Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Password’ On NBC, Jimmy Fallon’s Revival Of The Classic Word Association Game Show

Jimmy Fallon has played Password for years on The Tonight Show, and now he’s made a new standalone version of the classic word association game show, which debuted in 1961 with Allen Ludden as host. Fallon and game show veteran John Quinn are the executive producers; Fallon is a celebrity panelist in every episode, with a rotating set of celebrities taking the other celeb spot. The host is the ever-energetic Keke Palmer. In the first episode, the other celebrity panelist is Jon Hamm.

PASSWORD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes from the different iterations of Password over the past 60 years. Of course, many of those scenes involve Betty White.

The Gist: The game is pretty simple: Each contestant/celebrity pair gets a “password” to guess. One person gives a one-word clue, and the other has to guess the password. If they don’t get it, the guess goes to the other pair. The number of points to earn on that word starts at 6 and goes down 1 with every wrong guess. The first pair who gets to 15 wins the game. The first contestant to two wins goes to the bonus round. If each team has a win, there’s a tiebreaker consisting of Palmer reading off a list of words, requiring one of the contestants to buzz in.

The bonus round is similar to the “Alphabetics” bonus round of Password Plus and Super Password, which run on regular rotation on BUZZR. The contestant gives clues to the celebrity for words starting with ten different letters. After 30 seconds, the celebrity switches to try to pick up the words the first one didn’t guess or didn’t get to. If the celeb guesses all ten words, the contestant gets $25,000.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There have been (checks internet) 5 iterations of Password, the last being Million Dollar Password, which Regis Philbin hosted in 2008-09. This version’s gameplay is a hybrid of the original version from the 1960s and the Password Plus/Super Password iterations from the late ’70s through the late ’80s.

Our Take: As a game show purist, we were worried that a Jimmy Fallon-produced version of Password would be too dependent on Fallon and the other celebrity panelists goofing around and mugging for laughs than actual game play. The promos that NBC put together obviously focused on the comedy aspect, and most of that was irritating in the usual fashion that most Fallon shows are; people trying too hard to get laughs and audiences laughing too hard at those attempts.

There are certainly things that need to be tightened up with this version. Because this version uses the classic ’60s main game, with words being guessed for points and not as part of a list of clues like in the Plus and Super versions, the game moves slower than it needs to. It seems that the clue giver is given an endless amount of time to play or pass, and then the guesser is given all the time in the word to guess the password off that clue. All of it leads to too many moments when, for instance, Fallon and Hamm are telling Betty White stories and not actually, you know, playing Password.

We are completely in the tank for Palmer, and she does bring a fun energy to the show as host. But there are times where it feels like she’s playing a game show host instead of being a game show host. That being said, she exhibits a ton of warmth — like when she finds out a contestant is a big fan of hers, they immediately bond — and the shtickiness of her hosting should settle down into something more organic, at least the Keke Palmer kind of organic.

Finally, there’s the bonus game, where two things irritated us. For one, the words are too easy, as all of them had obvious clues that generate quick correct guesses. For two, if a contestant gives an illegal clue with the first celebrity, a new word is subbed in when the celebrities switch, keeping the $25,000 in play. Not sure why the contestant should be given a second chance if they’re the ones who gave an illegal clue; they still win $1,000 per correct clue, so there is something to play for even if the $25k is off the table.

Despite the slow pace, easy clues and overreliance on guffaws, we still found ourselves playing along as if we were watching the older versions on BUZZR. And the modernized version of the ’60s theme song is pretty fun. If the show gets a second season, we hope Fallon and Quinn tighten things up to make the show move a bit faster.

Sex and Skin: Besides the cheeky act of giving Hamm a password of “Package“, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: Two different sets of contestants play with Fallon and Hamm, and there are two different bonus games. A tribute to Betty White is flashed before the credits roll.

Sleeper Star: A.D. Miles is the show’s announcer, and he does the traditional whispering of the password — “The password is… Package.” to the audience. He gives that whisper a weird affect that for some reason we didn’t get annoyed by.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Hamm was given “Package” as a password, he passed it to Fallon. Take the joke head on, Jon!

Our Call: STREAM IT. As much as we’d want to rip a Jimmy Fallon-produced Password for ruining a perfectly good and classic game show format, we can’t do it, because the game is still pretty entertaining. The pace just needs to be tightened up a bit, which should still allow plenty of room for Fallon and company to solicit laughs from the audience.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.