Induction #36: Hold Everything!

#36: Hold Everything!
Hidden Cameras, Pat Bullard and C-Listers! What More Could You Ask For?

Syndication: (June 1990 - August 1990)

There are certain types of game shows that are quite endearing to the game show public. One of those is the stunt show. Going back to Beat the Clock, and evolving to Almost Anything Goes, Double Dare, among others of that ilk. The shows that I just listed are classics. However, there has always been 1 type of show that drove people to absolute madness...The Hidden Camera Game Show.

Ah yes, the Hidden Camera Game Show. The basic premise is pretty much that you'd watch a situation unfold for about 2-3 minutes and be bored out of your mind, then the video freezes and then you have to predict what would happen next. Many shows have tried to make this type of show interesting, but all of them have failed. But the worst of these types of shows has to belong in the Summer of Crap that was 1990 that brought us a ton of pain. How much pain, let me count the ways as we present Hold Everything!

So, let's see who's hosting this....

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So, already we're going to be suffering. Yes, that's Pat Bullard. Don't let the late 80s mulletlicious hairstyle fool you. That is still the smarmy worm that I roasted in the Card Sharks 2001 induction. With this being 11 years earlier, he was just as bad, if not worse. I need to remind myself to do a full-scale induction on Pat Bullard in the future. In the beginning of the show, Pat Bullard said that "We'd be surprised and entertained as we reveal how people really are." He'd be better off by saying, "We're going to be showing you a bunch of unfunny segments and our celebs are going to be just as uninteresting. I mean, I'm one smarmy pile of goo and the only reason I got this job is because nobody else wanted this job anyways."

Now, the set. The Set has to be one of the cheapest sets I've seen. I mean, it's mainly made up of 3 cheap barcaloungers from 1979, some Ikea bookshelves, a table with 3 2-digit egg-crate readouts built into it. Oh, and a big chair that Pat would hover over, but never sit in. I think the only set cheaper at that time was another Dan Enright disaster in All About The Opposite Sex, which I'll get into sometime soon. But back to Hold Everything! I could make a game show out of my own house and it would be a much better looking set than this. I mean, when the best looking thing about the set is the readouts, then you've gone way below expectations.

The gameplay is equally as stupid as the set & Pat Bullard. The celebrities...yeah, I forgot. This show features celebrities instead of regular contestants. I guess Dan Enright couldn't be bothered to get real contestants to play the game, so he had to pay bottom dollar to movers and shakers in the industry like...

Frank Bonner, who's best days were back in 1982....

Anne Bloom, who starred in Not Necessarily the News during its dying days....

And Hal Williams who played third banana to Jackee Harry on 227. So, we got ourselves a C-Lister bonanza here.

Ok, now I should get back to the gameplay, if you can call it that. It's pretty much like I described in the opening. A hidden camera bit was being shown to the celebrities. Now this was supposed to lead up to some hilarious situation, but since we can't get that in any show that Pat Bullard does, It just leads to some stupid stuff. For example, this bit was filmed at a dentists office. The lady on your left is the suspect, just keep tha...ah, screw it. I'll just skip to the end. The dentist who looks like someone who they pulled out of central casting wants to pull out a tooth the old fashioned way: by rope and yanking it. He then asks if the lady will help and then...

Yeah, we get a very stupid Hold Everything! soundbyte by Larry Van Nuys. I would actually put it up on here, but I decided against it via better judgment. Also, the show is too toxic to put up anywhere, video or audio wise. Yes, it's that insipid and horrific.

So now, we get the celebs discussing about it and each celeb has to decide if the person will go along with the person or not. Yeah, it's just as boring as it sounds.

And you pretty much seen the entire show. That's all the show is. It just repeats for a couple more times until 4 situations are shown and the celebrity who did the best won $1,000 for their favorite charity. I mean, in 1990, $1,000 was peanuts, especially when shows like Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Classic Concentration, Family Feud and pretty much every single cable game show on at that time were giving away more. I mean, Make The Grade gave away at most, $1,100 in cash, plus a trip, which was about another $1,100 or something like that.

I'm glad that's over. Bullard's smarminess and godawful haircut, paired up with the worst concept in game show history, and C-listers galore make for possibly the worst show in 1990. How long did this utter pile of garbage last? 9 Weeks. That's right, 9 Weeks! So, not only is it one of the worst game shows in history, but it's one of the shortest lived. This wouldn't be the end for Pat Bullard, as he would have his own talk show on E! and go on to host Love Connection in 1998. Dan Enright would go on to produce TTD 90 before retiring from TV shortly afterwards.

If this doesn't seem like my best work, then I apologize. The first time I saw this show, I was extremely angry at the crap quality of it all. Everything from Pat Bullard's messed up hair, to the cheap set ripped from a Kmart Showroom, to the C-Grade celebrities, to the theme song, among everything else about this show. If You're a trader, don't ask for this show. You'll be better off for not watching this.

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