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In the beginning, there was Hot Potato. The game of two teams of the players that were "Three of a kind", playing against each other, passing the potato all over the place by answering the questions correctly. And it was good. Sadly, too many people were watching other shows at noon. So to attempt to boost ratings, just like other game shows of the past attempted to do, Hot Potato added a word to its name. And that word was Celebrity. And it was the worst word that could have been added to the title of the show. Consider this a personal essay on the cons of Hot Potato, beginning April 16, 1984, and why these are "The Non-Celebrity Hot Potato Pages".Why is it that whenever a show doesn't do well in ratings, they think that adding stars will boost ratings? Many shows are great, and the people just don't realize it, or won't admit it. Another example was Whew! When that show didn't do well, the same word was added to the title, and thus, the shows ratings didn't improve at all. And it was the same with Hot Potato.
When I got my first episode of Celebrity Hot Potato, I thought that it would be exactly like the original run, but with celebs incorporated. And that was all that happened. But sometimes, when we expect isn't what we get for real. While celebrities were added, they tried to make names for themselves. Which is stupid, because if they didn't have a name for themself already, why were they on a celebrity show?
Thus, the stars tried to be funny. And most of the time, they weren't. They thought they were, but they weren't. Especially when all 4 celebs were tring to be histerical at the exact moment. Words going back and forth, left and right. So that they were all unintelligable. Total choas. Then how funny is that on the show? It's not.
But may we forget that this is a game show. Players money is at stake here. And the celebs obviously couldn't care too much, since it wasn't their money they were risking. Instead, they gave stupid answers, and thus got kicked out of the game and sat at the bench. And the contestants on the show were the only ones that were serious on the show, because THEY were the ones that could go home with $5000 in the bonus game.
However, this wasn't all that caused problems with Celebrity Hot Potato. The original run had a lot of one of a kind items to it. First off, there were the teams of 3 players that had something in common. Because there was now only one real contestant on each team, this obviously wasn't there anymore. And its cooler to hear 3 people saying "AND WE'RE TELEGRAM SINGERS!", that it is to hear, "Hi, I am Susan and I am a Teacher". I mean, now, I don't really care what the players do. The teams of three made it interesting.
Another problem with it. Bill Cullen himself. No, not that he wasn't tring to do a good job with it. He did an excellent job hosting the original run, and made it flow well. On the Celebrity run, the stars tried to be funny after every answer, which slowed it down a bit. And to be blunt, Bill looked very pissed off that he couldn't do his job like he had done for the past 4 months prior to the time that the word "Celebrity" was added to the title. And he wasn't afraid to tell the stars to be quiet, which he did do.
In closing, Celebrity Hot Potato was so much different than the REAL Hot Potato. Too many changes, too quickly. And change isn't good like that. Other examples include the 1994 run of Family Feud with Richard Dawson. 1980's Celebrity Whew with Tom Kennedy. And the 1990 version of Tic Tac Dough with Patrick Wayne. Its because of all of the changes that were made in April, 1984, that changed the name of the "Hot Potato" pages here, to the "Non-Celebrity Hot Potato" pages.
Thank you for reading this.
