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| Nicole Sullivan on (the new) Hollywood Squares. |
This is not your father's Hollywood Squares. Or is it? The
new-and-improved Hollywood Squares was launched on September
16, 2002, with a new producer (Henry Winkler) and a new set. Apart from
that, however, very little seems to have changed. The host is the
same (Tom Bergeron), and most of the panelists have previously been
on the show. Perhaps the most significant alteration is that Whoopi
Goldberg is no longer the center square. In her stead, we get a new
panelist as center square every week - for the first week, it was
Ellen DeGeneres, whose freeze-dried wit proved more than adequate.
Other panelists included Joan Rivers, Martin Mull, Cloris Leachman,
and John Ritter, which all mixed palaver and wit with varying degrees
of success.
Nicole Sullivan on (the new) Hollywood Squares.
But the main focus of this synopsis is Nicole Sullivan, who was a panelist during the inaugural week of the new Hollywood Squares. I viewed four of the five episodes in which Ms. Sullivan appeared. Why, the inquiring fan might want to know, didn't I screen all five episodes? I didn't screen Wednesday's episode because channel 2, the only local (New York City) station which airs Hollywood Squares chose instead to air a half-hour special called Countdown to the Latin Grammy Awards on that day. Even worse was the fact that Hollywood Squares was listed in that time slot on that channel on Wednesday in TV Guide; apparently the decision to pre-empt Squares was a last minute one (either that or they won't even deign to submit programming changes to TV Guide - either way, I didn't see the episode). I apologize in advance for not covering the episode, although channel 2 owes its viewers a much bigger apology for this.
This was Nicole Sullivan's second appearance on Hollywood Squares (coverage of her previous appearance). This time, she appeared as the bottom center square, and only got picked an average of twice per show. Moreover, in the bonus round, in which the winning player must select a panelist and determine whether or not a factoid concerning the panelist's past recited by the host is true or not, she was not picked even once, as far as I know. Nevertheless, she did contribute some scintillating responses. For example, when asked who coined the phrase "[s]trong enough for a man, but made for a woman," she responded with "I think that's from a K.D. Lang album." Another response highlighted her ability to extemporize; when asked what the function of nose hairs is, her rejoinder was: "I use it as a form of birth control," and gesturing with her hand, she indicated that long nose hairs keep men away. While this was not the most gelastic material in the world, I can think of worse ways of spending thirty minutes (e.g. The Anna Nicole Show), and overall, her performance was quite good, as she more than holds her own with such veterans as Martin Mull and Joan Rivers. [Her performance was better, for example, than Jeffrey Tambor, whose "I'd like to buy a vowel" schtick was not funny the first time he used it, and was even more painful to watch each time he repeated this bit.] This is not essential viewing for the casual Nicole Sullivan fan, but was worth watching.