Pass the Buck

[carlisle96]

My two kids discovered Pass the Buck on YouTube, and went on and on with "He should have said...." commentary after the bonus round. They love the game and have also discovered Bill Cullen. I had to point out to them that this was a 45 year-old show (just look at the clothes and hair styles, guys). I still don't know why it didn't catch on in its network run. It perfectly fits Bob Stewart's "talking back to the set" criterion for what makes a great game show.

[clemon79]

Because dem's da berries, and playing "what was the writer that nobody, including the folks at home, know anything about, thinking at the time they wrote this?" isn't great TV.

I like the show too, but I fully realize it's a guilty pleasure. At it's core the place where you actually make real money is a blind-assed guessing game and that's a huge format hole.

[carlisle96]

Because dem's da berries, and playing "what was the writer that nobody, including the folks at home, know anything about, thinking at the time they wrote this?" isn't great TV.

I like the show too, but I fully realize it's a guilty pleasure. At it's core the place where you actually make real money is a blind-assed guessing game and that's a huge format hole.

I will say it could work better as a parlor game or one of those box game you play at a party when nothing's at stake...and Bill Cullen helped hold the thing together. He looked like he was having a lot of fun. I do see the flaw: if you have to name four things, three are usually reasonable answers while the fourth is the cockamamie one that you may hit if you don't get nervous and just keep talking. But I still like the show.

[JasonA1]

Chris hit it on the head. Pass the Buck is one of those shows I've found game show fans to either love or hate (You Don't Say is another such show). I happen to like it.

The conceit of playing hot potato with a list is fine. We can imagine it with things like "name a U.S. state" or "name a vegetable." But when you get into "name a beverage you wouldn't typically see in your lunchbox" and you watch the judge make one bad call, for or against, a large group of viewers are going to give up. The talking back at the screen turns from chastising the contestants to chastising the show. I also felt like players tried to push less-than-stellar answers with an air of "I do this all the time!" and that was a little annoying, too.

There are ways to ease the main game and endgame problems that we've discussed before. Use a "jury" like Scattergories in the main game. Canvass answers for the endgame (from a survey, or a handful of audience members), and take only some of the answers at random for the board.

Do those changes make it a long-running classic? Probably not. In the same space, it's more satisfying for viewers to match wits with a survey on Family Feud, and claim ownership over whatever "right" answer the stage contestants missed vs. having the 92nd thing that could have kept the game going on Pass the Buck.

-Jason

[clemon79]

Canvass answers for the endgame (from a survey, or a handful of audience members), and take only some of the answers at random for the board.

That doesn't fix the guessing game aspect, though, it just anonymizes it, and the writer's already functionally anonymous, so it doesn't matter. The fact that it's "which one out of a large, non-finite number of perfectly valid answers" is the problem.

I like the idea of applying the Scattergories jury to the front game, but the idea of slowing the game down to a crawl to put a questionable answer to a vote every time one comes up doesn't sit well. Having a judge rule up/down is fine on Pyramid and it's fine here too.

[JasonA1]

I like the idea of applying the Scattergories jury to the front game, but the idea of slowing the game down to a crawl to put a questionable answer to a vote every time one comes up doesn't sit well.

My intention was not a literal one-to-one with the Scattergories voting moment. At parties, we've done it where the jury is actively weighing in as we play, with buttons. The functional pause to get that ruling ends up being no longer than it was on any episode of Pass the Buck -- you peek at the voting, and simply say "the jury says [yes/no]!"

re: the endgame, I had a particular soft spot for Fast Bucks, and wanted to try to keep the spirit it, while taking the show's own budget concerns out of the equation. I think members of the public would answer more reasonably, and hopefully make it feel more like the endgame on Hot Streak: two reasonable people didn't connect on the same idea vs. the show picked an answer they knew you'd never say.

-Jason