Last Updated: 11/25/2002

TV

Worth Watching...

BalderDash*

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.

SportsNight*****

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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