S05.E05: The More You Ne-Yo

[Drogo]

Two contestants lead a team of three celebrities, who include Michael Bolton, Ne-Yo, Nick Lachey, Vanessa Lachey, Chris Parnell and JB Smoove, in hopes winning a $25,000 grand prize.

[Corgi-ears]

Well, that was a stunning show of incompetence by everyone concerned. To only get 3 answers during "Where're You Going?"? To take a million seconds to get "dice" because you're too stupid to say "roll the blank"? To not know who Elizabeth Warren, or Lin Manuel-Miranda are, or think that Simone Biles is a singer?

And "Nice Package" was a hyper boring game to watch, and impossible to play along at home to. What was right, what was wrong? Who knew? Who cared?

Edited July 28, 2017 by Corgi-ears

[paigow]

Were all the smart celebrities busy when the booking interns called?

Smoove is an idiot even on Talking Dead...why invite him when real dollars are on the line for a civilian????

Edited July 26, 2017 by paigow

[Aliconehead]

Geez. Worse ending clue givers.  They passed on so many. Didn't know who Simone Biles was when this was film last summer when she was everywhere. Just bad

[Primetimer]

But is he driven to help civilians win money?

View the full article

[Irlandesa]

On 7/26/2017 at 10:24 AM, Corgi-ears said:

Well, that was a stunning show of incompetence by everyone concerned. To only get 3 answers during "Where're You Going?"?

To be as fair as I possibly can be to this group, "Where're You Going?" is usually 90 seconds. I think it was shorter today because they did ridiculously well in the balloon popping game. That went on forever.

But that was definitely a failure by the celebs at the end.  The thing is, I'm trying to think of who would have been better. Ne-yo wasn't terrible.  Vanessa didn't know anyone but I'm not convinced Michael Bolton would have done any better.  J.B. Smoove doesn't seem serious enough but I suppose he could have surprised.

[paigow]

Bolton proved how useless he is without any help from Lonely Island...

[swimmyfish]

This was a pretty bad episode, although it did have some bright spots:

• I liked the conveyor belt game - it's a little chaotic, but it requires more actual knowledge of celebrities than similar games they've played (like the one with the pillows), so it was fun to watch
• Vanessa & Nick Lachey were charming - they were the strongest celeb players on their respective teams, both took the games seriously but still managed to have fun
• Strong civilians - sure, their careers were not interesting - selling children's clothes on ebay is really the most interesting thing you can come up with about yourself? - but they both clearly knew a lot about pop culture and not afraid to throw themselves into the games. I felt bad for both of them, being saddled with lackluster celebs.

On a neutral note - did they update the rules to Scary Poppins? It's been a while since I've seen that game so I may be remembering wrong, but didn't it used to be that every person went to the podium to answer a question? I thought this seemed more fair - to have the last incorrect person stay up there, if that is indeed a change. Either way it was unfortunate they got through only 1 round of the game; it gave Gigi such an imbalanced lead, the other team just could not catch up.

Although, there's obviously a chance they would never have caught up because - whew, these were not good celebs. I was most surprised by Chris Parnell, who wasn't terrible, but who I expected to be a much stronger player. I suppose he hasn't been on SNL for a long time, but he's Dr. Spaceman! Although, in his favor, I think Hollywood Game Night should develop its own equivalent to the EHG Dave Points, and give all of them to Parnell for his Olive Garden answer - that's the right answer when the clue is "bread sticks". 

Ne-Yo was a pretty good player two weeks ago, I don't know what happened this time around.  Maybe last time I was just charmed by his devotion to nachos? It's hard to say. He did okay in the final round - he and Vanessa made a pretty good team, I thought, but between the two of them they've got some big gaps in their pop culture knowledge.

I think, for the Secret Life of Pets, Vanessa said it was her son's favorite movie, not her own. And while her answer was indeed wrong, I did like the she immediately remembered the correct answer once the buzzer went off.

Michael Bolton didn't really seem to know what was going on. I bet he likes to watch the show and play along at home, though. Or maybe he thought he was really going over to Jane's house for an evening with friends.

I thought JB Smoove was pretty bad overall, but that is almost exactly what I was thinking for "cigarettes" in Off The Top Of My Head - you can use them as money in prison. I think he, like me, was leaning too heavily into the Orange Is the New Black theme, and didn't fully realize he could give clues about the item divorced from the show. Chris Parnell did the same thing with "dragons" - you don't have to make a GoT reference, just say "breathes fire" and everyone will (or should) know what you're talking about.

I think that was the lowest-scoring round of Where You Going? ever. However, I did like that both drivers indeed asked the titular question for each new passenger.

And now this show is moving to 10pm on Tuesdays? I can not stay up that late to watch this program. Old people are the only ones watching this, NBC, and we need to go to work in the morning. 

[Corgi-ears]

More like "The more you know, the less you're Ne-Yo," am I right or am I right?!

[BobH]

It was an uneven episode. There was a lot of stupidity, as detailed in the podcast. I was amazed the civilian did as well as she did in the final round, given some of the pop culture gaps her celebs obviously had. If she had been quicker to pass on a few things there were clueless on (if they made it clearer to her that they were clueless) she might still have won.

Five for five this season on singing with the band, multiple times on this one.

I kind of liked the package game, especially since it looked fun to play, but it does need some tweaks to actually be good TV.  Maybe some sort of chyron scroll of the names as they come out, a graphic of how many boxes each celeb is holding and how many are right? Or is expecting any sort of post-production work on the episodes asking too much? I mean, they have time, given it's years between filming and airing each episode.

I did expect Parnell to be better, so that was disappointing. The Lacheys were surprisingly good (until her on the final round), but that's because the only thing I know him from is the "Stay out of it, Nick Lachey" quote that they kept playing on The Soup.

[sweetandsour]

If it were me, I would have probably chosen Nick and Vanessa for the final round, given the lackluster choices and the hope that they work well enough together to make two clue-givers an actual advantage.  I thought there were more "harder" names in the final round than usual, but they did have complete gimmes like Britney Spears in there, too, so I guess it should have evened out.  If you don't know to shout "Hamilton!" for Lin-Manuel Miranda, you've got nowhere to go.  Elizabeth Warren is a hard one that people could get, but also seems likely to require a lot of time and is very conducive to giving incorrect clues (like yelling out "congresswoman from [the wrong state]") because I don't know if "congresswoman who was attack dog on Hillary's campaign!" would be enough.  Not that the state would help most people, but it's just more room to grapple at the wrong straws.  Simone Biles should have been a gimme for who knew anything about her, but they clearly didn't.  I did think the civilian did a better job than most at passing quickly - they just had to pass so many times - and Vanessa did a better job than most at immediately indicating the civilian should pass.

Also agree the conveyer belt game was fun and challenging for the contestants, but very little payoff for the viewer.  You just watch them fumble around and you yourself can't even follow the names coming down, and then the weak climax of a final score at the end.  I know Jane called out Tony Danza as being a wrong pick, but I don't know if she just chose one error or that was the only one.  So there's not much room for comedy, either, around dumb or silly choices.

They need to stop inviting back terrible players.  JB Smoove for a third time?

[sugarbaker design]

Vanessa Lachey must be nominated for Worst Player Ever after that abysmal performance in the last round.

Elizabeth Warren     "Wow!"

Lin-Manuel Miranda "Wow!"

Simon Biles               "She's a singer!"

[ae2]

People here must be geniuses, they're so quick to throw people in the 'worst player ever' category or even calling them dumb.

Those names aren't exactly A-listers who I'd expect everyone that comes on this show to know. She didn't pass on George Clooney and Jennifer Lawrence. How many senators and Olympians do we get on this game, anyway? If someone wanted to study celebrities in preparation for HGN I don't think Elizabeth Warren and Simone Biles would have even come up. And let's not pretend Vanessa was alone up there...

As far as worst player material, she did exactly what you should do when you don't know a name and tried to get the player to pass on it. That's exactly what you should do and that makes her a better player, not a worse one. You could maybe find fault with Simone Biles, it was clear that she mistook the name for someone else but wasn't very certain about it and should have kept passing.

[Palomar]

11 hours ago, BobH said:

Five for five this season on singing with the band, multiple times on this one.

 

Love this part of the show...especially when it involves pairings that would ordinarily never happen. 

[iMonrey]

Wow, these had to be the dumbest teams ever on this show. I almost didn't even watch it the minute I saw JB Smoove's name in the credits. I can't stand the sight of that ass-clown. Everything about him bugs, right down to his stupid, pretentious name, "smoove." Ugh, I strained my eyeballs rolling them so hard. And he didn't know South Park? What kind of pop culture black hole has he been living in for the last 20 years?

I knew it didn't matter who won because neither contestant had a snowball's chance in hell of winning Celebrity Name Game with these duds, especially after they only got three points for "Where Ya Goin'?" Wow. They sucked on that last game too (can't remember the name of it). 

Can't believe the contestant picked Ne-Yo as one of her clue givers: the guy who thinks Oktoberfest is filled with Swedish women {headsmack}. Half the celebrities that came up they didn't even know! Wow. Just - wow.

[paigow]

Hardwick should have done 2 shows instead of No-Yo...unless the producers need to save $45k occasionally...

[gpgurl50]

On 7/27/2017 at 10:09 PM, sweetandsour said:

If it were me, I would have probably chosen Nick and Vanessa for the final round, given the lackluster choices and the hope that they work well enough together to make two clue-givers an actual advantage.  I thought there were more "harder" names in the final round than usual, but they did have complete gimmes like Britney Spears in there, too, so I guess it should have evened out.  If you don't know to shout "Hamilton!" for Lin-Manuel Miranda, you've got nowhere to go.  Elizabeth Warren is a hard one that people could get, but also seems likely to require a lot of time and is very conducive to giving incorrect clues (like yelling out "congresswoman from [the wrong state]") because I don't know if "congresswoman who was attack dog on Hillary's campaign!" would be enough.  Not that the state would help most people, but it's just more room to grapple at the wrong straws.  Simone Biles should have been a gimme for who knew anything about her, but they clearly didn't.  I did think the civilian did a better job than most at passing quickly - they just had to pass so many times - and Vanessa did a better job than most at immediately indicating the civilian should pass.

Also agree the conveyer belt game was fun and challenging for the contestants, but very little payoff for the viewer.  You just watch them fumble around and you yourself can't even follow the names coming down, and then the weak climax of a final score at the end.  I know Jane called out Tony Danza as being a wrong pick, but I don't know if she just chose one error or that was the only one.  So there's not much room for comedy, either, around dumb or silly choices.

They need to stop inviting back terrible players.  JB Smoove for a third time?

I also agree that Ne-Yo and Vanessa were not the players to select for the final round.  I would have gone for anyone else on Ne-Yo's team.  I will give Vanessa a pass thanks to pregnancy brain and her functioning as the best player the rest of the night.  Weirdly, Jane Lynch was promoting the show this week and was like Ne-Yo is on it!

 

As for the conveyer belt, Jane said they had 16 points like immediately after they finished.  I think it was an edit.  It feels like it would take too long to explain to the audience which boxes fit into which category, who got it right and how many.

 

And yes again about the terrible players.  I felt bad for those civilians.  They both seemed to have knowledge but they weren't being helped out by their teams.

[Racj82]

On 7/27/2017 at 10:13 PM, swimmyfish said:

This was a pretty bad episode, although it did have some bright spots:

• I liked the conveyor belt game - it's a little chaotic, but it requires more actual knowledge of celebrities than similar games they've played (like the one with the pillows), so it was fun to watch
• Vanessa & Nick Lachey were charming - they were the strongest celeb players on their respective teams, both took the games seriously but still managed to have fun
• Strong civilians - sure, their careers were not interesting - selling children's clothes on ebay is really the most interesting thing you can come up with about yourself? - but they both clearly knew a lot about pop culture and not afraid to throw themselves into the games. I felt bad for both of them, being saddled with lackluster celebs.

On a neutral note - did they update the rules to Scary Poppins? It's been a while since I've seen that game so I may be remembering wrong, but didn't it used to be that every person went to the podium to answer a question? I thought this seemed more fair - to have the last incorrect person stay up there, if that is indeed a change. Either way it was unfortunate they got through only 1 round of the game; it gave Gigi such an imbalanced lead, the other team just could not catch up.

Although, there's obviously a chance they would never have caught up because - whew, these were not good celebs. I was most surprised by Chris Parnell, who wasn't terrible, but who I expected to be a much stronger player. I suppose he hasn't been on SNL for a long time, but he's Dr. Spaceman! Although, in his favor, I think Hollywood Game Night should develop its own equivalent to the EHG Dave Points, and give all of them to Parnell for his Olive Garden answer - that's the right answer when the clue is "bread sticks". 

Ne-Yo was a pretty good player two weeks ago, I don't know what happened this time around.  Maybe last time I was just charmed by his devotion to nachos? It's hard to say. He did okay in the final round - he and Vanessa made a pretty good team, I thought, but between the two of them they've got some big gaps in their pop culture knowledge.

I think, for the Secret Life of Pets, Vanessa said it was her son's favorite movie, not her own. And while her answer was indeed wrong, I did like the she immediately remembered the correct answer once the buzzer went off.

Michael Bolton didn't really seem to know what was going on. I bet he likes to watch the show and play along at home, though. Or maybe he thought he was really going over to Jane's house for an evening with friends.

I thought JB Smoove was pretty bad overall, but that is almost exactly what I was thinking for "cigarettes" in Off The Top Of My Head - you can use them as money in prison. I think he, like me, was leaning too heavily into the Orange Is the New Black theme, and didn't fully realize he could give clues about the item divorced from the show. Chris Parnell did the same thing with "dragons" - you don't have to make a GoT reference, just say "breathes fire" and everyone will (or should) know what you're talking about.

I think that was the lowest-scoring round of Where You Going? ever. However, I did like that both drivers indeed asked the titular question for each new passenger.

And now this show is moving to 10pm on Tuesdays? I can not stay up that late to watch this program. Old people are the only ones watching this, NBC, and we need to go to work in the morning. 

On your last point, I object to that! I'm 34. I just enjoy primetime game shows. Trivia is always fun to me. I barely have anything to watch on Tuesdays and I don't watch anything in real time anyway. They could move this anywhere they want. For me anyway.

[Spaceman Spiff]

On ‎7‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 11:45 PM, Corgi-ears said:

More like "The more you know, the less you're Ne-Yo," am I right or am I right?!

Maybe he was distraught he didn't have a plate of nachos to hold onto the entire game.

That whole breadsticks Italian restaurant thing for Pizza Hut follow by the buxom Swedish women for Oktoberfest was painful.

I would have gone with Nick and Vanessa for the end game as well.

[rwgrab]

On 7/27/2017 at 9:57 PM, BobH said:

I kind of liked the package game, especially since it looked fun to play, but it does need some tweaks to actually be good TV.  Maybe some sort of chyron scroll of the names as they come out, a graphic of how many boxes each celeb is holding and how many are right? Or is expecting any sort of post-production work on the episodes asking too much? I mean, they have time, given it's years between filming and airing each episode.

This is a brilliant list of suggestions!  I think the package game needs some tweaking, too.  It has a good premise with tons of active participation, but the switching camera angles made it tough to play along at home. We just saw a bunch of yelling while they threw boxes around.  They didn't even run through the correct answers at the end; they just said "Ok, you got 16 right" and moved on.   Having a list on the screen would have helped as the action sped along.

And I know it's unpopular, but I actually like Odd-o-tune.  I do agree that it has all the negatives they mentioned in the podcast, but as a psychology nerd I kind of like the challenge of it.  It's similar to those experiments where the names of colors are written out in different colored ink, and you have to say the actual word instead of the physical color.  Once you catch on to the song, if you try to sing it in your head to get to the title before the performer does, the strange distortion gets in the way.  Yes, it's dumb because they eventually read the song title, but I like the fact that you can play along with the game from home.

[iMonrey]

The problem with Odd-O Tune is that the players are speaking rather than singing the song lyrics, probably because most of them aren't singers, and because they don't know the songs well enough to sing them. So it's not until they hit the title of the song in the lyrics that anyone has a clue what the song is, unless it's a really well-known classic song. I have a hard enough time identifying contemporary music as it is, because I don't keep up with today's pop music. Throw in voice distortion and I'm totally lost.

Quote

Those names aren't exactly A-listers who I'd expect everyone that comes on this show to know. She didn't pass on George Clooney and Jennifer Lawrence. How many senators and Olympians do we get on this game, anyway? If someone wanted to study celebrities in preparation for HGN I don't think Elizabeth Warren and Simone Biles would have even come up. And let's not pretend Vanessa was alone up there...

I can give a pass to someone not knowing Lin-Manuel Miranda. That's a pretty Broadway-specific, New York-specific kind of thing. I think a lot of people have heard about Hamilton anecdotally but the percentage of people who've actually seen the show (much less know who wrote it) has to be pretty small. 

However, I think you'd have to be living under a rock not to know who Elizabeth Warren or Simone Biles are. JMHO.

[Qoass]

Quote

 a hyper boring game to watch, and impossible to play along at home

I know they want to keep inventing games to keep the show fresh but yes, being able to play along a home should be a top priority. It's kind of fun to watch celebs try to juggle boxes or play charades with their hands behind their backs but if we don't have the player's point of view, it's hard to stay interested. On that same topic, the Scary Poppins game and the one where the popcorn shoots out if you answer wrong make me lurch for the fast forward. They're not suspenseful; they're boring.

[Ciarrai]

On 7/31/2017 at 11:12 AM, iMonrey said:

I can give a pass to someone not knowing Lin-Manuel Miranda. That's a pretty Broadway-specific, New York-specific kind of thing. I think a lot of people have heard about Hamilton anecdotally but the percentage of people who've actually seen the show (much less know who wrote it) has to be pretty small. 

However, I think you'd have to be living under a rock not to know who Elizabeth Warren or Simone Biles are. JMHO.

See, I think it's the other way around. Lin-Manuel Miranda has been everywhere over the past year and I don't think only people from New York or musical theatre geeks would know him from the clue "Hamilton". I have no idea how they could have clued her into Elizabeth Warren (however, I'm Canadian so take that with a grain of salt). Simone Biles should have been easy though. Short female gymnast, won tons of medals.

[April Bloodgate]

On 8/3/2017 at 2:13 PM, Ciarrai said:

See, I think it's the other way around. Lin-Manuel Miranda has been everywhere over the past year and I don't think only people from New York or musical theatre geeks would know him from the clue "Hamilton".

I totally agree. I'm not in New York and I'm not a theater person, but I see stuff about him everywhere. He did the music for Moana, he's starring in the new Mary Poppins, and the success of Hamilton is so overwhelming that I think it/he is in the general pop culture zeitgeist now, whether you're into Broadway or not.

[Kel Varnsen]

On 03/08/2017 at 4:13 PM, Ciarrai said:

See, I think it's the other way around. Lin-Manuel Miranda has been everywhere over the past year and I don't think only people from New York or musical theatre geeks would know him from the clue "Hamilton". I have no idea how they could have clued her into Elizabeth Warren (however, I'm Canadian so take that with a grain of salt). Simone Biles should have been easy though. Short female gymnast, won tons of medals.

What bugged me was not so much that the clue givers didn't know who the clue names were, but that they wasted a ton of time just staring at the screen without saying anything. If you don't know who the name right away is, just tell the contestant to pass and find a name you can describe. Although didn't they say Vanessa was a host of Entertainment Tonight? You would think she would be better at describing celebrities. That is like high school test strategy.

 

On 31/07/2017 at 2:12 PM, iMonrey said:

The problem with Odd-O Tune is that the players are speaking rather than singing the song lyrics, probably because most of them aren't singers, and because they don't know the songs well enough to sing them. So it's not until they hit the title of the song in the lyrics that anyone has a clue what the song is, unless it's a really well-known classic song. I have a hard enough time identifying contemporary music as it is, because I don't keep up with today's pop music. Throw in voice distortion and I'm totally lost.

Yea you can really tell how much easier the clues are when the person reading it knows the song and can sing it with the right rhythm.

[jhlipton]

On 8/2/2017 at 6:31 AM, Qoass said:

On that same topic, the Scary Poppins game and the one where the popcorn shoots out if you answer wrong make me lurch for the fast forward. They're not suspenseful; they're boring.

I like the popcorn game, and always play along.  Definitely a YMMV thing.

On 8/3/2017 at 1:13 PM, Ciarrai said:

 Simone Biles should have been easy though. Short female gymnast, won tons of medals.

Black gymnast who was this year's "Gabby Douglas"?