Stupid game show

1950s comic Ernie Kovacs is getting some kind of honor from his home state of New Jersey.

Ernie got a reputation as a comic genius that was occasionally justified, much like Jerry Lewis. While Lewis tended toward the juvenile, Kovacs veered toward the absurdist. Neither guy's work is particularly to my taste. But humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the laugher (or beholder).

The linked article goes into surprising detail about Ernie's venture into our little genre, Take a Good Look. The story makes the show sound like an absurdist masterpiece. To state the untrimmed truth, the show was a shameless knockoff of I've Got a Secret, with a few weird sketches tossed in as supposed "clues" to the panel. The sketches were sometimes funny and more than sometimes lame. (Yeah, I know that I've Got a Secret itself started as a knockoff of What's My Line. But the Gary Moore effort eventually edged closer to a variety show.)

The article displays some of the condescension toward game shows which is all too familiar. He was using a stupid game show to fulfill what he could then piece together and create new TV shows, opines one poobah. Actually, the confining format of Take a Good Look kept Kovacs under a bit of control, which made him more palatable.

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