Funny enough?

Just watched the debut of Funny You Should Ask. The easiest way to describe the show is Hollywood Squares minus three celebs and the tic-tac-toe game. I'm also tempted to say minus the laughs, but you'll can decide that one for yourselves. At least the show moves along briskly, if not too humorously.

Jon Kelley hosts in a bland and generic manner. Two civvies try to decide if a celeb - there's a panel of six of them, and each answers in turn - is right or wrong when Kelley asks them a general knowledge question. Before their answers the celebs deliver scripted punch lines, which mostly lacked punch in my sour opinion.

After three rounds of this frivolity, the winning contestant plays a bonus round of three questions, again with scripted and supposedly funny answers. The poor civvie has to pretend to laugh along and to pick which answer is correct. In the ep I saw, the civvie nailed all three and got an extra five grand. Yippee.

I know I'm sounding grumpy about the show, but I thought the humor was pedestrian and the format was routine. The only saving grace was pace, but pushing things along quickly doesn't help much when things aren't that entertaining. It's unfortunate that this show replaces the far superior Celebrity Name Game among syndie game shows, but bad things happen sometimes.

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