ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Move over, Merv Griffin – there’s a new game show in St. John’s and it’s set to return right after these messages.
“Whaddayat: The Live Comedy Game Show” is a breath of fresh air in the St. John’s nightlife, this novel idea unlike any other existing event in the capital city, even though it isn’t necessarily a new idea.
The game show pairs two contestants with local comedians, adapting a “Hollywood Squares” kind of format, in which contestants either agree or disagree with the correctness of their assigned comedian’s responses.
The Thursday, Sept. 19 edition of “Whaddayat” was hosted by local actor Evan Mercer and featured comedians Katie Thompson and Paul Warford.
Going back to March 2019, Night Out Productions and creator Riley Harnett put on two previous installations of the game show, intended as a “playtest” to “figure out if a live-format game show would even be entertaining,” he said.
Both events were in the small Peter Easton’s Pub in St. John’s and, according to pals who attended, it was a great success and highly entertaining.
The most recent version of “Whaddayat: The Live Comedy Game Show” was also highly successful, seeing the event move into a new and more suitable location – The Rec Room in the Avalon Mall.
Taking in my first “Whaddayat” while on my first foray into The Rec Room, to say I was excited was an understatement.
A longtime fan of game shows and, once upon a time, an avid watcher of the Game Show Network, I didn’t just want to watch all the fun – I wanted to play the game.
In an attempt to become a contestant, I messaged the Facebook event for extra details. As it turned out, the contestants would be chosen at random by raffle ticket draw.
Round 1 saw contestants tackle Newfoundland-themed trivia, with questions like, “What does FDG stand for?” “What is the most common surname in Newfoundland?” and more. (The answers, in case you were wondering, is “Fries, Dressing, and Gravy” and “White.”
Round 2 was a somehow more challenging game called “Who’s Yer Fadder,” in which contestants and their comedian partners viewed a photo of a celebrity and tried to guess who their father was.
Having watched the first two contestants go through the game show, I was absolutely raging for the opportunity to participate.
After calling three ticket numbers and not having them claimed, the host played “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” to choose a contestant. To better my chances, I got up out of my seat, walked toward the stage and simply yelled and flailed my arms until Mercer’s pointer landed on me.
A bit of a trivia buff, I killed the first round of 10 trivia questions, with Warford doing me a solid and basically single-handedly winning “Who’s Yer Fadder?”
Competing to take home the big prize – a $75 gift card to The Rec Room – the night’s earlier champion, Allison, and I went head to head, sans comedians.
Sadly for Allison, my obsession with seemingly useless knowledge was about to pay off, and I won the freakin’ game show.
While the $75 gift card made a decent dent in my bar bill after buying a few celebratory rounds for pals, I got what I really wanted: the opportunity to play the game and, as an added bonus, bragging rights.
