Feeling ‘Family’
“Family Feud” recently returned to the local TV screen as a weekend viewing treat, with Luis Manzano hosting.
We caught its telecast last April 2, and found it acceptable viewing fare—but it left us asking, “But, where’s the family?”
The original editions of the iconic quiz show featured actual members of two families competing against each other to win prizes by guessing the most common responses to questions like: “When there’s fire, what would most people save first?”
Supposedly, the show preinterviewed 100 people to get the most “popular” responses, and the family team that “read” the public’s mind best of all emerged as winner.
The family nature of each team’s composition was deemed to be a significant boost, because relatives “think alike,” or have an unspoken psychic bond or link that would help them “focus” better on the right responses.
So, teams made up of nonrelatives are less “copacetic” in this key regard, and the show isn’t as focused and “warm” as intended.
That certainly seemed to be the case on the show recently. One team was made up of former beauty queens, while the other was composed of comedians.
Their (moderate) “star value” did help the show, but they weren’t “in sync” in their guesses at all.
The beauties were lovely, but relied too much on their “visuals” to get by. So, they came up with tepid ad libs—with the exception of Shamcey Supsup, who did best of all.
If memory serves, she was a cohost on the TV show, “Real Talk,” some months ago, so practice really does make perfect.
A word to the wise for many ex-beauty queens who dream of also making it on television.
As for the “comedians,” they weren’t as funny as promised, just generally yakking and yukking up a flurry of rowdy and raucous remarks, only a few of which found their humorous target.
One of them also made the unproductive mistake of “competing” with the beauties on point of ramp modeling “flair,” with particularly dismal results.
And there were some weird responses: Where would she hide her money?
A beauty’s “bright” answer: in her bra. Another former beauty titlist was asked about “most dangerous” occupations, and her response was—“a criminal!” We had to rearrange our neural connections after that!
More instructively, some of the comics came up with unproductive responses that revealed their wrong view of the answers the show was looking for.
Like, a comedian’s response to the “most dangerous occupations” was “window cleaner in a high-rise building.”
That is a potentially dangerous work, but would “100 ordinary or representative Filipinos” come up with it? Not likely, because their “context” would be different.
So, for people who may want to join the show in the future, the most productive point of view is to train yourself to think, not as yourself, but as “100 ordinary or representative Filipinos!”
Better luck and more focused “logic” next time.
