Mindreaders

[whewfan]

With the recent death of Dick Martin, I was thinking, would you blame the format or Dick Martin for not making Mindreaders work?

Someone said that the pilot of Mindreaders was a riot, and they thought it had potential to be a good show.

For those that are not familiar with the show, there were two teams of three civilians, and a celeb on each side. A question was asked of the three players, which was a question about themselves. These questions  usually required a "yes or no" answer. A sample question might be "Have you ever been to a strip club?"
The celeb for that team must try to correctly predict the answers of all 3 teammates, but an incorrect answer meant control went to the other side. The bonus round was similar to the car game on Eubanks' Card Sharks. A question was asked of 10 people (again with a yes or no answer), and this time the team had to predict how many out of 10 responded with the same answer. After that, the teammates had to predict how the CELEB responded to a question (thus the term "turnabout round")

I personally don't think Dick Martin was to blame. I think he did the best he could with a flimsy format. It was sometimes a little dull to hear the celebs' reasoning for why they think someone they never met responded a certain way. Also, the contestants really had no control over their fate. If anything, I don't think Mindreaders suited Dick Martin's talent or brand of humor. When Family Feud was created, it was basically built around Richard Dawson. They failed to have the same thinking for Dick Martin.

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'whewfan\' post=\'186830\' date=\'May 26 2008, 12:14 PM\']It was sometimes a little dull to hear the celebs' reasoning for why they think someone they never met responded a certain way. [/quote] There's the answer. It's interesting when you have one person trying to guess how the polling group thinks, because you have something to work from.

When Family Feud was created, it was basically built around Richard Dawson. They failed to have the same thinking for Dick Martin.

How so? The format certainly lent itself to Dawson's particular talents, but I don't think it was built around him at all.

[tvwxman]

Were there differences between the Pilot format and Game format?

There was just too little playalong factor, and as stated above, the entire game rested on how a celebrity could guess on contestant thoughts.

I think they had it backwards : A much better game would have been to have 1 contestant play with 3 celebrities.

[Allstar87]

Dick Martin was not to blame. Mindreaders' format was awful; I don't think anyone could've salvaged it.

He seemed to be having more fun on The Cheap Show; at least there, he could properly show off his humor.

[chris319]

It wasn't the pilot but a couple of office run-thrus which went well and made it seem like the show might have legs. In the studio, not only did Dick seem a little overwhelmed, but the celebrities had trouble buying into the flimsy premise of predicting the responses of total strangers. That, and the fact that run-of-the-mill civilian contestants weren't as beguiling as G-T staffers were in office run-thrus.

Definitely the weak concept killed it.

[whewfan]

It should be noted that sometime in Tattletales run, they tried a new wrinkle in the format that was similar to Mindreaders (not sure if this idea was what inspired Mindreaders, or if this was after Mindreaders was cancelled) The three celebs were asked a question to be answered YES or NO. (I don't think the spouses offstage were involved in this round) A representative of each section tried to predict how the celeb in his/her section responded to the question. It was tried for a week and then dropped.

In this case, the Mindreaders format worked MUCH better because the civilian was trying to predict the answer of a well known celeb. However, it also slowed down the pacing of the game.

[tvmitch]

[quote name=\'tvwxman\' post=\'186832\' date=\'May 26 2008, 03:38 PM\']
I think they had it backwards : A much better game would have been to have 1 contestant play with 3 celebrities.
[/quote]
Which is similar to the format of All-Star Secrets, right? Not that "the show with the most unfortunate abbreviation" was a perfect format in and of itself, but it stood as a more solid game on its own, at least compared to the Mindreaders pilot I've seen.

[Jimmy Owen]

Guessing a celebs opinion would be more akin to "People Will Talk" or "Celebrity Game" than "All-Star Secrets."  A-SS could never have return celebs because all of their secrets were used up within the week.

[SRIV94]

[quote name=\'whewfan\' post=\'186864\' date=\'May 27 2008, 04:44 AM\']
It should be noted that sometime in Tattletales run, they tried a new wrinkle in the format that was similar to Mindreaders (not sure if this idea was what inspired Mindreaders, or if this was after Mindreaders was cancelled)[/quote]

Do you recall which version of TT tried the wrinkle (that would answer your question as to whether it inspired MINDREADERS or whether it came afterwards, since MINDREADERS' run was right in between TT's two versions)?

Wow.  3200 posts.

[tvwxman]

[quote name=\'SRIV94\' post=\'186872\' date=\'May 27 2008, 11:01 AM\']
Do you recall which version of TT tried the wrinkle (that would answer your question as to whether it inspired MINDREADERS or whether it came afterwards, since MINDREADERS' run was right in between TT's two versions)?
[/quote]
1st version, early in the run, as they moved away from the original format to all 'quickies' .

/Is 'quickies' the standard definition of the questions asked on TT? Can't be.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'tvwxman\' post=\'186883\' date=\'May 27 2008, 10:13 AM\']
/Is 'quickies' the standard definition of the questions asked on TT? Can't be.[/quote]
Could be. On the original, with the HS/SS format, they referred to a question of that sort (which they would throw in somewhere in the middle of the game) as a "Tattletales Quickie," very likely with the innuendo intended.

[alfonzos]

I think they had it backwards : A much better game would have been to have 1 contestant play with 3 celebrities.

Yes, who cares what the contestant has done? I want to know about the celebrity. The most memorable element of Mindreaders was that the sign covered the scoreboard when it wasn't in use.

[Ian Wallis]

Do you recall which version of TT tried the wrinkle

It was the week with Bobby Van, Shecky Greene and Greg Mullavey from early January 1975.  GSN has aired this week in the past.  They switched to all "quickies" in late June, 1974.

[ChuckNet]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' post=\'186870\' date=\'May 27 2008, 10:53 AM\']
Guessing a celebs opinion would be more akin to "People Will Talk" or "Celebrity Game" than "All-Star Secrets."  A-SS could never have return celebs because all of their secrets were used up within the week.
[/quote]

Wesley Hyatt even alludes to that in The Encyclopedia of Daytime TV...perhaps it would've worked better as a weekly show, maybe paired up w/another Hill-Eubanks offering, The Guiness Game.

Chuck Donegan (The Speculating "Chuckie Baby")