Story idea:
Title: Match Game. In the 1990s, an aimless 20-something discovers that her estranged mother was once a contestant on the game show The Match Game in the 1970s. She starts to suspect that one of the celebrity panelists is actually her father, sending her on a globetrotting journey to question each celebrity.
The end of one year and the beginning of the next is often a time of reflection. A glimpse into the past, trying to solve its mysteries, an attempt to understand its changes, a journey of self discovery. Or it’s a time to marvel at the fact that for over three years now, my wife and I have been strangely obsessed with the 1970s game show The Match Game.
It started as a curiosity after watching an episode of The X-Files guest starring Charles Nelson Reilly. (Season 3, Episode 20 – “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” – highly recommended).
That curiosity pulled us into a YouTube rabbit hole, into the Buzzr live channel, and eventually into a weekend morning ritual to visit our friends and the orange shag carpet for a social engagement where contestants are given silly and ridiculous prompts and try to match their answers with a panel of celebrities.
Though we never watched it when it aired, my wife and I both have vague memories of catching reruns on the Game Show Network, but thanks to YouTube, we have access to almost its complete library of episodes.
For some unknown reason, we instantly fell in love with the show. Maybe it was the celebrity’s humor and wit. The inside jokes created. The collaborative and encouraging game play. The comfort of what seems to be a simpler time. Even though that simpler time is going through the Watergate scandal, two gas shortages, and the Vietnam War.
It made me wonder about the contestants. What world did they go back to once they were spun off the shag carpet? For the winners, what did they buy with their money? For the losers, did the consolation prizes and memories make the experience worthwhile? What regrets, mistakes, triumphs, and stories were captured briefly on daytime network television and then left forever in the past?
Eventually this curiosity-turned-ritual-turned-comfort show sparked a story idea. But this time, it wasn’t mine alone. My wife is the one who conceived of the premise – inspired primarily by her love of Fannie Flagg’s books. Fannie, on top of being an actor, comedian, and Oscar-nominated writer, was also a mainstay celebrity on The Match Game.
But it wasn’t just my wife and I creating the story idea. Fannie Flagg, along with Gene Rayburn, Richard Dawson, Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Betty White, Nipsey Russell, Patti Deutsch, Scoey Mitchell, and all the contestants provided the characters, dialogues, and stories. All of us playing a round of The Match Game across time to create a story together.
What about you? What glimpses into the past have sent you on a journey of self-discovery?
Start your story in the comments below…