Since Bob Stewart came up with a winner by modifying "Chain Reaction" into "Go!", how about "Pyramid" with teams? Five people on a team with one person designated as the guesser a la "Go!" for a best two out of three match with the winning team going into the end game which would be a true winners circle as each team member takes turns giving clues while seated around the guesser. I would title the new show "The Winner's Circle" to get the bad taste of the previous "Pyramid" out of the station manager's mouths.

Don't mess with what isn't broken.

This was the downfall of the last Pyramid.

Didn't the Chuck Woolery Pyramid pilot use "Pyramid Players" (7 celebs or something) in this fashion?

I remember Randy Amasia (RIP) saying how horrible it was.

ITSBRY
itsbry@juno.com

I believe it was Mark L. Walberg, and yes, it was teh absolute suck.

How about calling it something other than Pyramid? Don't even call it Pyramid All-Stars.

Would "Disaster" suffice? :) :)

I wasn't aware of the rules of that pilot but this would differ in that there would only be two celebs, each of whom captains a team, a la "Go!" not seven. Since the "teamwork" concept is currently trendy both in real-life and TV, that could be a selling point. I agree it should not be called "Pyramid."

No, "Disaster" has been cancelled leaving Donny Osmond out of a gig.

Sorry, the door was wide open for that one.

Didn't Chuck W. do a pilot as well? I seem to remember reading about two pilots that were made before Donny's pilot. If so, did Mark and Chuck's pilot both use "Pyramid Players"?

ITSBRY
itsbry@juno.com

Walberg's pilot used "Pyramid Players", unknown comedian types. Woolery's pilot used six celebrities to represent the front game categories.

Both pilots produced by the man who ended up executive producing Donny's series. If at first you don't succeed....

Try it a third and blow it yet again.

Well on the plus side, at least they went back to the traditional format. Unfortunately, they also went back to the lame categories, something that was used in the pilots ("I'M OK, YOU'RE MARY KAY", "MILLI VANILLI'S GREATEST HITS"). At least on the original Pyramid, and even Win Ben Stein's Money, the categories had some subtleties to them.

Don't even get me started on the poor camera direction of the show. I never could stand cutting back and forth between player and celebrity as the clock ran in either round. Did they think the MTV generation couldn't watch a static shot for 30, beg pardon, *20* seconds? And in the winner's circle, not cutting to the wide shot as categories were advanced/passed. "X to win" doesn't cut it for me as the game goes on.

I know, nothing that hasn't been ranted about before, but having grown up on that show, and having sat through many NYC Pyramid tapings, it hurt to see a great game messed with like that.

Not even Pyramid Plus?

Josh

It also rendered the score display monitors added near the end of the 1st season pointless to the folks at home.

But for all its technical and judgmental flaws, I thought it was a decent revival that deserved a 3rd season...how much worse is Pat Croce's show doing in the ratings, anyway?

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

But for all its technical and judgmental flaws, I thought it was a decent revival that deserved a 3rd season...how much worse is Pat Croce's show doing in the ratings, anyway?


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Pat's show is hovering around a 0.5 or 0.6, less than a third of what Pyramid averaged for last season.

It's better that Donny's Pyramid went off. It was a very poor show all around.

No, not even The All New Fat-Free Celebrity Super Pyramid Plus for Dollars Oh-Four with Chlorophyl and Retsyn!

My main problem now with it? The fact that they briefed the celebs on the material. Part of the appeal of the show, like "Password" (and today, "Celebrity Poker Showdown") is the fun in seeing the famous and/or semi-famous without the safety net of a script, to watch them flail about for the right words to use. When you're feeding stuff to the celebs, that part of the show is gone entirely. Hate to say it, but we *want* to see celebs fall on their face every so often (and the more serious they take the game, the better--the Ben Stein Principle). Joe Viewer might not've known it, but when we heard about it, it hurt the show in my view more than needless camera angles, blah theme music or overjokey category names.

Maybe that's another reason to call it "over-produced". We've discussed it before, but everything is edited and planned out so heavily these days that you'll never see any of the (sometimes) funny screw-ups that happened in the '70s and '80s. That was part of the fun of these shows - that you never knew what could happen. Now everything's so "scripted", that it takes away some of the fun.

Maybe most game shows are out of favor right now, but the way many of them have been produced in the past several years could be part of the reason. Like most game show fans, I enjoyed the way these shows were done in the '70s and '80s - the excitement of the audience, the catchy music, the spontaneity of the game play, the occasional screwup. The shows now are trying to go after the "MTV Generation", where many of the genre's fans grew up before that became a factor.