Gameshow Marathon

As a huge fan of classic game shows, I was thrilled when I saw the advertisements for CBS' Game$how Marathon. It's not hard to create updated versions of shows; the somewhat successful reincarnations of Family Feud, Match Game, and I've Got a Secret prove this. CBS, however, managed to ruin the many classics that it attempts to recreate. Their first mistake was the host--there's a reason why Ricki Lake hasn't hosted a game show up to this point, as she's a horrible emcee. The attempts to create nearly exact replicas of the game shows depicted in this series only further the problems, as any attempts to reminisce are broken by a stale Lake, who is clearly out of her element, as well as the dozens of audience shots peppered throughout the broadcast. In addition to the content, the length of the show itself is a severe problem; there's a reason why all the game shows featured on Marathon (sans The Price is Right) were only half an hour long.

If you want to watch game shows like Family Feud and Card Sharks, stick with GSN. All the brilliance and simplicity of these classics are lost through overproduction in this train wreck of a "tribute."

They started off the episode I watched ("The Price is Right") with a fairly interesting retrospective of the real show and it's all-but- canonized host, Bob Barker.

Big mistake. All it did was ensure anyone who watched what followed would see this show for the crap it is, and that Ricki Lake is woefully unsuited to game show hosting (in much the same way that she was woefully unsuited to talk show hosting).

The retrospective was followed by a whole lot of gabbing with/about the celebrities, followed by a dreadful, boring, truncated version of "The Price is Right."

Avoid at all costs.