My History With Match Game

In my blog post that introduced this blog, I wrote about how I had a lot of history with the game show Match Game. In this post, I will be explaining my history with the show and how I came to fall in love with it My hope with writing this blog post is that all of you reading will be interested in watching the show.

The show first premiered in 2016, and what caught my attention was that it was hosted by Alec Baldwin, who I had been familiar with since I was literally a child, as he was the narrator of Thomas the Tank Engine for a while. I initially didn’t know what to expect, but I thought it could be fun, so me and my parents decided to watch the first episode and see what we thought of it. What we thought of it was that it was really great and funny. It was easily the funniest and most sarcastic game show I have ever seen, and throughout its first season, they had so many funny celebrity panelists and questions. 
I think that what stood out to me about the show was the fact that it wasn’t like a traditional game show. Standard knowledge questions were not asked of the contestants, instead they were given what can best be described as the setup to a joke, and they had to come up with the punchline in a way, making it almost like an improv show. This also made it fun for me to play along at home, as sometimes I knew there was an obvious answer, but other times, because I was watching with my parents, I would ask them what they would say for questions that were less obvious to me. 

I also loved that any time a contestant gave a bad answer, the audience, the panelists, and even Alec Baldwin himself would let them know that it was a bad answer. One time that stands out to me is when a question was asked that said that a person was stuck on a deserted island with Scarlett Johansson, and they wanted someone to send ______. The contestant gave the very bizarre answer of “hair,” which resulted in much booing from the audience and panelists, and Alec Baldwin said that he was going to invoke a rarely used clause in his contract to ask the contestant to explain his answer, and his explanation was that “she has great hair.” The mocking didn’t end there though, as Jack McBrayer said that he was going to say hair, but then thought it was the stupidest answer, and Jason Alexander, who is bald, walked up to the contestant and criticized him. Another time that I found really hilarious was when a contestant was asked the question “Last Friday was singles night at Chuck E. Cheese. To heat things up, they emptied the ball pit and filled it with _______. The contestant’s response to this question was “fish,” which initially made no sense at all, until he explained that even though Alec repeated the question several times, he misheard it as “seagulls night,” which resulted in all the panelists coming down to hug him, and then immediately congratulating his opponent on winning. 

When I found out that the show taped in New York City, I knew that I had to get to a taping someday somehow. They taped a new season in October 2017, and there were three tapings in a single day, so me and my parents signed up for tickets, not realizing how easy it actually was. We figured that if we signed up, we might get a chance to win tickets, so we waited until we got that notification. When we finally got the notification, we literally had one day notice, and we knew that there was way too much to plan in such a short timeframe, so we decided not to go. 

When they started taping again in summer 2018, we decided to try again to sign up to go to a taping. This time, we found out how easy it actually was to get tickets, as we submitted our info for tickets to the second taping on a certain day, and then from there, we had the tickets. When I went to the taping, I had one of the best times of my life. It was easily one of the craziest, most unhinged, off the rails things I had ever seen, and I absolutely loved it. I loved how nobody cared what they said, and just kept on saying incredibly inappropriate words, it added to the craziness and really made it seem like I was watching a game show in New York. I also loved seeing all the stuff that happened in the episode that they cut out when it aired, such as a Roseanne Barr joke. There were also several points where when everybody was cheering, my mom whistled, which I could hear from the audience during the airing of the episode. For those of you who are wondering, the celebrities that were at this taping were Joel McHale from Community, TV celebrity chef Rachael Ray, Jason Biggs from American Pie, Caroline Rhea from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Donald Faison from Scrubs, and singer, Broadway star, and actress Vanessa Williams. Another interesting fact about going to the second taping of the day is that it was right before they would remove the name cards from the previous taping, and they would also start adding the name cards for the third taping after our taping, so I would know which celebrities were at all three tapings that day, and for names I didn’t recognize, as it was just first names on the cards, I would do some searching after the taping was over. I also met one of the nicest people who worked there named Jackee, who took me out of the really crowded line when I was freaking out and encouraged me to stay, let me wait elsewhere, and even let me be part of the first group of people let in to the studio.

After this, I knew that I had to go to another taping when the next season was taped, which just so happened to be June 2019. Due to how much I loved the show and what a great time I had last time, my dad told me to go to two tapings that year, which ultimately proved to be a smart decision for a number of reasons that I couldn’t see coming. The first taping that I went to was a themed episode called Match Game Code Blue, and it featured celebrities who had all played doctors in shows. The panelists were Joel McHale from Community again, Mayim Bialik from The Big Bang Theory, Kal Penn from Harold & Kumar and House, Sarah Chalke from Scrubs, Donald Faison from Scrubs again, and Bebe Neuwirth from Cheers and Frasier. This episode was even crazier than the first one that I saw, as there was one point where all the panelists had spray bottles, and all of a sudden, what started as Joel McHale spraying Donald Faison erupted into a big spray fight that ended up interrupting everything. The absolute best part was when Alec tried to move on to the next question, which started off by saying that Mayim Bialik played a charming teenage girl on Blossom, and then Mayim, who was cleaning up the water at the time, screamed in response “Look at me now!” I was so happy to see that when the episode aired, this moment was not edited out or shortened. During the second game of the episode, the winning contestants family was brought out, and they ended up sitting in front of us, and when the episode aired on TV, I was amazed to see that I could see myself and my parents on TV, even though it didn’t show our faces. When we left the taping, the incredibly nice worker from last time, Jackee, gave me a souvenir outside the studio, as she wasn’t really allowed to give it away, which was a Match Game All Access Pass that had my name written on it. 

Two days later, me and my dad went to our third and what was ultimately our final taping. While it wasn’t as off the rails as Code Blue, it was still a lot of fun for many reasons. The celebrities at this taping were Michael Che from Saturday Night Live, Kirstie Alley from Cheers, very controversial actor and comedian Chris D’Elia, actress, comedian, and talk show host Sherri Shepherd, Mark Duplass from The League and The Morning Show, and model and actress Brooklyn Decker from Just Go With It and Grace and Frankie. While the panelists were all entertaining, one of the most entertaining parts of the episode was one of the contestants from the first game. His name was Frank, and he was more excited and had more energy than any other contestant in the show’s history. Some highlights from him include him saying that he wanted “Question Number B,” the panelists commenting on his energy, Alec Baldwin getting more and more concerned by his level of energy, saying that if Frank won the $25,000, he would get a mayonnaise jar full of valium, and before the $5,000 answer was revealed in the Audience Match, Alec said “Can you imagine the screaming if he wins,” and when his answer was revealed to be the winning answer, he screamed and celebrated so much that Alec literally walked off to the side and got down on one knee while holding his head. There were some other funny moments from the taping that didn’t make it to the actual episode, which were Frank accidentally calling Kirstie Alley “Kristie” during Super Match, and when Alec corrected him, Frank jokingly called him “Alex,” and at the end of that half, Alec showed the audience that Mark Duplass had written on his card “Frank is Insane.” There were some other moments during the second half that I found funny, such as one contestant being so obsessed with wigs that she changed her hair more than once during the episode, which threw Alec off, and two moments that didn’t make it to TV, which were Alec saying that Brooklyn was on the show “Frankie and Johnny," and when the contestants were writing their answers to a question a voice came on over the loudspeaker, saying “Brooklyn, you can’t draw that, please get a new card.” 

The very next day, one of the craziest things ever happened to me. I was getting lunch with one of my friends, and I told her about the fact that I went to two tapings of Match Game. To my surprise, not only had she heard of the show, but she had also been to a taping that same week. I was so happy to find out that I finally had a friend who had heard of the show and seen it for themselves.

After that round of tapings, I knew that I wanted to go to more tapings the following year. Unfortunately, the following year was 2020, and that is when the pandemic started. I wasn’t entirely disappointed though, as I knew they still had enough episodes to air that year, and they could start taping again once the pandemic was over. In 2021, there were no tapings for the show, and the last two episodes were dumped on ABC with very little fanfare. I was beginning to think that this meant the show wouldn’t be coming back, but I still had a small amount of hope for another season. Unfortunately, a few months later, there was the tragedy of what happened on the set of Rust, and I knew that Match Game would never be coming back.

While I was disappointed at first that Match Game wasn’t coming back, over time, I got over it, but I would still get disappointed when ABC would announce their summer game show lineup, and I would see all the shows included that were not Match Game. In September of 2024, Game Show Network started airing repeats of Match Game, and I was reminded of what an amazing show it was, and it also helped me not miss it as much.

However, in April, something strange happened. Out of nowhere, they updated their cover photo on Facebook, four years after they ended the show. I left a comment on their post that said “Don’t Mess With Me Match Game, You Can’t Just Post Something Out Of Nowhere After Being Off The Air For Years. There Better Be A Reason You Updated This Cover Photo Lol,” and my comment got 65 reactions, even getting screenshotted and featured and commented on in a blog post from game show blog BuzzerBlog. Things only got weirder from here, as they then deleted everything they had ever posted. At this point I knew that something had to be up, as typically a social media page only does this when they are trying to start fresh. 

A few weeks later, I had my answer, as it was announced that Match Game will be returning on July 23 at 9:00 with new host Martin Short. When I first heard this news, I couldn’t believe it. My favorite game show was finally returning for a new season after four years. As with all good news, there was a catch, as I will not be able to go to any tapings in June, as it is not taping in New York City, but in Montreal. However, I’m okay with this, as I’d rather have new episodes of Match Game but not be able to see them get taped, than no new episodes at all. 

Overall, that is my entire history with Match Game. I am very much looking forward to the new season on July 23, and I hope all of you reading will watch it too! Until then, you can watch repeats every Saturday and Sunday at 7:00 PM on Game Show Network, and I’ll see you all soon with a post about celebrities that I think would be great for the show!