The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: wdm1219inpenna on May 13, 2011, 10:23:06 AM
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It's now been 25 years since it's been on in first run, but does anybody here remember this version of "Break the Bank"? I remember hearing about it coming on and at first I thought it was going to be the Jack Barry version with the 20 boxes, and was rather disappointed when I saw it was nothing like that version.
Rayburn supposedly hated this gig, and then they changed hosts and soon after the format changed somewhat. I've never been a really big fan of "stunt" shows, which is why Beat the Clock and Minute to Win It never did anything for me. I know Rayburn's version had the stunts to earn bank cards, and it seemed very lame. The updated endgame with Farago seemed a bit better, but not too much so. Many more puzzles used too, rather rapid fire.
Overall a so-so show. Just wondering who else remembered it, and what your take on the show was.
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I saw Rayburn's once and the end game was just too bizarre. Farago's format was run-of-the-mill. Neither was worth watching on a regular basis.
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I saw a few episodes on Youtube. I thought Rayburn's bonus round was ridiculously out of place and took way too long.
Getting rid of the stunts on Farago's version was a good move, but I guess it was too little, too late at that point. There was also that cheesy transition to commercial...
Farago: We'll be back with more "Break the..."
Audience: BANK!!!
It always seemed like something out of a sitcom game show parody.
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It didn't help that Rayburn wasn't all that quick at that point in his life. Maybe if the stunts were the front game it would have helped. Then there'd be more room for mirth and fun. The puzzles could have been the end game; I suppose that would be the same as Sale of the Century's "Winner's Big Money Game" but for bank cards.
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The show wasn't seen in our area. It was only on a distant station not carried by our local cable. I saw it listed in TVGuide though, and was wondering if it was a re-do of the mid'70s version.
The only two episodes I've seen have been via tape trades and I wasn't overly impressed with the show.
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On my old trading website I called it the worst game show I have ever seen.
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Must have been a pretty old website since I can think of a lot of really bad shows from the past decade. ;-)
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I saw a few episodes on Youtube. I thought Rayburn's bonus round was ridiculously out of place and took way too long.
Getting rid of the stunts on Farago's version was a good move, but I guess it was too little, too late at that point. There was also that cheesy transition to commercial...
Farago: We'll be back with more "Break the..."
Audience: BANK!!!
It always seemed like something out of a sitcom game show parody.
I see at as practice for the infomercial market he'd later thrive in.
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Must have been a pretty old website since I can think of a lot of really bad shows from the past decade. ;-)
No, I say the record still stands.
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No, I say the record still stands.
The Chamber.
The Moment of Truth.
Set For Life.
Temptation.
And you're going to go with an innocuous and inoffensive (albeit admittedly dumb) game show from the mid 1980s. Your sandbox, I guess.
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No, I say the record still stands.
The Chamber.
The Moment of Truth.
Set For Life.
Temptation.
And you're going to go with an innocuous and inoffensive (albeit admittedly dumb) game show from the mid 1980s. Your sandbox, I guess.
Not that I made the original remark, but one might consider Moment of Truth a reality show but not a game, and Temptation did have a good game but undid it in execution. I didn't see enough Set for Life to know if Kimmel's disgust was more apparent than Rayburn's with BtB. And the Chamber, well, good point.
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It's interesting, because on Regis Philbin's show, Gene praises BTB calling Richard Kline a "creative man" and that the show was fun to do.
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Not that I made the original remark, but one might consider Moment of Truth a reality show but not a game,
There was definitely a game being played: the more someone is willing to psychologically damage their friends and family, the more money they win.
and Temptation did have a good game but undid it in execution.
I would make the case that the "good game" was bastardized to such a degree that you would be hard pressed to link it to the original article.
I didn't see enough Set for Life to know if Kimmel's disgust was more apparent than Rayburn's with BtB.
Whether his disgust was apparent is of little import: people were winning hundreds of thousands of dollars by choosing inanimate carbon rods, only to have much of the prize fund cut down on account of a well-meaning family member. It was foul TV.
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Call me a masochist, but as I've said before, I think there was potential in making the show something of a You Bet Your Life, where Gene meets two couples, each getting a turn in the vault, with the most successful couple trying their bank cards for the jackpot. The word game was okay, and I liked the whole look and sound of the front game. But the two elements together? Bleh.
-Jason
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I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the right show... this is the end game where people scurried around to random stations doing random things, all the while the clock is running while Gene and the contestants try to figure out what they're supposed to be doing? Apologies to anybody who thinks this is a lost classic, but.... this was the most ridiculous and chaotic thing I've ever seen on a game show.
You know it's not a good sign when the contestant says "It's confusing!" about the end game.
Ah yes, it IS the show I'm thinking of and I found the clip with the confused contestant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_N7y4WkgNU
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It always seemed like something out of a sitcom game show parody.
That's the vibe I always got from it- from the audience chants to the generic theme music to the just overall cheesiness of the whole production.
I've always liked the Password Puzzle/Super Password "right answers are clues to a bigger answer" format, but it seems Password was the only show to execute it right, as I remember there being 3 or 4 other shows that tried it too.
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I've always liked the Password Puzzle/Super Password "right answers are clues to a bigger answer" format, but it seems Password was the only show to execute it right, as I remember there being 3 or 4 other shows that tried it too.
To an extent, The Cross-Wits did a good execution as well. The only real difference was sentence-long definitions vs. single word clues, but the "board" was pretty much the same as PW+, except with a few more clues. I wonder if Mr. Goodson got the inspiration to improve upon the Password franchise after seeing The Cross-Wits?
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Cheesiness: Wonder how music from other shows wound up on "Break the Bank"? I remember hearing at least a snippet of "The Joker's Wild" theme on there, and also the "21 Win" cue from "Gambit".
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It's interesting, because on Regis Philbin's show, Gene praises BTB calling Richard Kline a "creative man" and that the show was fun to do.
Was this said during his run on the show or after? If the former, then we can probably chalk that up to Gene being a good company man, taking what he has and trying to promote it.
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For those who care to see it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLy6X-AwnCU
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It's unfortunate that Gene had restrictions, because if Kline and Friends had allowed him as much free reign as he did on Match Game, maybe it would've been a bigger hit.
I've said before, the thing I disliked most about the Bonus Puzzle format was that in the original, when you put the bank card in the slot, it would show a code, and wait a few seconds before it said WRONG CODE or BREAK BANK. In the second format, the suspenseful pause was taken away, thus removing what was probably the best part of the show.
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I've said before, the thing I disliked most about the Bonus Puzzle format was that in the original, when you put the bank card in the slot, it would show a code, and wait a few seconds before it said WRONG CODE or BREAK BANK. In the second format, the suspenseful pause was taken away, thus removing what was probably the best part of the show.
That's interesting--I watched that bonus round clip, and I thought the suspense of the reveal was ruined by the fact that WRONG CODE or BREAK BANK scrolled instead of simply appearing. I mean, once you see the B in BREAK BANK appear, you know you've won. In practice, it was very anticlimactic.
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The suspense is in the moment before the reveal, not the reveal itself (which only scrolls because everything else scrolls).
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It's unfortunate that Gene had restrictions, because if Kline and Friends had allowed him as much free reign as he did on Match Game, maybe it would've been a bigger hit.
I don't see how. You still have a lame front game and a catawampous end game that frazzled the host. Where do you give him more reign?
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It's unfortunate that Gene had restrictions, because if Kline and Friends had allowed him as much free reign as he did on Match Game, maybe it would've been a bigger hit.
I don't see how. You still have a lame front game and a catawampous end game that frazzled the host. Where do you give him more reign?
The only way I could think of is if they had modified the main game format and somehow incorporated the stunts more.
Here's how I would do it...
Forget the questions... Clues to a puzzle are revealed one at a time a la the tiebreaker round. The couple that buzzes in first and solves wins seconds. The point/seconds structure is reversed... 1st clue- 100 seconds, 2nd clue 80, 3rd clue 40, fourth clue 20, fifth 10 and 6th is 5 seconds. Play continues until a couple amasses a total of 3 minutes in the prize vault. Perhaps to make the game run a little faster, the third puzzle, the seconds payoff is doubled. With this format, perhaps two bonus games instead of one could be played in a half hour.
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With this format, perhaps two bonus games instead of one could be played in a half hour.
And what happens if the bank breaks in the first half of the show? That was a big enough prize that to shoot your wad at the midpoint of the show would make the second half utterly lame.
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With this format, perhaps two bonus games instead of one could be played in a half hour
And what happens if the bank breaks in the first half of the show? That was a big enough prize that to shoot your wad at the midpoint of the show would make the second half utterly lame.
Quite simply, if the bank is broken during the first bonus game, the cards are reshuffled and there's another chance to break the bank. Of course, they could've done what Family Game night does... just play 5 or 6 events and earn bank cards that way.
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Quite simply, if the bank is broken during the first bonus game, the cards are reshuffled and there's another chance to break the bank.
Yeah, that would make the second half utterly lame. Unless there was a second breaking, and 1) I'm not going to bet the look and feel of my show on the one time in 1,000 that happens, and 2) by definition (assuming the same climbing jackpot) it would always be for less (and likely a lot less) than the first one was...which looks lame.
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Quite simply, if the bank is broken during the first bonus game, the cards are reshuffled and there's another chance to break the bank.[/quote]
Yeah, that would make the second half utterly lame. Unless there was a second breaking, and 1) I'm not going to bet the look and feel of my show on the one time in 1,000 that happens, and 2) by definition (assuming the same climbing jackpot) it would always be for less (and likely a lot less) than the first one was...which looks lame.
Under those conditions, yes, you're right. It's kinda like with Play the Percentages jackpot bonus for guessing a percentage on the nose. It climbed all the way up to $26,000 and it was finally hit. Then they played the bonus game for significantly less, and even Geoff pointed out that the bonus game seemed anti-climactic.
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Oops I'm off by $10k... it was a $36,000 win in the maingame.
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Under those conditions, yes, you're right.
Well, "those conditions" are the reason you're sticking a bonus game in the middle of your show in the first place, yes? You're not sticking it there for people to lose.
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Hi, I'm Chris. Longtime viewer, first time caller.
Locally, BtB aired on a small, independent station whose programming was mostly forgettable 60s and 70s movies, obscure 50s TV reruns, knock-offs of then-current popular cartoon series, and laughably bad low-budget advertising. Google the movie 'UHF'. As bad as it was, it was good.
Anyway, this little station aired the full run of BtB, and it was watchable fare. And I watched it regularly and enjoyed it. It was certainly more unpredictable than Wheel of Fortune or MASH reruns, and maybe not as entertaining as cable scramblevision, but watchable fare. For a long time I thought Joe Farago was the next-door neighbor's first husband on Married With Children. And my brother called him 'Joe Fart-i-go'. But I digress again.
The fun part of a retrospective view of old shows is the nostalgia and the cheese factor. Life was different when it was happening. The frosted lens of time makes things seem better or worse than they really were. See administration, Carter or administration, Reagan as good examples. At least one someone thought Break the Clock or Beat the Bank was a good idea and they spent their coin on it. And when it didn't quite pan out, they tossed the host and tinkered with the format. When that didn't work, it was replaced by something else that I didn't watch and can't remember.
Then 6 or 8 years later teenager Chris sees or hears something that reminds him of that show that had two hosts, a flashy set and an odd format. And he wants to see it again because it's driving him crazy. And he gets lucky and finds an episode that didn't get dubbed over in the family pile-o-Beta/VHS tapes. Then teenager Chris discovers usenet through his (expensive!) Compuserve account and finds these people that also remember that show. Some of which even had those shows on their resume (or at least the production company). And we danced and played together, hummed the theme to Mindreaders and reminisced.
Which brings us back here to this forum 20 years later. Break the Bank wasn't the best show on TV and it was not advertised as such. Perhaps if it were we might have justification for most of the comments made here about it (and other shows) in 2011. I don't put those expectations on it. I consider myself lucky to have seen it, as it didn't exactly air in the premiere markets or even on the premiere channels in Anytown USA. I'm even luckier to remember it. Super lucky to have a few episodes. Somewhere. I think.
I definitely don't take it seriously. Somewhere along the way, the internet became serious business. It hasn't been the same since. Can we reminisce some more, please?
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Can we reminisce some more, please?
Will this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2Y77pblrqY) do? ;-)
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Quite simply, if the bank is broken during the first bonus game, the cards are reshuffled and there's another chance to break the bank. Of course, they could've done what Family Game night does... just play 5 or 6 events and earn bank cards that way.
How does that give the host more free reign, though? You're packing more of the gameplay in, but at the cost of completely handcuffing your host who is known for spontaneous wacky behavior with little provocation. Having two chances to zip through the prize vault doesn't give your host more chances to be funny, it gives you more chances to confound him.