THEY WED, THEREFORE THEY AM

THEY WED, THEREFORE THEY AM

THE NEW NEWLYWED GAME (Syndicated)

by

Rick Johnson

Ever since TV Guide awarded The New Newlywed Game the double honor of naming it �The Worst� and �The Dregs," enflamed world opinion has demanded a re-evaluation of the most important game show of the century, i mean, people were just getting used to Mariel Hemingway�s televised assertion that "there�s more to life than cheeseburgers� when the Clydes at Guide went and pulled our collective chain.

Why, you ask yourself, should I, Denmark�s Clown Prince, watch The New Newlywed Game? Because it contains every possible form of superior entertainment known except a pull-out poster of the Heimlich Maneuver; that�s why. It�s triumphant return to the airwaves is the biggest showbiz development since Sly Stallone misspelled his own name in concrete at Grauman�s Chinese Theatre.

The new version doesn�t differ greatly from the old ; one. They�ve jazzed up the set a bit and they kick off each Show with the couples posing in little vignettes ala Family Feud, but that�s it.

Bashful Sob Eubanks is back as the host, having been rejected by Sigue Sigue Sputnik for looking too weird. Bob hasn�t changed much himself, although his nowreceeded hairline bears a slight resemblance to a clandestine airstrip. An �80s kinda guy, he�s turned up his personality a couple notches and often injects bizarre random comments, into the proceedings like, �When your foot slips off the pedal it doesn�t hurt as much.�� We read you, Euby, but sometimes his demeanor is not something you want to watch on television. It�s something you�d expect a gymnast to put on his hands before climbing aboard the parallel bars.

The questions he asks the couples have been amplified as well. These days, even the simplest questions can be complicated by tortured, mutilated and spit-on syntax.

Of course, nobody—-least of ail the contestants—pays ,.any attention to the stupid questions anyway. The real competition is between the couple to see who can spill the most painful revelatidn on the other, preferrably a particularly embarrassing detail about their sex life. This is still a touchy topic for TV, though, so they have to use code. AH' sexual behavior is condensed into a Single phrase, �making whoopee � In the absurd world of this show, it could have been anything from tutu-bashing to getting your ham smoked, so you have to admit that whoopee is a pretty inspired term. One offshoot of this I find especially demoralizing is the number of couples who claim to have made whoopee on their first date when compared to my own whoopee-tofirst-date ratio.

When you get right down to it, the viewer is usually better off ignoring the actual gameplay and focusing instead on the three basic internal games going on at any given moment: 1) How on earth did these two taxidermist manikins end up together?, 2) Which spouse Will be brutally rhurdered and his corpse humiliated by irate relatives after the show, and 3) What do they really do in bed? Not to mention the very concept of watching people applaud wildly for a vicious personal insult (�He digs up nun's graves,� �She�s sexually attracted to patio furniture�) just because it happens to be a �correct� answer worth a rinky-dink five points.

By this time, I�m sure you-ce all So feverishly excited about The New Newlywed Game you want to be a contestant yourself. And you can, if you�ve been married to a member of the opposite sex (told you before, this is television) for two years or less and don�t mind making a complete jackass of yourself for the rest of your life in order to win some wonderful prize like an autographed Mr. Meat Smoker. Here�s the L.A. number: (213)469-4907. It�s that easy!

Well, what�re you waiting for? I�m telling you, it�s a once-in-a-lifetime opportune ty, like being buried in a mass gravel!