The Fyood

Somehow, we sometimes find ourselves eating dinner with the TV on when Family Feud is on TV. The Feud has a long and undistinguished history. It was hosted first by Richard Dawson, part of the "Hogan's Heroes" ensemble, who after being a "celebrity" panelist on other game shows became perhaps the smarmiest game show host ever. I know that's a high bar to clear, but this guy oozed sexual innuendo and made all the female contestants kiss him. Yeah, really.

If you've not seen the show, you might be disappointed to know that there is no actual feuding. That may seem quaint in this day of reality TV, where you might expect families scheming to undermine their competitors or even take up arms in order to win. In fact, the families rarely interact with each other at all, except in the first step, where a question was asked of 100 people and the contestants are asked to guess what the most popular answers were. Each family has a representative guess and whoever has the best guess gives their family the chance to play. THe other family goes to the other side of the stage and watches until their opponents either guess all of the most common answers and win, or fail, giving them a chance to fill in a missing answer and snatch the victory.

So when we last watched, we got to see the question "Name something you would never want to end." One family named things like favorite song or movie, marriage, vacation, that kind of stuff, but left one spot blank. We were stumped and the other family tried too but failed to guess that the thing 8 out of 100 people wanted never to end was "The World." Wouldn't have occurred to me either.

Next round, when the 2 people were vying to get control of the play, the question was, "Name something a burglar would not want to see when he enters the house." One guy buzzed in and actually yelled out "Nekkid Granny!" The host, veteran comedian  Steve Harvey, lost it. He doubled over and didn't speak for a minute. It was all downhill from there. Oh, and it was scored as a correct answer (though the game board said "somebody home.")