“This is Joey Fatone, and it’s time to play Family Feud!” Not only does that sentence reveal the depths to which post-N*SYNC life has carried Fatone, but it also indicates the start of possibly the most engaging game show ever made. It combines the simple with the impossible and the outrageous with the mundane. Gilgamesh and the Iliad combined cannot compare to the sheer staying power that Family Feud brings to modern entertainment. Critically acclaimed dramas and side-splitting comedies alike quake in the face of Steve Harvey’s caterpillar mustache. “Family Feud” can entertain even the ficklest of audiences. It unabashedly holds up a mirror to society and reflects the ideology held therein. It’s a goddamn masterpiece.
The most impressive part of Family Feud is its sheer longevity. It has aired (nonconsecutively) for over thirty years and is showing no slowing in popularity. In June 2015, it surpassed “Wheel of Fortune” as the most-watched syndicated game show on television, a fact which incidentally coincides with the crumbling of Pat Sajak’s marriage. As the show’s most recent host, Harvey brings to the table his superhuman ability to be blown away by even the slightest of inappropriate responses. He goes agape for a solid thirty seconds after someone answers the prompt of “Name someone who uses a pole” with “Stripper!” No matter the frequencies of these outrageous answers, Steve is unfailingly floored. Some point out that it feels as if the producers are steering into the skid by asking loaded questions to prompt inappropriate answers, but is it really their fault that someone comes up with a dirty response to “Name something you put in your mouth but don’t swallow?”
So how exactly does the Feud dominate the game show market? For starters, pretty much anyone can play the game. It’s a unique type of trivia based exclusively on answers to surveys, which means that all the answers depend on the public interviewed. This develops accessibility to a large audience. Some may struggle to answer “Sakura cheese from Hokkaido is a soft cheese flavored with leaves from this fruit tree,” in the form of a question, but everyone can come up with at least one answer to the question “What type of animal do you see in the park?” when it’s asked eight consecutive times. It rewards the common man, the player who’s in tune with the populous.
That said, boy howdy are there some dumb answers on the show, but from an entertainment perspective, buffoonery is equally engaging. “Name a way to say hello in a language other than English.” “Howdy!” “Holla!” “Oui oui!” That episode has forever altered my opinion of our nation’s collective cultural intelligence. It was also not an isolated incident. The frustration induced when a pitifully wrong guess is greeted by a familial chorus of “Good answer! Good answer!” is potent enough to cause a hernia. The pressure of fast money especially can pull embarrassingly revealing answers out of unsuspecting contestants. “Name a place your doctor might look in with a little flashlight.” “Your butt!” Even more disconcerting was that the answer was repeated in the second round.
Family Feud is the same story told a thousand different ways. The questions and answers evolve but the format stays the same. Every game the players change, meaning every game the heroes and villains are made anew. Some families are fun, some are lame, some are awkward as hell, but under the guidance of the modern television messiah Broderick Stephen Harvey, every one of them has a shot at greatness.