The basic premise of Family Feud, which screens at 5.30pm weeknights on TV3, is that contestants are asked an open-ended question, which has also been posed to a group of New Zealanders. The aim is then to guess how middle New Zealand would answer the question.
It was more often interesting for wrong answers than right, particularly those of Sue, the mum from Team Harvey who apparently told Dom: "You should try and get us on Family Feud, I watch it at home and I'm really good at it." This was absolutely not borne out by her performance on the show.
She gave us instead Dadaist anti-answers: all of them words; none of them right. Five questions in a row ended with an angry, obnoxious buzzer and a large red X on screen. Given that there were literally dozens of easy points dangling ripe and in front of her, it was quite an achievement.
Her sweet bewilderment was preferable to the attempts at comedy. In response to "what would you do in the bath?", Jay-Jay came up with "this isn't something I do - is it fart?", which epitomises the night's humour. It's like 7 Days Goes to Kindergarten, a collection of bad and bland jokes wrapped around a game show. At one point one of the Block-men came out and did a little dance, and it was both one of the most aggressively dumb things I've ever seen on television, and a high point for the show.
Later, Jay-Jay called her dog from the crowd, and host Dai Henwood was forced to make a joke at his own expense concerning his and the dog's mutually petite stature. Henwood is a very funny man, but not so funny that he can make this show swim underneath all this dead weight.
Eventually, the half-hour lumbers clumsily to a close. The scoring system is oddly complex, for a show with such a primitive vision of humanity, involving points correlating to percentages, multiplied by 10 with bonuses as a kicker. Whatever - Team Harvey won, sending $7000 to Fertility New Zealand, their nominated charity. Fine, I guess.
Afterwards, all celebrated as the credits rolled. Wade, from Team Walker, picked up Jay-Jay in an extravagant embrace, and spun her round again and again. It was a picture of human ecstasy, prompted no doubt by the knowledge the show had finished. I could relate.
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