ABC is bringing back The Gong Show Thursday night, and one of the acts is somebody I met while I was working the gate at the Portland Pride festival this last weekend-The Unipiper!
At the Pridefest he was decked out as Darth Vader, and piping the theme from The Empire Strikes Back.
Isn’t this basically just *America’s Got Talent *in another form? I realize the original Gong Show got there first, but this seems like a niche currently well-filled.
It’s supposed to be really stupid acts, though. I don’t watch *AGT *but I assume those acts are kind of polished and could possible turn professional? Gong Show is more like “This is some weird shit, man” or [gets stoned] “This is some hilarious shit, man!”
The commercials for it mention that the host is some guy I’ve never heard of named Tommy Maitland, so I googled the name. Apparently this is Mike Myers playing a character.
Watching the original Gong Show through bloodshot eyes was a daily ritual back in my college days. I believe much of what happened on that show was spontaneous and “un-recreatable.” (Is that even a word?) I predict the new one is off the air within 6 weeks.
From Monsters & Critics:
They’re only planning ten episodes and it’s the summer (when fewer people are watching TV), so I doubt they’ll end it early.
They had a review of it in the paper today and it was not good. They basically said that this version is pretty much mean spirited and laughing at the acts where the original was more fun and laughing with the acts.
There is *no way in Hell *this will be worth a shit in the slightest.
Real desperation on somebody’s part.
There oughta be a gong in DC! 
This isn’t the place for politics, but I do agree with you. :o
Yes…I guess it is a thing he’s doing for some reason.
This is very…odd.
I watched it last night. I was thoroughly entertained. I didn’t pick up on any mean-spiritedness on the judges’ parts, and there was a sufficient amount of absurdity. The winning act was horrifyingly hilarious. It’s no Wipe-Out, but I’ll take it as the truly mindless summer TV entertainment it tries to be.
They seem to be bringing back a lot of game shows for night time. I like the the beat shazam show and the guess who is lying show.
I got bored with the Pachinko show halfway through the first episode.
The problem is that the original show was part of what changed TV in the 70s. There’s been plenty of parody talent bits since then. The show made it as big as being part of the Mama’s Family skits on the Carol Burnett show and Chuck Barris made an incomprehensible movie about it. Since then SNL and other late night programs engaged in similar kind of parody, Letterman had his Stupid Human and Pet tricks, it spawned another bit of nonsense called the $1.98 Beauty Show. It takes quite a bit more than the Popsicle Twins to cause a stir in the modern world of TV.
I really didn’t like it. The whole Mike Myers/Tommy Maitland thing was just stupid. I noticed ‘Tommy Maitland’ was given some time of credit (Producer?) at the end.