Took Uber to work, since my stomach continues to be off. No trouble there. The morning drive arrived in 4 minutes, the afternoon in 11. No traffic on the road or problems getting anywhere.
Considering the way my stomach felt, it's probably just as well that I spent the day in the back storage area, helping the floral department manager load bouquets for Valentine's Day into buckets. My biggest problem was figuring out how to load the huge sprayer machine we used to fill the buckets, and how much water to put on it. I couldn't get the nozzle on right. I kept getting myself wet. And no matter what I did, those buckets always seemed to have too little or too much water.
Other than that, everything went fine. I'd fill the buckets, and the floral department manager or the other two women who are helping her this week would take them up front. After they all left, I hurried to bring the remaining flowers up to the front and finish everything before my shift ended. I mainly did roses, but in the last two hours, I also pulled out chrysanthemums, carnations, and dyed mums and daisies, which were all in the same large boxes together.
Needed a few more things after work that I didn't pick up yesterday. In addition to grabbing more ginger ale and ginger lemon soda, I got real ginger and lemon to make into ginger lemon tea. Picked up two last Valentines to send out and a gift card for Jessa, whose birthday is Wednesday.
Once I got home, I took the laundry downstairs, had dinner and watched Match Game '90. The week with Rebecca Arthur and Bill Kirkenbauer got really exciting when a guy picked up over $20,000. Jo Anne Worley joined Charles, goofy soap star Jacklyn Zemen, and a far more subdued than usual Jimmie Walker in the next week. If you grew up when I did, you'll remember stand-up comic Roger Behr as the voice of McDonald's mascot Mac Tonight and two of the original Transformers.
(Oh, and while I've seen it on YouTube, Buzzr just posted episode 7 of Match Game '73 there in a much better quality with some of the buzzing issues that's plagued that episode for decades fixed and the last five minutes or so of the episode, including its original commercials, intact.)
Finished the night on YouTube after I brought the laundry back up with dating and relationship game shows. The gold standard for dating shows is The Dating Game. This Chuck Barris creation ran from 1965 through 1973 on ABC and has been seen frequently in syndication thereafter. The premise is simply one bachelorette asks three bachelors hidden behind a screen questions. The one whose answers she likes the most is the one she's going out with. Though later episodes became known for the many celebrities who appeared on it looking for dates (both before they were famous and during the height of their fame), I went with their early Valentine's Day special from 1967 that sticks with normal contestants and a better view of the original format.
Tattletales and The Newlywed Game were hit variations on "couples tell all" games. Main difference was celebrities played Tattletales, while more couples got involved in Newlywed. I remember catching the 1986 Newlywed Game revival occasionally when I was a kid, though I didn't understand much of it then. Check out the brief square dance one of the couples do! After having enjoyed seeing Get On Up again last week, I thought I'd watch an episode of Tattletales featuring the real James and Deidre Brown. The real winners here were regular couples George Hamilton and his wife Alana and combative Charlie Brill and his wife Mitzi McCall.
Kids tried to get in on the dating games in the NBC Saturday morning show Double Up from 1992. Here, two sisters and brothers ask the questions to find dates for their siblings. Whomever isn't chosen ends up in the dumpster. Um, no. Kids are way too young for this sort of thing, and frankly it's more creepy and obnoxious than fun. J.D Roth tries to make the whole thing a lot less offensive.
Some adults had trouble with dating shows, too. Bzzz! from 1996 starts with a woman choosing a man from behind three screens, then asking them more questions to whittle down the choices to one. The two couples come back at the end of the show to answer a series of questions where they raise signs to see if they're compatible with one another. Certainly fast-paced, with a very late-90's in-your-face set and a rare energetic female host in Annie Wood. Wood, however, can get annoying fast, and the last round comes off as silly and unnecessary. This doesn't seem to have ever worked, not in syndication or when Buzzr ran it briefly during the first half of 2020.
The GSN show Baggage from 2010 could get even meaner. Here, the lady has to choose between three men carrying literal suitcases that hold their real-life secrets. When she decides on one, they have to decide if her secret is too much baggage to keep her. I suspect Jerry Springer being the host for this show was one of the primary reasons for its successful two-year run. It's not really that exciting, but if anyone knows how to keep a show about trashy secrets moving, it's a guy who used to host a show about trashy secrets for a living.
Charles Nelson Reilly had his own problems dealing with Sweethearts in 1989. This is basically The Newlywed Game crossed with To Tell the Truth. Three couples claim to have met in unusual ways. The celebrity panel has to guess which is the real couple. Reilly was a lot of fun on Match Game and elsewhere, but his braying voice and mincing manner were all wrong for hosting a game show, and none of the couples or their stories were all that interesting or unique. Neither this nor its original British version from 1987 lasted more than a few months.
See how crazy relationships can get with these outrageous and provocative episodes!
And here's the upgraded Match Game '73 episode from Buzzr, featuring the only Waltons actors to appear on the show, Michael Lerned and Richard Thomas!
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