I must start this review by restating my feelings on Game Shows. My feeling is that they are a thing that exist and I don't really care about them or think of them very much. Yes, like every child who was born between say 1965 and 1995 I watched The Price is Right with Bob Barker on sick days. It was that or some kiddie show made for pre-schoolers or a soap opera. You didn't get much choice on sick days. However it also kind of mattered what kind of sick days they were. On the sick days were you weren't actually sick and pretended to be to stay home, I'd just play Super Nintendo. On the days I actually was sick I would just sleep to try to get better. Honestly it was only a few select times that I watched Bob Barker but you saw him. Every damn child did. I could watch Jeopardy from time to time and when Who Wants to Be A Millionaire/The Weakest Link were popular I would watch them. Were they the last really super ultra holy shit popular game shows? The only one I can think of that came after them that got even close was Deal or No Deal. I just know that those two shows I would watch with my family and have a good time doing so. They have a special place in my nostalgic heart. Game Shows have their place on TV but they were never something I was ga-ga over.
They also made game shows for children. They probably did a bunch before Double Dare in the 1980s but you know that's when they became the most popular. Nickelodeon did a lot of them in the 1980s and 1990s. I do not think I saw any of them. I have no idea if they weren't shown up here in Canada or if I just didn't watch them and watched I dunno Sailor Moon or Gilligan's Island instead. I was amazed to find out that All That and The Amanda Show showed up here on Canadian TV. I couldn't watch everything people!! Before I get into the show of UH-OH I must go on what seems like a completely pointless and stupid tangent about sketch comedy. You know sketch comedy so I won't have to go into a complete history here. Stuff like Saturday Night Live or Kids in the Hall. They also had sketch comedy for kids. YTV had a good amount of it too. They had the classic You Can't Do That On Television which became a Canadian-American production when he went to Nickelodeon and was actually created by a British man. Three countries had to come together to bring the world something that beautiful. They had Squawk Box and later on System Crash. Squawk Box was hilarious to my younger self and I never watched System Crash. I will refrain from going to much into these shows because who knows I might talk about them in more detail on this blog.
Which is what brings us to the TV show It's Alive. It's Alive ran for four seasons between 1994 and 1996. It's something I do not remember in the fucking slightest. Do you ever feel like you really should remember something, like a TV show or a movie but you just do not at all. Like I watched a TON of YTV. I mean I would take time to watch old ass 1960s sitcoms on TBS like The Beverly Hillbillies or Disney cartoons on Family Channel but I really seriously should remember something about this. I think it was because in the first season it was a hour and a half and the last half hour was just a random episode of either Are You Afraid of the Dark, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Captain Scarlet. Captain Scarlet was created by the Thunderbirds people and I think I just blocked everything related to this show out of my mind because knowing that YTV would waste an entire hour on that fucking horse shit every week would have driven me mad. I could have also forgotten about it because it's very forgettable. The one episode I watched had a prolonged soap opera sketch and then a game show parody. Then some joke about a rapper. It was all very pointless and unmemorable. I have to mention it becuase Uh-Oh was a sketch I think on this show. The game show they were doing in the show as Al House of Goo or some shit. I literally just finished watching this and can't remember the actual name. I don't know if Uh-Oh was also a sketch or if Al's House of Goo was made into Uh-Oh. I also don't really care. The next time I talk about It's Alive it will be of the cool movies from the 1970s/1980s about killer babies. Larry Cohen was a nutbar.
Anyway Uh-Oh was turned into a game show proper in 1997. The host of the show was Wink Yahoo, actual name Scott Yaphe. Scott was one of the sketch players in It's Alive. You had three teams of two kids each. They would be asked questions and you could also go to a speed round to do challenges. Gross slime filled challenges. I would refer to this show as a Double Dare ripoff all the time. It's what got port interested into learning more about this show because Portnoyd wishes he could hug and kiss Marc Summers on the mouth twenty four seven. They would also go outside to do an outside challenge. I dunno if that happened all the time or what. I'm seriously only watching one episode of this show, not all 70 something damnit. The prizes for this episode were a snowboarding thing for first place, a hockey jersey (it's Canada bro) for second place and a Game shark for your N64 for third place. Not too shabby really. Oh and the girl in this episode Marie was from Newfoundland. I wonder if she still lives here. Anyway since I am also from Newfoundland I am for Marie to win it all!
This is a picture of THE PUNISHER. Yes, it's a man in a gimp suit. I had not seen this show in several decades and really only watched it when not a single other thing was on and I didn't feel like playing Super Nintendo because some game had pissed me off. I would joke about a guy in a gimp mask playing the Punisher in the last few decades thinking I was being hyperbolic about it, but no. That man gets smacked around by a woman or another man during uh you know the kinda stuff Gimps are into. I do not know anything about the Punisher's actual life except that he was the guy who would slime the kids when they got enough questions wrong or something. They were put into a little slime container place and just slimed. I'm still amazed I was correct in calling him a gimp. I didn't even see Pulp Fiction until I was like thirty! Anyway any time a kid hit UH OH on the spinning thingamgig their partner would be put into THE SLIME CHUTE and if they got a question wrong their partner got slimed. Do you think any kid totally got the question wrong because their partner pissed them off. I totally do because I totally would have if someone pissed me off. Also Marie totally has the Newf accent and it's hilarious. The outside events were a part of the slime tour and they had to do some gross shit like well find buffallo turds in hay. Well the turds were fake. I hope.
Anyway the RED team won because of a TRADE and SPIN thing. I kinda hate that shit in game shows. Someone works to get 210 points and then the goobers who were in last place get to trade to win. Red Team was the goober team of the episode and they won just out of sheer luck. Oh well. I wonder what Marie is up to these days. I hope she's doing well and still enjoys Jiggs dinner from time to time.
FINAL THOUGHTS: I did have a little bit of fun re-watching this. No I won't be watching any more of it but it does make me want to talk about VIDEO ARCADE TOP TEN. Would you like me to talk about that portnoyd? I promise it's better than Thunderbirds. God damn I fucking hated Thunderbirds and still do. Creepy fuckin marionette bitches.
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