This is a great board game with sufficiently intellectual
participants but the new
PAX TV game show is dull, vapid and blatantly low budget. (Ooh,
note to self: another category for reviews: Games). Elaine Boosler
is the host, but she couldn't carry this dog. She was joined
by 3 stand up comics as the star talent. I'd
never heard of any of them, but that could just be me. The format
needs to improve: in the first round 1 of the 3 "celebrities"
gives the true answer, the contestants can choose to guess "Truth"
or "Balderdash", well simple probability says go for Balderdash, there's
double the chance that you'll be right. Duh. And these contestants
went that way until forced to shoot for truth in the next round.
Artificial constraint! Artificial constraint!
But worse, there is little chance for contestant or audience creativity as
there is in the "real" game and we can only assume that the celebrities
have been fed the true and BS answers well ahead of time.
Then there's the prizes; last night's (8/25/2004) top prize, which was
won, was a
trip to Palm Springs, CA for the
International Festival Of Short Films . I'm sure this is a swell
prize for an eclectic few afficionados but for main stream America,
two tickets to the demolition derby at the local county fair would be
more welcome.
ABC, Syndicated to Comedy Central
The scripts are delivered like staccato machine gun fire. Sharp, witty,
topical. But also with a rhythm like poetry or song that makes the reruns
almost as enjoyable as the first run.
Quotes like the one below (which is from episode 22 "Quo Vadimus")
Stranger: "Yeah. It's a good show, Dana. Anybody who can't make money off
'Sports Night' should get out of the money-making business." Sports Night
was cancelled after only 2 seasons.
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