Who hasn’t had a bad day lately?
Let us adjourn, then, to the Game Show Network (DISH 116.) Although there are several modern game show reruns in the mix– Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Deal or No Deal– there’s also a treasure trove of big hair, bad jokes and Dick Clark.
Game show nostalgia, once regulated to weekday afternoons on USA, has now spawned a network. We live in a world in which the ever-delightful Press Your Luck is now a featured game for Wii. Game Show Network sees the Whammy and raises it a Match Game. Go for the Charles Nelson Reilly, stay for the horrifyingly wide lapels. Also present is The $25,000 Pyramid, complete with Dick Clark and pretty much, at some point, the entire cast of Gimmie a Break. GenY might know Pyramid only via the Donny Osmond-hosted version, which was featured in an episode of Friends (“It’s white.” “Paper! Snow! A ghost!”), but the late resurgence of these chestnuts indicates a backlash against, say, the current culture of women in tiny shorts vying for the chance to win a movie-prop sized Ochocinco ring.
To that end, you will indeed find cultural decay creeping into GSN (my personal favorite: Baggage, featuring Jerry Springer, whose career, like that of all infesting molds, stubbornly refuses to die.) However, even original offerings offer a “Hey, Remember the ’80s?” twist. The Carnie Wilson-hosted revival of The Newlywed Game marries (sorry…) a ’70′s classic with a ’90′s girl group, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air‘s Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton!) fronts Catch 21.
Oh, and real-time games with cash prizes pop up throughout the day. So tell that to your economic recession.
