Celebrities Haven't Improved Family Feud

[Zoneboy]

Three decades after its heyday, game show saddens rather than entertains

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In 1976, following in the footsteps of the inane game show Match Game came Family Feud. The Feud, as it came to be known, pitted two families against one another in a competition to guess the most popular answers to survey questions posed to 100 people.

Richard Dawson, the first host, was the embodiment of the boozy and permissive spirit of the times. Always looking kind of red in the face, he made a point of kissing every woman on the show on the mouth, sometimes repeatedly. He managed to do this for 10 years, before the spectacle of a guy in his 50s kissing women 30 years his junior became creepy, and the show was cancelled in 1985.


No matter, the show was repeatedly resurrected with the present incarnation being hosted by actor John O'Hurley. No doubt, you will remember him as J. Peterman on Seinfeld.

I recently stumbled across his version of the show while channel surfing. The families, frozen in silhouette at the start, and the music, which explodes in hyperactive bursts that last no more than three seconds, were instantly familiar. The set still looked like it was constructed by Hasbro, and the contestants still huddled together whispering, as they conspired to steal their opponents' points. And of course, at the end, when the answers were revealed, the audience still read along in wonder as if hypnotized.

What differentiated The Family Feud I remember as a boy from the present one wasn't the game but the people who were playing it. One episode I saw included the likes of Bono, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and Robin Williams, or at least people who looked a bit like them. I had not happened upon a Celebrity Family Feud, but a Celebrity Look-Alike Family Feud.

You will be interested to know that their version of Aniston, who was wearing shorts and had a long face, looked like a transvestite. When asked "what quality do people find most attractive in a person," she answered with surprising certainty: "The mouth." It was also worth noting that a fake Robin Williams is every bit as irritating as the real Robin Williams.

It was an utterly ridiculous and charmless display, impoverished on just about every level imaginable. Had both contestants and celebrities become so scarce that they had to resort to such pitiful party tricks?

Perhaps, for last summer I happened upon an actual version of Celebrity Family Feud, and it was rather heartbreaking to watch. The episode, which is now burned into my brain, featured Tiki Barber and his family going up against Ed McMahon's clan. Barber, an articulate and likable ex-football player, is in the prime of his life. McMahon, who was born in 1923, wore a neck brace and held onto his podium like it was a walker. Ed's reflexes have slowed a bit, and he was no match for Barber when it came to hitting the red buzzer during the "Face Off" portion of the show, looking like he was trying to swat a fly that had buzzed away from his soup five seconds earlier.

Repeatedly when the host asked McMahon a question, a blank look washed over his face and he was unable to answer before a buzzer sounded and a big, red X filled the TV screen. His most recent wife, Pam, who is many years younger than he, kept trying to shout answers in his ear, but to no avail.

However, watching McMahon in such oblivious and genial decay was not the saddest part of the show. That honour went to Ed's stepson, Lex, who called Barber's black mother "girl." No doubt, he was trying to be cool, to show the world that he had watched Oprah and understood the black vernacular, but he sounded like the sort of guy who still loves to do shooters even though he's in his 30s.

Worse yet was the dynamic between Lex and his mother. They didn't seem to like one another very much, and the mother, clearly the leader of the family, disregarded all of her son's suggestions. When this happened, which was constantly, a look of sincere hurt came over Lex's face.

In some ways, McMahon and his family -- who have seen some hard times -- stood before us as a cautionary tale. Far from personifying the optimistic end that game shows, and America, are supposed to suggest, they had not been spared the infirmities and dysfunctions the rest of us suffer. It was sobering rather than entertaining, and I certainly preferred the illusions I digested as a boy, when Richard Dawson suggested an adult world of sex and riches, one that was unsullied by the complications and consequence of its pursuit.