Anybody seen the new I've Got A Secret?

[bpatrick]

I had a chance Saturday night to catch two episodes of GSN's remakeof IGAS, which normally runs weeknights at 11:30 (ET). While Bil Dwyeris a pretty good emcee and is about as adept at interpreting the panelists'questions as John Daly was on What's My Line?, two things bother me aboutthis show. First, supposedly the panelists are all gay; what is that all about?Second, the secrets are absurd: a man who jumps rope while holding three women,a woman with a 15-inch waist (and she looks like something out of P.T. Barnum'sfreak shows), etc. The whole show seems designed so that the panel can askthe most sexually-suggestive questions possible (it gets a TV-14 content rating),and I don't care for the audience's "whoop"s when a panelist is close to guessingthe secret.For this, GSN dropped its airing of the Garry Moore/Steve Allen IGAS. The ratingsfor week one, I hear, were pretty good for GSN, but as good as Bil Dwyer might be,he's not in the same league with either Garry or Steve. Nor will this panel of unknownsever be confused with Bill Cullen, Betsy Palmer, Henry Morgan, and Bess Myerson.Indeed, it was a LONG half-hour, and I'm not at all sure I'll watch it again.Your thoughts?

 

[Ultimajock]

...the thing looks like a cheap nightclub send-up of the format. Suzanne Westenhoffer is the only panelist I like; Dwyer as emcee is a bloodless robot. GSN would have been better off putting cameras in front of a taping of NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"...

 

[ironbear]

I had a chance Saturday night to catch two episodes of GSN's remakeof IGAS, which normally runs weeknights at 11:30 (ET). While Bil Dwyeris a pretty good emcee and is about as adept at interpreting the panelists'questions as John Daly was on What's My Line?, two things bother me aboutthis show. First, supposedly the panelists are all gay; what is that all about?Second, the secrets are absurd: a man who jumps rope while holding three women,a woman with a 15-inch waist (and she looks like something out of P.T. Barnum'sfreak shows), etc. The whole show seems designed so that the panel can askthe most sexually-suggestive questions possible (it gets a TV-14 content rating),and I don't care for the audience's "whoop"s when a panelist is close to guessingthe secret.For this, GSN dropped its airing of the Garry Moore/Steve Allen IGAS. The ratingsfor week one, I hear, were pretty good for GSN, but as good as Bil Dwyer might be,he's not in the same league with either Garry or Steve. Nor will this panel of unknownsever be confused with Bill Cullen, Betsy Palmer, Henry Morgan, and Bess Myerson.Indeed, it was a LONG half-hour, and I'm not at all sure I'll watch it again.Your thoughts?

Sure. I figure there's at least some tradition along these lines, what with Fannie Flagg, Paul Lynde and more recently, Jm. J. Bullock. I think GSN simply knows their demographic really well, and that includes more than a few gays. Perhaps sexual suggestiveness feels less comfortable coming from Frank DeCaro, Billy Bean, Suzanne Westenhoefer and Germaine Taylor. All of them are known in queer space, but maybe they ought to be known in yours, too. DeCaro's no stranger to cable and comedy, since he did Daily Show for years, and he's a mid-day talker on Sirius. Bean's a former pro baseball player.There's streaming video of show excerpts here: http://www.gsn.com/secret/index.php ...at least one clip I saw there may not be work-safe.

 

[jwk1979]

. The whole show seems designed so that the panel can askthe most sexually-suggestive questions possible (it gets a TV-14 content rating),and I don't care for the audience's "whoop"s when a panelist is close to guessingthe secret.

/It seeems that every updated version of a classic game show is designed for more sexually-suggestive questions and answers. On the late ninties version of Match Game, every question was worded so that every blank was only funny if it were answered with a sexually-suggestive answer, as was updated versions of The Newlywed Game and the Dating Game, which wasn't the case with the classic versions of those game shows. And on the updated version of Hollywood Squares, every panelist gives a humorous answer before the give the real one, where as, on the Original version with Peter Marshall, only the panelist that were known as being humorist, such as Charley Weaver, Wally Cox, Paul Lynde and an occasional comedian panelist, would give humorous answers before they answered their questions.