Apparently it’s Full House Alumni week here at BE Something, though that’s entirely inadvertant. I didn’t know Erin was going to write about the Olsen Twins yesterday (though, honestly, I probably could have guessed), and she doesn’t know I’m going to write about, in a sort of roundabout way, Bob Saget today.

And why would she? Bob Saget should, by all logic and rational thinking, be little more than pop culture nostalgia at this point. I know some people like to point out that he’s actually a reasonably funny — and ridiculously dirty — comedian, but neither of those qualities makes him particularly memorable. Most of his stage act relies on the fact that people still remember, in the very back of their minds, that this guy on stage talking about incest, bodily fluid and hog fucking is the same guy who, once, taught Michelle Tanner about death after her goldfish died suddenly.

He was exceptionally neat

To be blunt: Bob Saget doesn’t really deserve to still have a bright spotlight after almost twenty years. He deserves to be remembered, sure, in the same way that everyone who was on Full House deserves to be remembered. It was a great hallmark of our generation, along with Saved by the Bell and a couple of others, that taught us kids a kind of distilled sense of morality and ethics, where youth is supposed to be an endless cycle where the teenager screws up, denies their screw up, screws up worse, realizes their mistake, and receives a speech while piano music plays. Bob Saget was part of all of that, and for that he deserves some renown. But it should be renown on the level of being the answer to a couple of questions in Trivial Pursuit 90s edition and not renown to the point where he is still appearing on television weekly in 2006.

To be fair, it is a Friday night show, and it is a game show, which actually puts him below the other Full House alum who is currently playing a dyslexic girl-crazy med student-cum-parking lot brawler, and his show — 1 vs 100 — is actually surprisingly good, for a game show starring Bob Saget, but the point stands. Especially since the show doesn’t really need Bob Saget. It could be anyone up there. They just got Bob Saget because, well, again, people sort of remember Bob Saget. It’s similar to the reason they got Richard Karn to host Family Feud: it’s not because the dude’s a good game show host (hell, the dude couldn’t even successfully market a freaking board game) but rather because people see him and think “Hey! It’s Al! From Tool Time! I vaguely remember that show and the warm, empty feeling it gave me” and then maybe they even make that weird grunting sound from that show, Home Improvement, because it’s weird how many people still love the hell out of that.

The evolution of the game show in the new millennium

This weird yet prominent trend of hiring old, vaguely-remembered and way-past-their-prime comedians to host game shows (in addition to Karn and Saget, see: Howie Mandel on Deal or No Deal and, I bet, others to come) is important because it coincides with another trend that’s struck the whole game show genre, especially as it’s become more popular over the last decade.

During the part of the 80s I remember and most of the 90s, game shows had multiple contestants. It wasn’t something you even thought about. Except in weird cases like Hollywood Squares which wasn’t a game show so much as it was a bunch of D-list celebrities trapped in boxes, game shows followed pretty closely to the formula of having one host, three contestants, an invisible announcer, a studio audience who generally remained pretty quiet, and crazy flashing lights and music.

I don’t generally like to throw around declarations like “it was a simpler time when…” but, in the case of game shows, I think it holds up. You can watch reruns of game shows on GSN or whatever and see three people wearing suits competing for, literally, hundreds of dollars. Occasionally thousands. They’re a half-hour long and some of the games are actually ridiculously esoteric. Sure, Card Sharks may have seemed simple, but I think I would have been tripped up in the second and third rounds. There were way too many factors to consider — High or Low! Freeze or Continue! Pass or Play! Those cards were gigantic!

But something weird happened at the turn of the millennium, and, like pretty much everything that sucks in the twenty-first century, it was mostly Regis Philbin’s fault. His Who Wants to Be a Millionaire show (the official title had no question mark, which was and still is a travesty) did away with the whole multiple-contestants thing. And it didn’t stop there: it also got rid of the crazy jingle music, the loud and boisterous host ( Regis actually
sat
down while
the game was
played. You’d
never catch Trebek
sitting down; not for
a minute. ), any sort of time requirement for winning the game (no lightning round!) and, most distressingly of all, the requirement that contestants who were to appear on the show be, you know, any good at the game itself.

And so it was for over a full year. Millions of people tuning in to watch an old man in a sweater or an overweight woman in her very best dress call their friends at home in a hopeless attempt to figure out the name of the guy who directed the Thriller video.

It was a sudden shift, and what’s weird is how long it’s endured. Even though Philbin’s show eventually died, it wasn’t because Americans got tired of the broader format. Rather, it was because they got fired of the same shit being on TV almost five nights a week. But if the success of Deal or No Deal and 1 vs 100 has shown us anything, it’s that the TV viewing audience is still hungry for the single contestant, standing up on a stage, agonizing over a question that you, the viewer, clearly know the answer to, for a ridiculous amount of time.

None of it is by accident. Occasionally people like to infer that people on shows like these are stupid because, well, everyone is stupid. And that isn’t true. People are smart! A lot of people. There are doctors and scientists and novelists and bankers all over the place doing great things with other things to create, well, products. And that’s fantastic. And some of them, I bet, even apply to be on game shows. But the other part of the pop cultural shift game shows has gone through has it so that viewers don’t want to watch smart people on these shows. There’s a reason no one gives a shit about Jeopardy! aside from old people and me — the contestants are too smart, the questions are too hard.

I’ve tried, in thinking about Bob Saget, his show, and game shows as a whole, to come up with some stunning conclusion as to why game shows have changed. I was hoping it would have something to do with 9/11 and, maybe, some sort of xenophobic isolation and encroaching technology but honestly, it’s not a complicated equation. Americans embraced the single contestant, the easier questions, the recognizable host and everything else that these new shows represent because America has, over the last decade especially, embraced character above all of us.

The desire for characters, as opposed to plot, jokes, mystery, intrigue, etc (though those things still exist — they’re just not the most important element), has manifested through the reality tv breakout, the talent show resurgance, the rising popularity of blogs, and even an increased interest in documentaries. And, yes, the game shows are probably the easiest place to see it.

And in Bob Saget, the whole thing just becomes staggeringly evident. And I think that’s what so infuriating about the whole thing. At this point, Bob Saget doesn’t even need to have talent. He’s on TV because he has, for a long time, been on TV. He’s an enduring character — the fatherly, gently funny, tall, thin and neat (with a talked about but rarely seen dirty side) man. And he talks to other characters, who are real people, but only in the most literal sense of the word. And they also play a game, but that’s really not the draw of the show.

People watch because there’s obsessed with the scenario, the idea, and the questions are easy so that people can think, as they watch, I could be there. And I could do this better than that guy. And me and Bob Saget — well, we’d be the best of friends.

Matt

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