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Post by carpetcrawler on Jun 5, 2014 0:08:15 GMT -5
Hurrah, public footage of this game show is now available!! Courtesy of the Wink Martindale YouTube page:
Big ups to John+crew for uploading these clips. The clips come from an episode that's not accounted for by UCLA's TV archive no less, which means four episodes of the show are now confirmed to exist. Neat. What do you guys think of this show?
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Post by ladykelsey on Jun 5, 2014 1:40:52 GMT -5
Baffle was the very first game show in history to have bright flashing lights in it's set. And not only that Baffle was the inspiration for many game shows to use flashing lights in it's sets as well. Pretty interesting fact about Baffle for anyone to know, Kelsey
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 5, 2014 7:03:08 GMT -5
Interesting show. I'm not sure it was worth losing Concentration to get this warmed-over PDQ redux, but there's certainly a charm to this show that can't be denied. You gotta love that "space-age" set, and the game is surprisingly engaging for what it is. (Nice choice of celebrities, too.)
Just too bad it eventually succumbed to the all-celebrity trap...
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Post by carpetcrawler on Jun 5, 2014 21:52:26 GMT -5
Interesting show. I'm not sure it was worth losing Concentration to get this warmed-over PDQ redux, but there's certainly a charm to this show that can't be denied. You gotta love that "space-age" set, and the game is surprisingly engaging for what it is. (Nice choice of celebrities, too.) Just too bad it eventually succumbed to the all-celebrity trap... You can blame that on Concentration not keeping up with the times. NBC wanted them to spruce up the show so that it didn't look like a 1950s show that somehow accidentally made its way onto a 1970s lineup, but they didn't want that to happen. I imagine NBC took one look at that super bright set and decided that alone made it an upgrade.
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Post by wildjackmonroe on Jun 6, 2014 7:21:15 GMT -5
I didn't think any episodes existed at all. It's always nice to see more presumed lost stuff being found.
I clearly need to watch PDQ at some point so I can understand the comparisons.
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 6, 2014 8:29:51 GMT -5
I clearly need to watch PDQ at some point so I can understand the comparisons. Ask and ye shall receive! Here's the PDQ pilot episode; the differences between this and the aired version are negligible:
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 6, 2014 8:47:23 GMT -5
You can blame that on Concentration not keeping up with the times. NBC wanted them to spruce up the show so that it didn't look like a 1950s show that somehow accidentally made its way onto a 1970s lineup, but they didn't want that to happen. I imagine NBC took one look at that super bright set and decided that alone made it an upgrade. Yeah, you're probably right. Sometimes, it really does come down to a case of style before substance, although to be fair to Baffle there was still some substance to the style too -- an engaging game, an interesting bonus round, and a host in Dick Enberg who may have been one of the most underrated emcees of the decade. (See also Sports Challenge and the criminally short-lived 3 for the Money.) But compared to Concentration, there's almost no contest which was the better show. I fear Baffle was, much like Blackout fifteen years later, doomed from the start simply because of the legendary series it replaced. Doubtless someone at NBC saw the newer, fresher daytime lineup CBS was pushing at the time and decided to try and grab a piece of that action. Thus, relative dinosaurs like Concentration and Jeopardy! were put out to pasture and a bevvy of more up-to-date games were added to snare a younger audience. Funny thing, though -- just a few months after Concentration disappeared from NBC Daytime, it popped up in syndication with a flashier set, streamlined gameplay, and a newfangled bonus round... all things that could have easily been implemented by NBC itself, but it took the wizards at Goodson-Todman to breathe new life into those old bones.
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Post by Kaos on Jun 7, 2014 0:23:57 GMT -5
Doubtless someone at NBC saw the newer, fresher daytime lineup CBS was pushing at the time and decided to try and grab a piece of that action. Thus, relative dinosaurs like Concentration and Jeopardy! were put out to pasture and a bevvy of more up-to-date games were added to snare a younger audience. Funny thing, though -- just a few months after Concentration disappeared from NBC Daytime, it popped up in syndication with a flashier set, streamlined gameplay, and a newfangled bonus round... all things that could have easily been implemented by NBC itself, but it took the wizards at Goodson-Todman to breathe new life into those old bones. Even MORE funnier thing. Well, look what happened to Jeopardy...
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 7, 2014 7:31:00 GMT -5
▲ Yes, look at what happened to Jeopardy!. It lay dormant for close to four years, and when it finally did return to TV in 1978 it was barely recognizable as the game it had been. If it wasn't for Art Fleming and the answer-in-the-form-of-a-question element, chances are most viewers might not have known what show they were watching. They didn't get it right until 1984, and even then it arguably still took at least one full season for Jeopardy! to find its footing and resume its rightful place in the pantheon.
If the 1973 Concentration was an example of how to properly update a classic show for a modern era, the 1978 Jeopardy! was an example of what happens when updating goes haywire.
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Post by wildjackmonroe on Jun 11, 2014 7:26:36 GMT -5
Thanks for posting the PDQ episode. I'm surprised I hadn't given that a watch before since I'm a big fan of celebrity word games. This was a cute concept.
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 11, 2014 22:01:07 GMT -5
In case you missed it: If Wink gets to 3,000 Facebook likes, this little goodie will unlock:
Intrigued? I know I am.
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Post by Kaos on Jun 12, 2014 18:06:48 GMT -5
TBH, I did like Catch 21, but Wink did it better with Gambit.
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Post by wildjackmonroe on Jun 15, 2014 11:04:55 GMT -5
^ To be honest, the only things about Catch 21 that I really disliked were stuff that didn't necessarily have to do with the format but mostly cosmetic and BTS stuff, like how the contestant coordinator was encouraging everyone to be as loud as possible. Being on a game show is fun and people should be naturally excited, but in a lot of instances folks could just be plain obnoxious. For example, every answer doesn't need to be screamed.
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Post by thekid965 on Jun 16, 2014 9:26:37 GMT -5
Now that the full episode has been posted and there's a dedicated thread for it, I'm gonna have to ask that the portion of this discussion relevant to Gambit be moved there instead.
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Post by Chameleonwhammy on Jun 16, 2014 10:13:15 GMT -5
Returning to Baffle, I have to say I enjoyed seeing those clips. Too bad nothing exists. Very good concept.
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