Some people have been avoiding grocery stores because of Covid and relying on grocery delivery, but it seems there’s another type of grocery store we should avoid—the one on TV in the form of Supermarket Sweep (ABC, Sundays, 8pm EST).
There are some game shows that come back with new energy—like ABC’s Press Your Luck, which created a new “final” round where the show’s winner plays several rounds on her/his own to win specially catered prizes. The show at least tried to update the original.
Then there are other game shows that don’t age well, like Supermarket Sweep. It rides the coat-tails of game show revivals of the past few years but fails spectacularly.
The basic premise hasn’t changed—and that’s the problem. Three teams of two solve riddles and clues about name-brand products you’d find in a grocery store—and answer questions to accumulate “time” to shop. The opening riddle involves the teams scrambling around the supermarket set to find the product (to get bonus points) before the show settles into a few rounds of puzzles to see who gets the most “time” in the sweep round.
In the sweep round itself, all three teams race around throwing items in their carts (including bonus items worth extra points). The more time you have to shop—presumably—the more time you have to fill your cart with expensive items. The team that gathers the highest grocery checkout total wins a trip to the final challenge.
The final sweep or “big sweep” involves only the winning team racing to answer clues and run to the appropriate product in an attempt to win up to $100,000. Host Leslie Jones playfully gives these clues by shouting into the grocery story intercom and about half the time the contestants are successful and the other half they fail to solve a particular riddle or find the correct aisle and fail to reach their desired prize.
While it is entertaining on some level to watch people fill their carts with diapers and turkeys, half the time I wonder if these contestants have ever been in a grocery store. Yes turkeys weigh a lot, but shoveling several big turkeys into a cart has less of a value than a lot of the meat they pass up. Apparently some unwritten rule of this game show is that despite having an entire store of items to select, you must always spend half your time throwing turkeys and a large wheel of cheese in a cart.
But the show feels old and dated. The questions are terrible. Some of the puzzles are like Wheel of Fortune where contestants stare blindly as letters are filled until they can shout out an answer. On a recent episode, despite being told it’s a cleaning product, none of the three teams could guess k-a-b-o-o-? might be Kaboom. They tried “Kabook?” “Kaboot?” Really?
And that’s a true shame because there is a redeeming factor–the host. Leslie Jones (Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters) tries to keep this sinking game show afloat—her humor and joy are contagious. You get a sense she would be having as much fun as a contestant as she does a host—and her worried looks and silly antics are just what the doctor ordered for the show. Sadly, if she’s the doctor, the patient (the show itself) seems destined to stay on life support.
And the show itself isn’t worthy of her energy. It is repetitive. You may smirk at the silly enthusiasm of the shoppers but you really can’t connect with them. And the fact they air two back-to-back shows where the same thing happens doesn’t help. Pyramid does this—but has all new “guest” actors and actresses so at least there is variety and entertainment if you sit down and watch a whole episode. Here, not so much.
The best thing about the show is it allows us to see people shopping in a world before Covid. Even though it was shot after the outbreak, the shoppers themselves have no masks. And they crowd together with no social distancing. But if that’s the best we can say about a TV game show that should be entertaining, then we are in for a cart filled with disappointment. We may sadly have to drop this show from our shopping list.
Supermarket Sweep airs Sundays at 8 pm (EST) on ABC.
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