It's 3 p.m., let's watch Gilbert Gottfried ruin a game of Hollywood Squares
Trivia-based game shows tend to be entirely dependent on building up tension from hearing a question, hearing a contestant answer the question, and then waiting to find out if the answer is right. Without that drama, a show would just be people rattling off facts like commenters trying to prove they’re the smartest one in a Reddit threat. Still, it can be wildly entertaining when something happens to undermine the formality of a game show, like when Alex Trebek could no longer hide his growing disdain for Ken Jennings or, like in this clip, when Gilbert Gottfried decided to dismantle whatever sanctity Hollywood Squares had.
Hollywood Squares, for those who don’t know, involves contestants playing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe by deciding whether or not they agree with the answer that a celebrity guest gives to a trivia question. Gottfried was a guest in this 1999 episode Hollywood Squares, and rather than sitting back and allowing casually-dressed host Tom Bergeron to inform the contestants whether they had correctly guessed if his responses were right or not (which is how the show traditionally works), he just started cutting in and shouting “you fool!” to every wrong answer.
Like Sideshow Bob and the rakes on The Simpsons, it’s funny the first time and slightly less funny each subsequent time, but then it just keeps happening until it begins funny again.