The Alec Baldwin-hosted version of Match Game limped off the air four years ago, airing a slate of episodes that were recorded pre-pandemic and held by ABC for whatever reason. With Baldwin embroiled in legal issues due to the Rust shooting tragedy, ABC and Fremantle thought it was high time to not only find a new host but move the show to a less expensive home. The show now shoots in Montreal and the new host is none other than Martin Short.
Opening Shot: “Get ready to match the stars! Selena Gomez! Cara Delevingne! Kevin Nealon! Anthony Anderson! Ziwe! And BD Wong! As we play the star-studded Match Game! And here’s the host of Match Game… Martin Short!”
The Gist: Yes, Martin Short is now the host of Match Game, taking over for Alec Baldwin, who hosted the revival of the 1970s game show classic from 2016-2021. Unlike Baldwin, Short comes out with a clip mic on his lapel; he is not holding the long, skinny microphone that Baldwin did as a tribute to the host of the ’70s version (and the ’60s original it spawned from), Gene Rayburn.
Another twist is that the show is now being taped in Montreal instead of New York, like it was when Baldwin was the host. Still, Short’s pull has attracted some impressive panels, as the show’s press releases indicates. In the second episode, the panel will be Caroline Rhea, Jay Pharoah, Ana Gasteyer, Phoebe Robinson, Randall Park and Constance Zimmer. In the third, Ego Nwodim, Jackie Tohn, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Andrea Martin, Thomas Lennon and Pete Holmes will be on the panel.
You know the rules: Two contestants have two questions to match as many of the celebrities as they can, filling in the “Blank” in a joke-filled question. The winner after two rounds goes to play the Super Match, which starts with the Audience Match; there, they can get three celebrities to give them ideas to fill in the blank on an answer. If they get one of the top three from the home audience survey, they pick one celebrity to do a Head-to-Head Match for five times what they won in the Audience Match, with the top prize being $25,000.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Match Game and Hollywood Squares have always been compared to each other, and that will definitely happen now that HS has been revived. The two shows share a decent amount of panelists.
Our Take: When we heard that Martin Short was going to be the new host for Match Game, we thought that was a perfect fit. Decades ago, Rayburn established what the host of Match Game should do: He or she should banter with the celebrities and trade joking insults with them, comment on the quality of contestants’ and panelists’ answers, and generally be the seventh funny celebrity on the set. Short is perfect for that because he’s an expert at coming up with a great burn on the spot, likes to banter, and isn’t exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to playing to the cameras.
He displays most of that in the first episode, though we were surprised that he didn’t poke fun at any of the contestants’ less-than-stellar answers (two complete games are played in the 42-minute episode, so there’s 4 contestants). It could be that the answers weren’t all that bad, but at the very least he could have said something when a contestant didn’t match with anyone.
Still, Short’s banter and bon mots sounded far less scripted and stilted than Baldwin could sometimes be. He seems to have a method of targeting two panelists — here, it was Nealon and Anderson, though there was a lot of banter about Delevingne’s eyebrows because of the first question — and just hammering away at them, knowing they’ll roll with him.
The questions seemed a bit less snappy than they were during Baldwin’s time. In the ’70s version, the questions that Dick DeBartolo wrote leaned towards either an obvious answer or a risqué one that could either be safe for network censors — think “boobs” — or just implied and chuckled at by all the knowing adults in the room. This time around, it feels that the writers wanted to stuff the jokes in the part of the question that Short read, not the part that was blank, which pretty much defeats the entire reason why MG has become such an enduring favorite over the past half-century.
The game is still fun, though sometimes the contestants themselves feel like they want to trade zingers with Short and the panelists. A contestant in the first game, for instance, kept saying how much she fantasized about being with Short. That has always been a big difference between the current version and the one from the ’70s; the contestants feel like they’re performing as much as the panelists are. But you can say that about most game shows these days.
Sex and Skin: Many of the questions have a bit of a risqué bent to them, but, at least in the first episode, most of the answers were PG.
Parting Shot: The panelists come down from their seats to talk to the contestant, whether that person won the Super Match or not. And the microphones stay on.
Sleeper Star: If the producers wanted to station Kevin Nealon in the upper-right seat (the Charles Nelson Reilly Memorial Seat) and make him a regular, we wouldn’t mind.
Most Pilot-y Line: Gomez mentioned that she used to watch the ’60s version of Match Game in reruns. Of course, our game-show-nerd hearts jumped at that, knowing she was referring to the ’70s version (very few episodes of the ’60s version still exist). But to Selena, the ’60s and ’70s might as well be the same decade.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We think Martin Short will breathe some life into the classic Match Game format, and the first episode showed some of that promise, even if it wasn’t as smooth as it could have been.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.