From May 2001...

Family Feud

The problem I have is that I often try to watch the 7pm Seinfeld rerun -- you know, if I'm around. And maybe I'm doing something else at the same time; looking through mail, working on website, whatever. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere The New Family Feud starts. It's really bad. Like "Meet the Lakes, they have so much fun when they eat their steaks!" and "These are the Murkees, they're no turkeys! Let's play the feud!" That's bad enough, right? But then this creature comes out from the wings. Very slowly. He is Louie Anderson. He is actually wider than he is tall. I do not believe that I am exaggerating. He is sloth-like. And then he speaks. He sounds like a frog. Like a frog who smokes 3 packs a day. And suffers from depression*. It is sad, laughable, depressing, pathetic, and American. It also makes me lunge for the remote, and if I can't find it, I run out of the room.

*The last host of Family Feud had an even rougher time. Ray Combs was host of the Feud for six years until it ended in early 1994. That July, Combs was in a car accident that left him with permanently painful spinal disk injuries. Financial problems, bank foreclosure, 18-year marriage crumbling. In June 1996, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward of Glendale Adventist hospital in California. Early the next morning, Combs, 40, fashioned a noose from his hospital sheets and hanged himself in a closet. I don't believe this was his first suicide attempt. He committed suicide on his wife's 40th birthday.