I grew up with the classic Match Game daytime series, the one Gene Rayburn hosted with that telescoping mic. It featured Bret Summers, Charles Nelson Reilly and Richard Dawson, all served on a bed of orange shag carpeting.
A decade ago a revival featured Alec Baldwin as host, complete with that goofy antenna mic. The series veered beyond the mildly saucy, PG antics of the original. Baldwin was deadpan and tremendously self-effacing, as dismissive of himself as he was for the celebrity panelists and players. He turned taking a cheque to pay for his new family of a dozen or so children into a deconstructive delight.
This summer, Martin Short is the new star of Match Game. Episodes were taped earlier this year in Montreal, with celebs flown in as panelists.
Here is what the show got right: the shag carpeting; the theme music, the bit at the beginning where the stars mug in a revolving frame; the cheesy, mid-level prize money (topping out at US$25,000). The producers did a great job of recreating the set from the ’70s, right down to the really slow turntable the contestants swing into the game on and the pokey toaster thing the “A or B” cards pop up on.
Points, therefore, for set design. What is written on these new cards, however, is pure blank.
For example, the overwritten cards on this ABC series often do backflips to reference other Disney-owned properties. One card in the first episode mixed a mention of a series on another streaming service with a 30 year old Disney comedy (the ’90s sitcom Family Matters):
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You always hear about people getting murdered on The White Lotus. That’s why I stay at the Jaleel White Lotus where you get nerdy Urkel vibes and housekeeping always leaves blank on your pillow.
None of the celebs matched that player’s guess (‘glasses”). Too often the questions are either too hard (zero-for-six) or too easy (six-for-six).
Then there is the great Martin Short. Maybe it doesn’t help that, back in the SCTV days, Short and his brilliant colleagues used to mock games shows in “Half Wits” and other lethal sketches. Still, the best talk show guest ever, about to return for a fifth season in Only Murders in the Building, deserves the reward of hosting the breeziest game show of them all, right?
Short is making the most out of a happy third act, both creatively and personally. He’s a welcome sight even on ads now with Steve Martin (one played on a recent Match Game episode). On the game show itself, however, it just seems like one gig too many. When Baldwin joked that this TV job was proof his Hollywood career was over, it was funny. When Short does it on the new show, you can’t tell if he’s kidding.
The “what am I doing on this show?” joke lands better when the so-called guest stars get in on the act. On an early episode, Martin asked SNL veteran Kevin Nealon what he was up to these days. “Not much obviously,” came the deadpan reply.
Anthony Anderson, Joel McHale, Ana Gasteyer, Thomas Lennon and Caroline Rhea, who all appeared on the Baldwin version, came back to play with Short this summer. They are joined by some of Short’s co-stars from Only Murders in the Building, including Selena Gomez, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Beanie Feldstein (on the upcoming season,) and previous season suspect Cara Delevingne. Even a fellow SCTV legend, the always welcome Andrea Martin, appears among this summer’s Match Gamers.
Match Game is not simulcast in Canada (CTV pre-releases it Wednesday’s at 7 p.m.) so if you wait two hours you get to see the American ads on border-crossing ABC affiliates. That is when you quickly realize that there are more real celebrities on American commercials than there are on Match Game, including, this past Wednesday, Billy Bob Thornton and KeenanThompson.
Which goes to show that there are blank cheques, and then there are blank cheques.
