Went for a short walk to Dollar General after I ate. I was almost completely out of pads. Grabbed granola bars, too, since granola bar sales haven't been great at any of the grocery stores. Treated myself to an Oreo Coke Zero while they're still available. I was hoping to get pretzels on the way back, but I forgot that the pretzel shop closes at 1 PM on Sundays. Not that the weather was great for lingering anyway. While it was warmer and far more damp, it was also gale-force windy, and the sun kept hiding behind heavy gray clouds. Not a great day for hiking around.
Soon as I got home, I had brunch, then spent the rest of the day (sans a shower later in the evening and a quick dinner) watching the continuation of last night's Family Feud marathon. There were even more episodes here, including the pilot and the series finale. The pilot had quite a few differences, starting with a smaller set and a lower, less elaborate board. The game play, however, remained the same from the beginning. There would be lollipop trees added in the last few years. The member of the family who chose the lollipop could win an extra $100 if they got a black-tipped stick.
Other than that, the show didn't change much over the years. Some of the weirder answers didn't change, either. The most infamous was probably the woman who answered the Fast Money question "How far into a woman's pregnancy does she begin to show?" with "September." Her sister was even goofier, giving the non-living "cuckoo" as a type of bird. There was also the supremely bizarre week ABC somehow got the Hatfields and the McCoys to play each other. I don't know if they were the real families, or actors hired to play them, but Richard spent a lot of that week with guns in his face. The final episode shown here even got a pig onstage (in a cage).
Other ABC Feud specials made a lot more sense. Given they shared the mornings with Feud, it wasn't uncommon to to see daytime - and more rarely, nighttime - soaps playing each other. General Hospital was Mom and Dad's favorite soap in the 1980's, but they never seemed to do well. They lost their first time around to One Life to Live and their second to All My Children. Knots Landing did even better playing Dynasty, the show it spun off of.
Less melodramatic shows also had a chance at winning for their favorite charities. One week featured vintage favorites like The Brady Bunch and Your Hit Parade. Another pit two very different series about stranded groups, Lost In Space and Gilligan's Island, against each other. (The guy who worked the Robby the Robot suit in the former was kind of cute.) Other shows focused on more recent series like Barney Miller and Welcome Back, Kotter. Charles Fleischer, the future voice of Roger Rabbit, was a riot on the latter. He just couldn't stay still, especially doing the first Fast Money round.
TV show casts weren't the only ones who played, either. The Dallas Cowboys and their cheerleaders played each other on a sweeps week, with the Cowboys playing much better here than they did this afternoon. We saw the last episode of the week that had popular game show hosts playing each other. Despite flubbing some answers, Jim Perry still helped Betty White, Bill Cullen, Bob Eubanks, and Nipsey Russell do well at the Fast Money.
By 1985, the show had begun to falter in the ratings. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy drew people away from the syndicated version, while the daytime series had to compete with newer shows like Sale of the Century and Super Password...and the fact that ABC had just plain lost interest in daytime game shows. (They'd end daytime game shows all together by 1991.) The original Feud ended in May 1985 with a heartfelt speech by Richard on how much he enjoyed working on the show. He even acknowledged producer Howard Felsher, whom he'd notoriously clashed with and fought with many times during the run of the series
Check out more of the wackiest groups of people to ever play game shows in the most legendary episodes of the original Family Feud!
Oh, and in between all this, I also listened to the Eagles game on my new mini-radio. This time, they played like champs, running rings around the Cowboys at the Linc. The Cowboys couldn't get anywhere near them. The closest they got to them was a fight at the end of the game that ended with three players ejected. The Eagles went on to wallop the Cowboys good 41-7 and win the NFC East and the number 2 seed in the playoffs.
Oh, and the rain that threatened off and on all day finally started around 7 PM. It's been off and on the rest of the night, though it seems to be off at the moment.
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