I happened to see an episode this week of the show's Bill Engvall version, where the winners really won. A hundred grand, in fact, which is pretty good for low-rent cable. As I recall, Engvall Lingo saw two 100K winners in its only season. The version also saw endless complaints. The clues, the occasional mildly off-color humor, the set, the contestants, Engvall himself...everything about the new version got trashed.
To some extent this was just the usual nostalgia for the "older" version with Chuck Woolery. I put "older" in scare quotes because Chuck's Lingo seasons hardly date back four or five decades. But nostalgia is a potent force on the game show Interwebs. So when GSN shook up the format with a new host and some other tweaks, complaints were inevitable.
Truth to tell, I liked the sassier and funnier Engvall episodes. Sure, sometimes the humor was corny or shady, but the funny helped the puzzle-solving seem more entertaining. And the rock-solid basic gameplay remained unchanged for the purists. Sometimes I'm even a purist.
Truth to tell, I liked the sassier and funnier Engvall episodes. Sure, sometimes the humor was corny or shady, but the funny helped the puzzle-solving seem more entertaining. And the rock-solid basic gameplay remained unchanged for the purists. Sometimes I'm even a purist.
No comments:
Post a Comment