Bang A Gong

I watched the new Gong Show last night.  It's one of a number of supersized, prime time revivals of old game shows on ABC.  I'm not sure why this trend is happening--maybe because such shows are so cheap to produce.

This latest is hosted by British entertainer Tommy Maitland, who's actually a disguised Mike Myers.  The whole bit adds little to the show, so I'm not sure why this is happening either.  I guess it was the only way they could get Myers to sign on.

But that's neither here nor there.  Is the show any good?  Well, it's mostly the gong show you'd expect, where amateurs come on and do their acts while celebrity judges rate them or gong them.

That's why I don't like it.  I remember watching the Chuck Barris Gong Show, which was a bit of a phenomenon in its day.  And it created a whole attitude toward entertainment that I hated.

It's hard enough to go out in front of an audience in the best circumstances. But once the crowd has the gong mentality, they're just frothing at the mouth, waiting for you to slip up so they can hate you.  It took years after the Barris Gong Show left the air for things to go back to normal.

Let's not return to those days.  We don't need it. (There are also too many shows that feature judges rating amateur performers, but that's a separate issue.)