Once again Drew's very long introduction beginning with "If you've never seen the show before" and ending with the loser joke was MIA. And that's one MIA, I'd be happy to have stay lost. Maybe in about 10 years, they'll have completely eliminated that waste of time altogether. (Although, I do admit that I like some of the loser jokes. The one about the sponges still makes me laugh.)

Cast: Wayne Brady, Jeff Davis, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Drew Carey

Let's Make a Date: Jeff = contestant; Wayne = all the members of the Klump family; Colin = angry neighbor whose relaxing bath keeps getting disturbed; Ryan = wary bird building its nest being repeatedly frightened away
As Jeff is walking downstage, Drew compares him to Paul McCartney. Now, maybe I'm showing my age, but I definitely see the resemblance between Jeff and McCartney during the Rubber Soul years. And that's all I'm going to say about Jeff's looks. (And yes, that has absolutely nothing to do with the game. LOL)

Jeff began the game by assuming what I think started out as a Valley Girl accent. Although somewhere along the way, his accent slipped South of the Border. Apparently, Ryan and Colin aren't the only ones with roaming accents. I'm not qualified to judge Wayne's quirk since I've never seen either of the films with the Klump family. From what I've seen of the commercials, he seemed to be portraying the characters successfully. It was obvious that he was playing several different people. I'll assume from the audience's reaction and Jeff's successful guessing that Wayne's performance was on the money. But I really couldn't say for myself.

I was very surprised at how much trouble Jeff had with Colin's quirk as I thought it was the easiest one to guess. Colin gave all the necessary clues in both rounds. He got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around himself at Jeff's question. There's the bath part. He yelled out the window — the angry neighbor bit. And then settled himself back into the bath at the end of the first bit. And repeated the sequence during the second round. It just didn't seem that difficult to me. Perhaps Jeff was thrown by Colin's ending of slipping and falling headfirst into the water and drowning. No, that would still have implied bath. I dunno. Chalk it Jeff's confusion up to inexperience, I guess. (Listen to me, as if I'm the great Let's Make a Date guesser!)

I would never go so far as to say that Ryan is bird-brained, but do you think that maybe he has some aviary genes in him? He does birds so well. It's frightening. Picking a card up off Drew's desk to use for the nest was an inspired way to quickly convey the idea of nest building. The flying upstage neatly depicted the second half of his quirk. But Ryan bobbing into the water pitcher puzzled me. If he was trying to convey a birdbath or drinking water, it didn't work for me. What I got out of that mime was the image of those 70s glass bird barometers. You remember. The ones that would bob up and down as the barometer shifted. I think it was the stiffness of his body that made me think of them. The question is — did Ryan mean for me to think of them? And if so, why? I have a small complaint about Ryan's performance while he was upstage. Yes, I realize that once in character, he couldn't drop the bird mime, but standing back there and continuing the wary bird act distracted me from Wayne's performance during Wayne's second round. If ever you wanted a literal interpretation of upstaging another actor, you got it then. Perhaps if Ryan hadn't flitted across the back of the stage, I wouldn't have been so distracted. I did like how in his own second round, Ryan started pulling hair off the Colin corpse for his nest. Then coming back to collect the entire corpse. I think Ryan intended for Colin to move over to the third stool to become part of the nest. But Colin interpreted the action as the bird rescuing him from drowning. So to my surprise, the corpse came back to life! And to thank the bird, Colin promptly broke off the wing and ate it. In a nice bit of three-way interaction, Colin broke off the wing and ate it, Ryan promptly died, and Wayne in his character as one of the Klumps comes in and shares in the feast. That kind of interaction has been happening in Let's Make a Date between Ryan and Colin for some time. But it was nice to see Wayne join in and to see Colin willingly accept his presence.

Couple of final comments on this game. I don't think that Drew and Ryan were razzing Jeff about not getting Ryan's quirk so much as using Jeff's inability to guess as a way to comment to the writers who came up with the quirk in the first place. Ryan's expression when he read the quirk was one of total disbelief. And I think he was sincere when he wished Jeff Good Luck at the beginning of Jeff's guess. I believe that everyone including Colin and Wayne who joined in on the teasing felt the quirk was too complex to guess. And the other comment. When I write these reviews, I try to base them exclusively on what's broadcast and not use any inside knowledge that I've gotten from the taping descriptions. But Ryan's comment about saving up points to buy Drew's desk so intrigued me that I had to check the date of this taping relative to That. This taping predated That by several weekends. I guess Ryan was just being oddly prophetic. And if you don't know what That is, just smile and nod. Say, "there she goes again", and move on to the next game. Actually, why don't we all move on to the next game.

Whose Line: Ryan = heroic gladiator trying to calm fellow panicky gladiator, Colin
When I first saw this game, I thought it was an average game of Whose Line. (It didn't help that my husband was trying to talk to me during the broadcast; silly man.) But when I rewatched the tape, I began to change my mind. Every time, I watched this game my opinion of this game rose until now it's a serious candidate for the Best Game award. If you feel about the game the way I did when I first saw it, I urge you to give it another try. But this time, pay special attention to not just what Colin says, but how he says it. There is some very nice vocal acting going on in this game. Listen to the whine about life's unfairness in "Oh, we gonna die". The shock in "LIONS". Or the blind desperate hope in "two little guys". There's a lot of fine subtle acting by Colin in this game.

That's not meant to slight Ryan, by any means. But for once, Ryan seems to be playing straight man to Colin who has most of the best lines and bits: What's that? (to the trumpeting). Look at you, you're all buff. (Ryan can't quite keep a straight face to that.) Ryan sets up the metal dress gag (more out of an inability to remember what to call it than anything else), but it's Colin who runs the farthest with the gag. And when Ryan steps out to the roar of the crowd, Colin steps out to and makes roaring sounds just like he saw Ryan do — neatly turning Ryan's sound effect into a gag. The only thing I thought was missing from this game was when Colin called Ryan "Gladiola" instead of gladiator. I know Ryan caught the error. I could see it in his eyes. I'm surprised he didn't make anything of the mistake though. (I'm also surprised Drew didn't say anything afterwards.) I guess you can tell I really liked this game. But it took some time to grow on me. And it's still growing on me. At this rate, it just might be my choice for Best Game by the time I finish the review!

Props: Wayne and Colin = pillow with curly Q hanging from one side; Ryan and Jeff = 2 large question marks
Points to all four for coming up with some new jokes for the props. They may not have been hilarious jokes, but most of them were new or at least gently used. Wayne and Colin's jokes ranged from moonshine stills to Curious George, but I think my favorite was Colin using the prop to demonstrate how he went bald. Ryan and Jeff had the better props for this playing, I think. I enjoyed the Riddler, the loan shark, and the fish on the hook (mostly because I like Ryan's fish). Unquestionably, my favorite of the entire game was the I Love Lucy heart. I wonder which one of them thought of the idea. It was very clever. Putting the two question marks together to form a heart is nice, but the I Love Lucy element was inspired.

Sound Effects: Ryan and Colin = two Jedi Knights checking out their spaceships before attacking the Death Star
I'm not going to comment on the arguments for the new Sound Effects (yes, there are some) and against the new Sound Effects (yes, there are some) because I want to finish this review sometime this year. I'll just say that compared to other playings of the new Sound Effects, I don't think this one was as funny. Which is somewhat surprising when you consider that the audience members were among the best sound makers we've seen. Especially Kevin who despite his opening faux pas — asking if the microphone was on — served Ryan quite well. (Listen to Kevin helping Ryan buckle into his seat, for example. And points to Colin for taking Kevin's mistake and incorporating it into the story line so quickly.) I think Ryan and Colin made a fundamental mistake in this game by getting into the fighter's cockpit. Sound Effects works best when the action is broad and physical. By getting into the cockpit, Ryan and Colin severely restricted their movements, which meant that they had to rely even more heavily on the sound effects. And with amateur noisemakers, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Not that there weren't any laughs here. I liked the bit when Colin whined that he wanted to test the buttons. Tina did quite well providing him with button sounds leading to the best line of the game, "All the boops are working." Both Ryan and I were laughing at that. Well, I was laughing. Ryan was trying not to. The other good bit was when Kevin didn't do quite as well with the laser fire. (Actually, scientifically speaking, Kevin's silence was quite accurate for laser fire in space. But since when have science and WLiiA had anything to do with each other?) "You're out of ammo!" You can tell that Colin caught Ryan off-guard with that because he can barely get out his next line, "What??? How can you be out of ammo in a laser guided ship?" "I don't know the science!" — definitely the game's second best line. (Colin was having a good night during this taping. And, no, that's not just because I'm a Colin fan.) Finally, the game ends with Tina's interesting delivery of Ka-Boom. A sound effect that so impressed the cast that they were ka-booming and booping as Kevin and Tina were walking back to their seats. (I'm not talking about Drew's comment after the applause. This was during the applause. I think it was Wayne but I'm not sure. It could have been Jeff.)

Duet: Jeff and Wayne sing to Timory, dental hygienist, in the style of Gospel
This game started out well. Ryan, Colin, and I were very impressed with Jeff walking over to Drew's desk to pick up a card to fan himself with. There was something quietly confident about that action. Something that said, "I know how to entertain, and I'm not afraid to do what it takes to entertain." In fact, Jeff's self-confidence is the aspect about his debut taping that impresses me most. He knew he was capable and up to the challenge without being arrogant or snooty about it. When Jeff returned with the card, Wayne started speaking about Sister Timory who was all glimmery and shimmery. (Why did Wayne waste the best rhyme words in his mumbled intro? Why not save them for the song?) Then Jeff joins in the rhyming with a wonderful line, "Let us open our books now to Second Jimmory". Loved that. And the song proper began. And the game became totally average and uninspiring. Too bad, really, because the opening should great promise. Bottom line: this is duet is not going on my short list of song styles that I rewatch.

Hoe-down: the beach; Wayne, Drew, Colin, and Ryan
Question: why would the game's best singer choose to talk-sing his way through the song? Admittedly, Hoe-down isn't the world's greatest tune. But I don't know why Wayne wouldn't have sung it as he has all the other times I've seen him. Once again, Wayne's lyrics were okay, but not great. Wayne's Hoe-downs have never impressed me too much. For the record, I do think he can create very funny and clever lyrics. They just seldom appear in Hoe-down. Drew's Hoe-down struck me as awkward. Every time I listen to it, my initial reaction is that the second couplet doesn't rhyme. Of course, it does really. After all, me rhymes with bikini. But the syllable emphasis is wrong. The stress in the word bikini isn't on the last syllable, so subconsciously, I start trying to rhyme "me" with some other parts of the sentence. And that in turn throws off the Hoe-down song rhythm. It just doesn't work right. And Drew knew it too. You can see it in his eyes when he's done. Good old ABC censorship hits Colin again — bleeping the end of the best Hoe-down of the four. Yes, Colin has done that joke punch line before. But it is amusing the number of different ways he can use that whale of a tale in a Hoe-down. Every one that I can think of has been different. This is the first time that the whale has been his pet, I believe. I loved Drew's reaction to Colin's Hoe-down. Don't you just know that Drew is standing there thinking, "Why did you do that? You KNOW that means we'll just have to do another bleeping hoe-down!" (I doubt Drew was bleeping his thoughts at the time.) I had trouble understanding Ryan's Hoe-down. Literally. He seemed to be mumbling the lines. I finally realized that he was talking about a beached Drew, but it took me several tries. Several reviewers have commented on Drew's expression after Ryan's verse. I'll comment on the fact that immediately afterwards Ryan started singing another Hoe-down. The only part that I can make out is the very beginning, "I went". Did anyone else catch more than that? And any thoughts on WHY Ryan started in on another verse?

Credits: Colin = angry neighbor
I thought this was a solid credits reading by US standards. I like Colin playing the angry neighbor. He works to incorporate the names into the reading. Ryan, in the background, as the wife in the shower was a nice touch. And Jeff as the troublesome people / animals in the yard worked well. I have no idea what Wayne was doing. I wasn't paying any attention.

Best Game:
Let's Make a Date. Well, Whose Line gave Let's Make a Date a very good run for its money. Colin was strong in both games, but I think Ryan was stronger in Let's Make a Date than in Whose Line. And when I factored in Wayne's performance, I had to award Best Game to Let's Make a Date. (Notice I didn't mention Jeff's performance. I don't think he added too much to Let's Make a Date. He was better in Props and at the beginning of Duet.) But if you rewatch Whose Line and decide that it's the better game, I won't argue with you.

Overall Comments:
I thought the show started off well with Let's Make a Date and Whose Line, but once past Whose Line, the show started losing its strength. Once you get into Props, the laughs and surprises are spaced further apart. And after the singing started in Duet, I don't think I laughed out loud again until Colin's Hoe-down although I smiled a lot. I think when I rewatch the show, I'll pick up the VCR remote sometime around Props and start using the fast forward button. But I do know one thing, I'll rewatch the first two games complete because I enjoyed them.

© LKK 01/17/01