Cold Matches

Kicked off a sunny and blustery morning with breakfast and Good Eats: The Return. "My Shakshuka" parodies Casablanca to show off a traditional Middle-Eastern dish that features poached eggs simmered in a spicy tomato-pepper paste. Not a bad idea, but Alton uses fancy spices from the internet I'd rather not mess around with and way too much heat for my palate. I think I'll settle for poaching eggs the regular way.

Work was even more of a pain than yesterday. It's the first major holiday weekend since Easter, and despite the windy and ridiculously cold for May morning, everyone wanted to be out and about. We were busy all day, maybe more than we should have been under present circumstances. I got very tired of trying to keep people out of the bathrooms so I could clean them, wipe down all the freezer doors and credit card machines, and do the sweeping. Finally opted to switch off on the latter with the college boy doing the carts.

After all that, I didn't want to be anywhere but home, watching the next Match Game marathon. This one covered the show's most memorable moments from 1977 through the end of its CBS run in mid-1979. Alas, I missed some of the best episodes of 1977, including the "lower tier imitates the upper tier" show and the infamous "School Riot," but I did catch other fun episodes.

1978 brought in the new Star Wheel. Celebrities spun it to choose their partner for the Head-to-Head Match and hopefully double their winnings. It was controversial from the get-go, especially with Richard Dawson, who'd been the king of the Head-to-Head Match until that point. Ironically, the Star Wheel landed on his name the first time it was used, prompting him and most of the other panelists to walk out!

Richard wasn't really happy on Match Game anymore by that point. He'd become more popular on Family Feud, and was tired of appearing on a show where he had little say in anything. The "School Riot," coupled with his equally heated complaint about a "baggie" answer later in the year, spelled the end of his time on the show. He was tired and not really playing along. Gene bizarrely tried to make him smile on the end of one episode. His final appearance on the show was two weeks after the Star Wheel arrived and they changed the set, and nothing was done for it. Despite being a regular for five years, he was there and gone.

The show continued on without him, but the writing was on the wall. Constant time changes and a shift to more-conservative tastes probably spelled doom for the CBS run of the show far more than Richard's departure. It ended in mid-1979, with a rather cute episode that had Gene loaning Bill Daily his navy blazer to wear at his wedding. (Bill apparently kept the suit; he wore it on the syndicated version of the show long after his wedding ceremony ended.)

Here's the entire marathon, so you can check out more of the show's most famous moments! Tomorrow, we celebrate Mother's Day with the next round of technical difficulties on the show, including with the post-1978 set.

Special Milestones on Match Game Marathon 1977 - 1979

Finished out the night with Gypsy, also in honor of Mother's Day. I go further into the 1962 version with Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood at my Musical Dreams Movie Reviews blog.

Happy Mother's Day! - Gypsy (1962)