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VITAL STATS

Front Game Rules
	Two players, each with a celebrity partner, compete. In each round, a statement is shown with four words missing. For each missing word, a celebrity got 20 seconds to try to describe the word as much as possible while his/her partner wore headphones. After the description was over, the opposing celebirty could censor up to 7 seconds of the description (with 1 second of Blackout time added for each repetition of a keyword) as it played back for the civvie. If the player could guess the word, s/he won $100. If not, the other player could guess the word, having heard the description in its entirety.
	After each word is identified, it goes up on the board and the team that guessed it has a chance to guess the puzzle. The first team to guess two puzzles correctly wins the game. If the score is tied after two puzzles, one final blackout word is played.
End Game
	In the end game, one player faced a "clue screen" while the other faced away. The one who watched the screen was shown the answer to a puzzle, and every 2 seconds the screen would reveal a clue to the puzzle. When the viewer thought there was enough information, s/he yelled "Solve It!" and the other player turned around and tried to guess the puzzle. 5 right in 70 seconds or less won $10,000, otherwise the player won $200 for each one he got right.
Notes Blackout bears a dubious disctinction among the genre. It's bad enough that it only lasted 13 weeks. But to add insult to injury, the show that replaced Blackout was The $25,000 Pyramid - the exact same show that Blackout had replaced to begin with! This is the only time in game show history that a show replaced - and was replaced - by the same show.

Loogaroo Looks it Over

This was an enjoyable game to watch. The "Blackout Button" was an interesting twist to the Pyramid game. The only problem is that the word puzzles didn't really fit in. First of all, with only four words, they couldn't be very big. What might've worked better is something like the puzzle format of Body Language - where the puzzle describes some other thing. The endgame didn't have much to do with the frontgame, but it was still interesting to watch. It isn't easy to guage how many clues your partner needs to guess a subject. Bob Goen's hosting job was OK, I guess. I think he said "Very good blacking out" about 17 gazillion times even though he was only on for 65 episodes. This show was interesting and fun to watch, but it didn't quite live up to its potential.

Blackout

Gameplay: 2 pts.
Host: 2 pts.
Presentation: 2 pts.
Execution: 2 pts.
Total Score: 8 pts.