one from the US Family Feud where the question was “In what month of a pregnancy does a woman begin to show?” The woman answered “September.” They had to pause the countdown because the host was laughing so hard.

5

That one was pretty funny. I liked when they cut to his family, and they looked like they wanted to kill him for such stupid answers.

6

I don’t remember what she was saying, but there was a woman early in the show that was on the Newlywed Game with the most elaborate, bizarre, OFF DA HOOK updo I’d ever seen. It looked like she’d somehow managed to pile 15 feet of hair on top of her head in giant “juice-can” curls. I was both delighted and traumatized by it.

I also liked the “turkey” guy, and the way he kept saying “turkey” so matter-of-factly like “isn’t it obvious?!” And the nervous woman who kept grab-assing Richard Dawson was a SCREAM!

I have to confess, I haven’t laughed so hard at a network program in a looooooong time.

7

Man, I was cracking up at the scene Sunshine mentioned. I think the funniest part was that when the contestants would clear away another square it would always be a square as far away from the funny one as possible - up in the corner, off to the side, anything but the one everybody wanted to see.

8

On an episode of the old “Jeopardy” program, the answer was:

“If you believe in fairies, then you believe in me.”

The question the contestant answered: “Who is Liberace?”

The home audience just heard a second of silence, after which they heard raucous laughter from the studio audience.

Art Fleming related this story on the David Letterman program in the 80s.

On an early 70s game show called “Jackpot” the question was:

“I’m the kind of dance you would expect a Playboy Bunny to perform.”

The contestant’s answer: “The hora.”

That was muted, also.

(Host Geoff Edwards related this story in a TV Guide interview.)

Another time of “The Price is Right,” a contestant was bidding on the showcase, which–at the most–would have been $25,000. She bid $100,000! Barker verified that that’s what she meant. She said “Yes.” Needless to say, it didn’t work out.

On an episode of “The Joker’s Wild,” the contestant was to fill in the next line of this song"
Oh, the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightfule,
And since we’ve no place to go. . .

(contestants’ answer)
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain. . . SNOOOOOW!

On a “High Rollers” program, when they came back from the commercial break, host Alex Trebek said that “something had happened to the video from the previous game, and won’t be able to show you what transpired. We can just tell you that [whoever] was the winner.” At least that was the story. Don’t know what really happened, though.

I saw Pee Wee Herman as a contestant on “The Dating Game.” Not Paul Reubens–Pee Wee Herman (although I don’t remember what name he used. It was the first time I had ever seen him, and it was a couple of years later before he became better known, and then later infamous.

A show called “Rhyme and Reason” (or maybe “or”) was played by displaying a line, whereupon the contestant would pick a word that rhymed with it. If the celebrity he/she called on completed a rhyme using the same word, the person scored.
Given line: “Will sex still be great, when I’m 98?”
Nipsey Russell answers: “It might be, but I won’t participate.”

And who could forget Eve “Jan Brady” Plumb’s dumb “Smegma” answer on “The Weakest Link.”

9

I think on the show when they were showing the montage of clips from Password where the person gave the password as a clue one of the players was Paul Rubens, but it was so quick I couldn’t have been sure.

One they didn’t show during the montage was one my brother and I were watching when we were kids. They’d gotten to I think the 4th password (out of 5) and it was turning out to be a stumper and everyone was racking their brains trying to figure out what the keyword was. Anyways, the 4th password comes up on the screen and the “top secret” voice says “The password is…APRON” or whatever it was. Burt Convey reads his screen, scratches his chin and goes: “Hmmm…apron…” and everyone cracked up. D’oh!

We’d also seen the show Wink Martendale was talking about where he said “Orange-utan.” (We watched a LOT of gameshows, bro and I…we were especially tickled to find out that my mom had old crusty 45s of both Wink and Burt Convey – probably still does!)

10

Hee, that special was much funnier than I thought it was going to be. People have already mentioned a lot of my favorites. I also liked the clip from Wheel of Fortune where the guy guessed, “A group of pill-pushers,” and Pat goes, “This is Wheel of Fortune!” Another great one was on Family Feud when three people in a row misunderstood the question.

11

From the UK version of Catch Phrase .

12

My favorite clip for Wheel of Fortune was “Minors and Hoes” rather than “fingers and toes”. Still chuckling over that.

Or the Family Fued clip, when the host said something to the effect of “Like “how old are you” another question someone may lie about”. Everybody guessed how old the host was! Nobody understood the question.

13

The producer of this show (Damian Sullivan) has been posting to the Usenet group alt.tv.game-shows. NBC has ordered two more installments, and he’s taking suggestions for outrageous moments to include.

Google Groups has the original message if you have ideas.

14

A while back I saw an old (1970s) episode of Card Sharks on the Game Show Network. You remember how it went: they poll 100 people, you have to guess how many people answered the question “yes”, or whatever. And after the host asks the question, the contestant hems and haws for a moment, talking out loud about why they’re guessing the number they eventually come up with.

So the question was, “how many out of 100 people polled said they had ever slapped their own face?” So the contestant starts thinking, and says, “Well, you know, sometimes when you’ve been drinking, you have to do that to wake yourself up before you drive home…” I was stunned. Everyone in the studio was evidently just nodding along.

Amazing what it was like in the era before MADD…

15

Not drinking, but smoking… watch some of the older game shows and everyone’s smoking. I love watching the reruns of “Match Game” on the Game Show Channel, but it still shocks me to see the panelists smoking while playing.
I can remember watching it after school or in the evening when it was in first-runs (dating myself :wink: ) and it was just very matter-of-fact, but seeing it now is amazing.
“Oh, my God, they’re SMOKING!!! On TV!!”

16

They should have a Family Feud stupid answers segment. I remember doozies from the Richard Dawson era. One lightning round I remember:

Name something men use to hide baldness.
Spraypaint.
Name something you put in tea.
A spoon.
Name something you take a bath with.
A duck.

All alone each answer is worth a small chuckle, but one after the other. . …

17

Paging Mr. Popeil… Paging Mr. Ron Popeil…

18

Um, Biggirl, I’m afraid I don’t see what’s so odd about those answers. Some men really do use spraypaint to attempt to hide baldness (it doesn’t work, but they still try), I always put a spoon in my tea, and what else could possibly be the answer to the third one?

19

I remember a Family Feud where Richard Dawson was greeting one team. There were three women in a row, and he kissed each one, then there was a man at the end, I swear he kissed him straight on the lips.

20

I missed this TV special – did they show any clips from The Gong Show? I mean the 70s show, with “Chuckie-Baby.”

The most outrageous bit had to be the two teenage girls who sat down onstage Indian-style and started fellating “big-stick” Popsicles. You could hear every guy in the studio audience go nuts. Amazingly enough, according to his autobiography (I skimmed at the bookstore years ago) Chuck did not mean for that particular bit to go on air. Whenever the censors would come for a run-through of the show before taping, they would, arbitrarily, out-of-hand, reject one bit (but usually not more than one) from being on-air. Chuck decided to make sure that every show had at least one act that was so outrageous that the censors would reject that one and leave the others alone. Strangely enough, they rejected some other sketch or song (I don’t remember what, but it was something Chuck felt was relatively innocuous) and let the Fellation Popsiclers on. :eek:

Seeing this go on air made Chuck think to himself that it had all gone too far.