By Chris Cosci

As many people know, I am a game show junkie. One of my favorite game shows has always been the Family Feud. So, I was intrigued when they brought it back recently with Louie Anderson as host, whom I always thought was a very funny comedian.

To me, ruining the Family Feud would be like ruining cereal for breakfast. You'd think it couldn't be done. However, in the case of this new version of the Family Feud, let's just say that somebody burned the Cheerios.

The disaster that was this show was perfectly captured in the very first question asked. "Name another word people use for rear end."

I cringed as the first contestant person buzzed in and enthusiastically answered "butt!" And that was the number one answer. This was followed by each family going through their vast vocabulary to come up with other answers to this thought-provoking question.

Sadly, the show never got any better. While the rest of the questions steered away from the mentality of a four-year-old, the show failed by sucking away all of the life and energy of the original version.

The original show had personality. You could find this personality in the music, the set, and, most importantly, the host - Richard Dawson.

Let's start with the music. The original had banjo-tinged music that fit perfectly with the theme of a down-home country feud between two rival families like the Hatfields and the McCoys. The new version has this easily forgettable, synthesized cacophony of horn-like sounds that sounds more like someone sitting on a cat than music. It's as if somebody hired a monkey to pound out a few notes on a keyboard and recorded it.

Then, there's the host, Louie Anderson. As a stand-up comic, Louie was funny and quickly made a name for himself with his excellent humor. As a game show host, Louie exudes about as much energy as a rock. He looks as if he's being forced to host the show with someone aiming a gun at his back.

Richard Dawson, and even the late Ray Combs (who hosted a 1990's version), succeeded with personality. Richard would talk with every member of both families before they started playing. He invested time in these people and treated them like friends, not like lowly contestants. Louie just runs the game, and even when he finally introduces the family members, he seems like he'll just forget them when they leave.

Moving on, we have the set. The original had sliding doors with the families' names on them. They would slide open to reveal the families. The answers would be revealed on a large revolving scoreboard in the middle. And again, it was decorated in a warm, down-home country fashion. The new stage strips away every bit of personality and replaces it with a cold, impersonal setting. No more sliding doors. Instead, the families just stand behind a podium with their name displayed on a television screen above them. The scoreboard is just a big television screen that is all computer graphics.

In fact, the whole show has the look and feel of a computerized version of the game, right down to the two-dimensional host whose dialogue is limited to the whatever the programmer included. If you were actively playing the game on your computer, you would probably enjoy it. However, you wouldn't want to watch someone you don't know playing the game on their computer.

The moral of this is don't mess with success. Look at The Price is Right. The show has been around for over 25 years and it still looks pretty much the same. They still have the carpeted walls, the low-budget lights, the cheesy music, and that mountain climber with the yodeling. Like the saying goes, if it ain't broke - don't fix it.