We’ll have full reviews once I’m down for long enough to write about it, but you can write your reviews of 20Q, The Money List, and Big Saturday Night, all airing on GSN tonight. As a very brief review, as I said before I really like The Money List a lot, 20Q ended up better than I expected, and Big Saturday Night ranged from rough to painful.
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40 responses to "Reviews of “20Q”, “The Money List”, and Big Saturday Night"
I really, really, don't like the games in-studio. They're not intriguing and they come off very poorly. I mean, someone won $10,000 cash for 30 seconds of playing with refrigerator letters. Just keep doing call-ins. If you're going to do extra giveaways, they might as well be call-in giveaways so viewers can be lured in. "Ooh! I wanna win!" The call-ins are the best, most fun and best executed games on the program.
And the skits are really not funny. If we learned anything from the Game Show Awards, it's that making fun of game shows on a network that game show fans will be watching isn't the brightest idea. Sure, it was done back in the day with Faux Pause, but look how that was perceived and how long it lasted.
I really, really like the Money List. Great concept and Fred Roggin hosts it very well. The only thing I don't like is that it's like he's asking himself questions. "Is it up there?….Yes it is!" 20Q could easily be a half hour show. As an hour show stretched to an hour and a half, it isn't that enjoyable. I feel like it's stretched a bit too much, but both shows definitely have a great play along element.
I think next week, I might skip the Big Saturday Night portion and just watch the shows uninterrupted. The worst part about Big Saturday Night just so happens to be the Big Saturday Night portion.
OK In studio gets a 6/10 Money List gets an 8/10 but 20Q is the highlight with a 9/10
I absolutely LOVED 20Q and truly do not understand the hate towards it.
I will be watching again that is DEFINITE!
Money List is great but i personally think $50K isn't enough of a top prize.
KMK hosted the studio games well as well as the always hilarious Ross Matthews.
Great job GSN.
OK, I'm going to just say right off the bat that some people are probably going to get their proverbial knickers in a twist with some of what I have to say here, but I'm just calling a spade a spade and telling it like it is, whether we all like it or not. I'm not even sure that I like it, but it is what it is and this is just the way the general public and society are.
First off, the shows are both great, I totally enjoyed watching and playing along. Cat Deeley and Hal Sparks were fun, and Fred Roggin was as professional and in control of things as always. I'd like to see a little more pizzazz from Fred because I know he has it in him, but still, he seemed very comfortable hosting "The Money List" and kept the show moving nicely. Using my usual measuring stick, he's better than Dylan Lane. MILES better. "20Q" actually played really well on TV and I can honestly say that the game show portion of this 3-hour block was fantastic and fun.
I can't say it flew by, however…because we had interstitials. Big Saturday Night isn't just the new game shows, it's the segments and the play-at-home stuff. And this, my friends, is where we hit the wall. Actually, "hit" doesn't work. We friggin' slammed into the wall in a Ferrari with a cement block on the gas pedal and exploded into smithereens.
The skits were lame. They were not funny. In some cases, they weren't even accurate. "Key Notes" ended with a line about second place on "Jeopardy!" being something we shouldn't strive for in life because it just gets you luggage. Ummm…actually, that hasn't been in the case in, what, 10 years? Maybe more? Second and third place wins cash. Maybe the joke was meant to say you can BUY luggage with your second-place cash. Yeah, that must be what he meant. It's one of those "outside the box, think about it" lines. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhno. It was just a lame-ass line that anyone who has only watched "J!" for the last few years wouldn't even have a clue what the hell it meant. Then we have the "Whammy interview", which was equally lame and unfunny. However, to add insult to injury, the segment CUT OFF THE ACTUAL GAME SHOW!!! Are you KIDDING ME?!?! How can an ENTIRE PRODUCTION TEAM be asleep at the switch like that, not to mention the "talent" (and boy, is THAT a word I'm using loosely) on stage?
OK, now speaking of the talent…all of the hosts sucked. But by God, Ross Matthews. Ross Matthews. I don't even know where to start. Let's just lay it on the table: Ross is obviously homosexual. And for that, I really could give a damn. I don't care who's straight, I don't care who's gay, I don't care who's bisexual, I don't care who's sleeping with inflatable animals. I just don't give a damn. However, GSN is presenting this person as a host for a period of THREE HOURS to an audience that will see the majority, frankly, reject him and not want to see or hear him. He is loud, his voice is ludicrously annoying, and I can't think of many men OR women who have such a high-pitched squeal as their speaking voice.
When ABC debuted "Show Me the Money" years ago, the first contestant was an individual very much like Ross. He was very openly gay, and again, I didn't care about that and I still don't. However, his demeanor was really hard to tolerate, speaking about his "murse" and squealing like a second-grade girl in pigtails while playing the game. What the hell was ABC thinking by airing that person as the FIRST contestant on the FIRST program of this big-money game show that they were looking to turn into a megahit? The show tanked, and I know part of the reason was people could not stay tuned to the program for more than 15 minutes because they couldn't deal with that contestant. I remember all the notes and message boards about this very thing.
So here, GSN goes and does the same thing. I already counted at least four people on the GSN message boards who said that Ross Matthews was unbearable. I can GUARANTEE you that there will be a lot of people either changing the channel when "20Q" and "The Money List" are not actually airing during BSN, or else TiVOing it and fast-forwarding through the non-game show portions, or worse yet, people just flat-out not tuning it at all next week. And it will not be because of the game shows, they were great. The awkward studio portions, the lame skits and the intolerable hosts will be why BSN may turn out to be the biggest disaster in this network's history. And there have been some BIG disasters.
BSN is a great concept with two great game shows as a part of it. I hope GSN fixes the major flaws one way or another to make this and keep this a complete success.
I liked the Money List, but really wish it would move faster. Do we really need to be reminded every four or so list items about the consequences of a contestant naming an item that isn't on the list? We get it: If it's not on the list, they lose. If they just sped it up a little bit I would have no complaints about this show.
Unfortunately, the commercial breaks killed me. I clocked one at just under ten minutes, which is unbearable. I guess that's what happens when they stretch this show out to half an hour longer than it should be? I think that I'll Tivo the show in the future and watch it a day later so I can skip over all the ads. As for 20Q and the Big Saturday Night program, I think I'll skip over them completely.
Big Saturday Night was "Must DVR TV." The two main games were both fine, at least when compared to all the filler material. For me, there was a total about 45 minutes of content that I would make an effort to watch, spread out over a 3.5 hour programming block.
Ross the Intern has a fingernails scraping the blackboard quality that sends me running to another room. What were they thinking? Hasn't his 15 minutes expired yet? Tom Green seemed to have skipped the rehearsal. Fred Roggin was good. Cat Deeley seemed okay. I'm not sure who the other people were, but I tried to skip most of those segments.
A couple of comments about the actual game play:
After the guy guessed "polar bear" on 20Q, the computer said that "polar bear" ranked 7th on its list of the most likely answers, with a 34% probability of being correct. That doesn't make any sense. Even if there were only 7 possible answers, each with equal probability, the chance of being correct is no better than 14.3%. And what would have happened if the contestant had just guessed "bear"? Would he have been ruled right, or wrong, or asked to be more specific?
On The Money List, having to name only 15 countries in Asia seemed awfully low. Twice as many would have been a more reasonable challenge, but it would have taken forever. On the other hand, the question about Will and Grace guest stars who played themselves would have been impossible for me, since I've never seen the show. So there's a lot of luck involved.
I personally enjoyed the new 20Q. Although, the rules seemed a little hard to follow. I thought the host "Cat" was pretty good, a bit hard to understand….. I LOVED the contestant "Lucy" wished she would've been the host – could've watched her all night. Hal Sparks was pretty good as the computer. I thought the gentleman who won the entire show seemed almost scripted.
The Money list…..is a bomb once again.
Of course we all like Deal or No Deal re-runs. The BIG SATURDAY NIGHT extra games were lame to say the least. Who were any of the hosts? They were lacking……………
I personally enjoyed the new 20Q. Although, the rules seemed a little hard to follow. I thought the host "Cat" was pretty good, a bit hard to understand….. I LOVED the contestant Lucy on 20Q wished she would've been the host – could've watched her all night. Hal Sparks was pretty good as the computer. I thought the gentleman who won the entire show seemed almost scripted.
The Money list…..is a bomb once again.
Of course we all like Deal or No Deal re-runs. The BIG SATURDAY NIGHT extra games were lame to say the least. Who were any of the hosts? They were lacking……………
Ed, the 34% was for that answer and that answer only to be correct- not that answer out of the 7 possibilities the computer had left.
20Q surprised me- in a good way. Money List was eh.
Alright, now I'll do the actual shows first, and then the plugins.
Firstly, 20Q is much better than advertised. The format is alright, and I actually laughed at some of Hal's quips. Cat Deeley is average, but that's to be expected due to her previous hosting of So You Think You Can Dance. But alas, it was alright. The play-in game was kinda fun, to narrow the field down from 6 to 3. The problem was with the quarterfinal game. there's a possibility that you could get stuck and coincidently not be able to get a Yes answer. They need to do that better. The semi-final and bonus game were ok. And $25,000 + a TV was a good haul. The set reminded me of Millionaire, but I can't complain. Grade: B-
Part 2: because my comment was too long the first time.
The Money List was fine. Fred Roggin was better here than at GSN Live, because I think he showed a bit more personality here than on there and didn't have callers who didn't know how to play the game or even knew the answers to the simpliest of questions. He sounded like he was having fun here. His dancing from taht clip earlier, needs something to be desired though. The format is pretty much the same as it was on the FOX run, but done well enough to fit in 2 full games. So, well done there. The set is the british set, which isn't worth complaining about. In short, it's the better Saturday Night game. Grade: B+
Part 3 because my entire thing was way too long the first time.
Big Saturday Night itself was absolutely pathetic. They drug Keenen Michael Key out of the same place they found Debra Wilson i.e. MadTV. The difference is that Debra is actually pretty good, cares about what she's doing and not annoying. Keenen is the exact opposite. He was godawful, very inept, and wasn't funny when they did his sketches as Barack Obama, the Keynotes (which were dreadful), and that Alex Trebek before he was born crap. They also put in Generic Blonde Bimbo #57824 in there to help spice things up, which diudn't work. She, like keenen, was too loud and too annoying. But those two are fine compared to Ross Matthews.
Finally, the worst of the worst.
Ross MAtthews aka Ross the Intern is by far the WORST host for anything on GSN. We get it, You're gay. We dont' care as long as you host well. And to be honest, you are worse than Patrick Wayne. You put your annoying self over like nobody's business, which is the absolute worst thing a host can do, When you tried the game with Tom Green, the acting game, you didn't even know what the hell to do, yet you were prepped on this before the show started and not 1 minute before the game started. You are absolutely pathetic and don't deserve to be on TV. Also, don't get me started on that horrific attempt at Weekend Update for Game Shows, especially with your drooling over reading the story about Adam Lambert coming out of the closet and wanting him to make you his twinky bottom bitch. Not only that, the plugs that you gave are worse for Oodles and that Seaworld sketch were horrifically done. May you never grace any stage again, not even a strip club stage, you untalented bozo. The games are bad, This was just a mess altogether. Grade: F
I have to agree with some of the comments and disagree with some. I think 20Q was just stretched way too thin because of the "Big Saturday Night" segments. Ross Matthews…he reminds me of the American answer to Ed Sanders of ABC's National Bingo Night. Very loud and very annoying. I couldn't give a rip less about his sexuality or mannerisms or anything like that. He just is not host material, especially given the runtime of the program he's on.
More on BSN…the best celebrity they could get was Tom Green? Tom Green Come on. We all know that GSN has talented people working for them, but the segments that weren't call-in were so lame and uninspired that you'd think the talent level had dropped below absolute zero. And GSN, if this is going to continue, PLEASE…if you're going to throw money at shows, throw some more at this one and try for hosts or guest celebrities that aren't annoying in almost every single way.
I say cancel this BSN BS and create a GSN Live Primetime for Saturday nights. Up the budget over the weekday show, bring in a few guests for interviews, and maybe do some remote shoots. Bring in a few new hosts, maybe Todd Newton or someone with a female co-host. GSN Live is a proven format that works very well and makes the network money.
The problem with the last two Saturdays is that GSN is trying to throw games into formats where games don't normally exist. The problem is that they failed both times. Sketch comedy and Award shows have proven unsuccessful. What's next? A drama behind the scenes of a game show where in the middle of it, they break out into an actual, game show where actual contestants win money? Oh wait…they do that already…it's called Survivor and Big brother and…um…other stuff in the reality genre. How about…wow! How about actually spending money on producing game shows? You know, maybe Saturday night is not the right night for this anyways. It's been the worst night for TV for the past 10 or 15 years. Only Trading Spaces in it's heyday did well on Saturday nights.
I liked the two game shows thrown in there. But, the live stuff sucked.
@Quincy Hughes: I got the impression that the segment that was started early (cutting off the list reveal, as I recall) was deliberate as the live segments had dragged so badly that the show was over. So, instead of cutting one of the lame skits, they chopped into a taped segment… go figure.
Besides the insufferable Ross Matthews and the lame skits, I see one major problem here. Will the casual audience sit through what are basically two list-based word games with an hour of padding every Saturday night? We will, we're game show fans. But if GSN is trying to reach out, having a show that's based on a list of clues leading to an answer followed by a show that's based on a clue leading to a list of answers may not be enough to do it. Therefore, the BSN interstitial content has to carry the casual audience. As it's set up right now… I'm not sure it will.
Suggestions: keep Charissa (she's cute and she'd make a good sidekick), find a real host (l like Julia's suggestion of Todd Newton), lose the intern and the MadTV guy, keep the studio audience, and play games that play off the shows that GSN airs.
Fred Roggin has now officially joined another "elite" list; this one of sportscaters who moonlighted as game show hosts.
Who might be next? Joe Buck? Tim McCarver? Bob Costas?" Dick Stockton? Kevin Harlan? Marv Albert? (Marv Albert?…YESSSSS!!) Any of the guys from ESPN? Just for shiggles," Other than Mike Greenberg, does anybody know which other sportscasters also were game show hosts?
I'm not sure, but was that John Hanlin who won the $20K on 20Q last night?
20Q was acceptable, but it suffered under the 90-minute BSN format. I got bored waiting for it to return and didn't put it back on until the bonus game. Cat Deeley looked a little nervous, but was acceptable, and there is a decent playalong factor to the game.
I do agree with Ed that I have to wonder how the show would have ruled if the contestant answered "bear" in the bonus game. Playing along, I locked in with "bear" on the third question asked.
Money List was good, and I'd like to see GSN promoting it as a standalone show. Roggin was decent, and the playalong factor was strong. Two things I noticed…
1. Difficulty seemed a tad all over the map — the Will and Grace question didn't seem to fit in comparison to the other questions asked.
2. On the same question, when Fred revealed the acceptable answers, Daryl Hall and John Oates were listed as one answer. What would have happened if a contestant answered "Daryl Hall"? Would Oates be eliminated as an answer as well? (Also had an issue with 7-11 being listed as a restaurant chain, but that's not the show's fault — that's the fault of the group that came up with the list)
20Q – Fun but dragging. Why did they have to recycle 1 vs 100 music cues?
Money List – Good god. They should be able to fit 4 complete games into 90 minutes. Obvious ADP, as well.
Big Saturday Night – Totally unwatchable.
The Money List is actually an hour show. It was 90 minutes last night because of the Big Saturday Night segments.
I did not watch it…but based on the comments I'm pretty sure I will love the shows and hate the BSN segments. I could not stand that Ross guy at the game show awards (and when I saw him on Tonight Show I thought that voice was made up for the show–i can't believe a man really has a voice like that)
Anyway, GSN is trying to get play-along shows to work… so why don't they just try to bring back PlayMania or a very-PlayMania like show? I can't see it failing. They still have hot, competetant females that could host –they probably could still get back Shandi–(no offense, but we all know from Jeff that a guy can't host the show; but if they wanted to try a guy, fine just NO ROSS!!!!!!!!!!) and the show just worked! Sorry for not being able to let go, but I'm just confused on why GSN keeps trying to make successful shows when they can bring back one that we know for sure will work.
OK, it wasn't John Hanlin of "Bingo America" who won on "20Q" last night.
Hrm…Playmania worked? Then, why isn't it on the air anymore? The genre of call-in shows like Playmania was very ill-advised and short-living. It made money for GSN really quickly, but at the same time, the hosts other than Mel Peachy were horrible. The games were horrible. When they decided to get innovative and produce 100 Winners, they ended up spending too much money, and lost the only host who competently host it. The same types of games are played during GSN Live, but in a much more interesting format. They give away more money on GSN Live, and make more money with it as well.
Sportscasters as game show hosts? Right now, Dick Enberg comes to mind (Baffle, Sports Challenge, 3 For The Money), as well as Vin Scully (the original It Takes Two).
Chris Berman, Kenny Mayne and Stuart Scott have hosted ESPN game shows. Dick Enberg did a few shows in the '70s (including Three For The Money and Baffle for NBC). Jim McKay hosted at least one early game (Make The Connection for NBC) before switching to sports. Joe Garagiola did To Tell The Truth and was the second host of the first US version of $ale of the Century. If you count American Gladiators, add Mike Adamle and Joe Theismann. Jimmy Cefalo did Trump Card… Ahmad Rashad did Caesar's Challenge… and if you really want to stretch, Dennis James was a wrestling and boxing announcer before his game show career. :) If you really REALLY want to stretch, Dennis Miller did Monday Night Football before Grand Slam and Amnesia.
Here's my opinion about the Big Saturday Night program:
20Q: I was a little skeptical about this program until I actually played along. This is a wonderful concept! It not the actual "20 Questions", but it's enough that it's fun to play along at home. Cat Deeley was a wonderful host. I'm a little iffy on Hal Spark's role as the computer, but then again, the jokes are there for the specific demographic. The winning contestant was pretty smart to beat the computer.
The Money List: This by itself is a wonderful concept for a show. I do agree with those of you who wished the game would go quicker. Maybe some tense commentary on the last item of the list or on crucial items. $50,000 is all right of a grand prize, since a winning team can easily rack up six for $10,000 on a good list. I'm not saying that the second list was bad, it was just hard for them. I do think it's a little unusual to see Fred Roggin as the host (He's not a bad host, it's just odd to see him in a big-money situation like this one after seeing him countless times on GSN Live.)
Filler Portion: Wow, GSN must have a big budget to afford to pay out between around $50,000 and $100,000 each week to contestants. The Oodles prizes for answering questions correctly have increased as well. A few more correct answers on BSN and I'll be able to afford a $10 Amazon gift card!
I was a little peeved when the bit about Alex Trebek wasn't really a bio, but a skit of a pompous and arrogant elementary school student answering in the form of a question. Jeopardy! wasn't even around back then, even with Art Fleming as host! Why again is GSN making fun of game shows?
As for the call-in segments, I actually got a call from GSN, but the machine told me that I wasn't going to be a contestant. Did any of you get a call, saying that you "might" be a contestant?
Anyway, I have mixed feelings towards this program. Still, it's fun to play along. Have a nice day and God Bless!
I got called – after a few cycles of "please stand by", I was dropped, too.
That's one more call than I got during the entire run of PlayMania, though. :)
Yeah, same here. Got one call at around 8:30 and never got another call.
Kenny Mayne hosted (please correct me if I have the title wrong) the "Two Minute Drill" and Stuart Scott hosted "Stump the Schwab". Those are the only 2 that come to mind.