GSN’s Updated “Lingo” is ROUGH, R-O-U-G-H
It’s incredibly hard to screw up GSN’s upcoming version of Lingo, debuting June 6th at 8:00PM ET. It’s just people guessing five lettered words and playing Bingo. You’d figure it would be next to impossible to find ways to botch the job. The network sent out screeners of an upcoming episode. The Bill Engvall hosted updated version is far from bad. They just made a lot of decisions which make no sense, and the show pales in comparison to the former version. You can click here for the rules. We’ve gone over it often. The rest of this is just opinions of the show itself.
I want to clear Bill Engvall’s name first. There was, understandably, a lot of fear when former host Chuck Woolery, a game show legend, wasn’t picked to continue hosting. Bill really does a great job with what he’s given. He’s good with the teams, he explains stuff well, he jokes around and has fun, hosts well, and carries the show. That’s all you can ask for. He doesn’t step on anyone’s toes trying to make a joke. I was extremely pleased with how he did, so good choice there.
Bill Engvall hosts Lingo on Monday, June 6th, at 8:00PM ET on GSN
The rest of the show is filled with decisions to update the show that make little sense. The clues are pointless and are really just an excuse to add dirty humor to the show. I could care less. My enjoyment of bizarre humor is well known. It makes no sense here, though. It slows the game down and the teams rarely, if ever, process the clue. Furthermore, if you are going to have clues that lead to the answer, they need to be better written. Some of them are so tenuously connected to the actual answer that it borders on nonsensical. This version of Bonus Lingo isn’t as enjoyable as the old version, either. I have no idea why they ditched the entire point of Lingo, the bingo tie-in, at the climax of the show. It’s not bad, but it’s just not as good.
I’d be more than willing to forgive all of that and enjoy the game play if it wasn’t for the contestants. The contestant casting was poor. The screener had as many nonsense words in one episode as you’d find in a week of the old version. And again I’d be understanding if teams weren’t just randomly shouting out words when it wasn’t their turn, not understanding how the whole procedure of drawing balls or answering words goes, flat out not listening to clues, or if some teams would just shut up for five seconds. But they couldn’t. To continue that, I’d be even more understanding and say, “Well, this is just one team.” However, this is what they sent out to get people excited for the show, and it leaves me worried about the quality of the rest of the contestants.
The main game play is the same and is still enjoyable. Bill Engvall is a fun host and does very well. The graphics and set are nice. I don’t know what happened with the rest, though. They had the show. They had a product that people loved. They had to make a few very small updates to bring it to 2011. They made some of them and continued to just switch things up, and they overstepped the line severely. Will Lingo be a success? I’ve got no idea. I grossly misfired on Improv-A-Ganza, and given how I perceived Lingo went, I’m stumped. However, other press people that saw the screener reacted the same way I did. We’ll find out June 6th at 8:00PM ET on GSN.
I honestly have no idea. By the sounds of it, GSN did a great job on some parts they are usually bad at, like the hosting. But like you said, it’s still a mystery.
Hopefully Lingo will be a really good show, and continue to air new episodes years to come with Bill Engvall. I don’t know what season of Lingo this will be, but I’ll say this. Let’s stay this is season 1 of the new Lingo premiering June 6. I think the show would do better at an earlier time. Say—6 P.M. (East coast time). GSN has done better with The Newlywed Game, Baggage, Catch 21, repeats of 1 vs. 100 in the time range from 5-7P.M. (Baggage has less viewers at 7:30, even with the newer episodes a couple weeks ago, New episodes of Carrie Ann Inaba’s 1 vs. 100 did poorly at 7P.M.) If Lingo does not do as well as GSN would like it to at 8P.M., move it to 6P.M..!
And for some reason—when you click on GSN fan it brings you to google.
I did not make google
And by the way, Lingo will also be on (repeats) at 5:30pm starting Monday, June 13
It would be season seven if you count Chuck’s version and this as the same entity(season one of Chuck’s version was the 20 episodes produced in the Netherlands, which aren’t part of the current rerun cycle), and seasons two through six had 65 episodes a piece)
I hesitate to consider this version part of the same run. For starters, it’s got an entirely new production team. Plus, the show has never been on hiatus this long, and has never made this many changes at once. Heck, I can’t think of any show that made this many changes at one time in the middle of a continuous run – maybe Millionaire this season came close, but it still retained Meredith as the host.
So once again, casting vs. contestant searching will make a show unwatchable…another great job by the morons of GSN.
GSN isn’t the ones screwing up by casting instead of searching for contestants.
The Original Donald
Mark Burnett should have just wrote Rob Mariano a $1M check and not bothered with Redemption Island.
This doesn’t seem too encouraging. I was already skeptical about the addition of clues, and the fact that they contain “dirty humor” REALLY worries me. (Especially since Alex, who like edgy humor, doesn’t approve.) I also have never had the best feeling about the new bonus round, though this review doesn’t address the concern I had about it being too easy to win the $100K. And the contestants on the Woolery version weren’t the brightest (particularly during the Shandi years), so it’s pretty alarming to hear that new version’s contestants are twice as bad.
I also agree that putting this show on at 8 PM is a bit overtly ambitious. It might be a better idea to put it at 8:30 or 7:30, with Karn or O’Hurley as a lead-in. Or they could put at 6 or 6:30 for now, replacing one of the Newlywed Game runs, since Baggage is in reruns and Love Triangle bombed. Still, I think it would at least do better than Drew at 8 PM.
For the record it’s not that I’m anything close to offended or bothered by the dirty jokes. It’s just that it makes no sense. It’s like if Alex Trebek started making jokes about boners during Jeopardy.
Yeah, that’s what I gathered. I’m not exactly a prude either, but some things are just meant to stay relatively clean.
I usually found it funny to watch contestants on Chuck’s Lingo spell out words that didn’t exist…
Still, I think Chuck deserves to host a new game show on the network…let’s say Greed… =D
I don’t think a show like Greed would work on GSN. They couldn’t make a rich enough money ladder to make walk-aways genuinely hard decisions. We all remember what happened with 1 vs 100. It’s silly watching contestants decide whether or not to walk with $1,000.
I would welcome Lingo over Love Triangle or Drew Carey’s Improv which is nothing as good as Whose Line Is It Anyway. I like Lingo and will be interested to see how Bill Engvall does as a game show host.
“The contestant casting was poor.”
Hopefully that’s just the screener, because this makes or breaks a show for me, much more so than changes to the set. I’m sure Bill Engvall’s great – he was never my concern. Gameplay changes may end up working out – I can’t say that without seeing the program. I hope though, that the casting department didn’t just cast screaming jumpers (you know the sort). People have brainfarts on TV – I understand that. Sometimes you can’t get in the rhythm of the game – got that too. But guessing on the other team’s turn? Have they even seen the show?
Proposed solution for Bill’s second season, if this becomes an issue: nationwide casting. Either let people upload video applications or – and this could be great for publicity if done right – take Bill on the road to four or five cities (NYC, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, say) for auditions (leave the LA ones in, of course). And next year, switch the cities up a little to get a different crowd (Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, perhaps). I think there are some very smart people in LA who would be great for this game, but I think this would get people much more interested – people from near where they live who aren’t just game show contestant clones.
8 pm – the time Drew Carey’s Improv-a-Ganza is on. Wonder what will happen to that show?
Although, according to the schedule, Drew Carey’s Improv a ganza is on 4 times in a row on Saturday nights.
That’s 2 straight hours of it!