Induction #13: Rappin' Chuck Woolery

#13: Rappin' Chuck Woolery
YO! What up, Dawg? This Be Whack, Man.

GSN Commercial: 2003

GSN. Formerly the Game Show Network. Sometimes I like to think how in the world did they last this long with all of the mind-numbingly bad ideas they came up with and put on air. Recently, GSN announced that they have signed on to do 3 reality shows. One of those shows is based off of the real life goings on of Carnie Wilson, the current Newlywed Game host. Now, this isn't the first time they tried this. The first time they did this concept was with Chuck Woolery back in 2003, except his show was called Naturally Stoned.

Naturally Stoned would be one of the worst things Chuck has done because it caused some horrific damage to his marriage at that time, ending in divorce after taping had just completed. The show itself was a mish-mash of good and bad, the good being how Lingo is done through the eyes of producers and contestants, namely Ben Ziek. The bad being Chuck wandering through a Cash n' Carry or something like that for Knudsen's Cottage Cheese and the behind the scenes look of Chuck's Rap commercial for Naturally Stoned..

Yeah, you heard right, Chuck's Rap Commercial.

I'll be honest. I am not a fan of rap music. I mean, back in 1999 when I was watching wrestling, I cheered a stable called the West Texas Rednecks were beating on Master P's No Limit Soldiers. Plus it also doesn't help that the majority of mainstream rap music consists of the F word or the S word or other derogatory comments to gays, women and other African-Americans every fifth word. So, when I saw this I just shook my head and moved on. But after seeing the breakdown of it on Chuck's reality show, I really thought it was a bad idea, since Chuck back in the 60s and early 70s before he hosted Wheel Of Fortune was a prominent Country-Western singer with the band Avant-Garde. If they would have done something having to do with that, then I wouldn't have had a problem with the commercial and it would have make sense.

But when one of the first things is Chuck's name just slapped on the back of some girl's butt doesn't quite scream "Watch my new reality show about my life, professionally and personally." From the looks of it, I'd say she looks like she got hired right out of Déjà Vu. But then again, this was done on the cheap, so it's expected.

Not only that, but the way Chuck looks in the rest of this video doesn't seem like the type of guy too comfortable with this type of commercial, with the girls in the back dancing like they just had about 4 java mochachinos from Starbucks.

Speaking of the girls. I bet if you asked all 4 of the ladies, plus the one in the black number with "Chuck" on the butt, they probably wouldn't recognize who the hell Chuck Woolery was. They probably thought Chuck W. was the latest signing from Motown. Not only that, they really don't look very interested in the video. BTW, is it just me or do some of the ladies in this video look like cross-dressers from Le Cage Aux Folles?

So, we got Chuck who looks pretty lost in this video, and we got the models that don't care, and all we need is some crappy lyrics to make this complete. Well, guess what. I'm going to type out the first few lines from the commercial to show the badness that it is.

"Yo! Check it out, Chuck W. Comin' at you tried and True
Slicky, freaky tricky yo, back in two and two, yeah
The Chuck wagon is taking ya home,
So, don't flip it, kick it with the Naturally stoned."

Now, I'm not a rap fan, but those lyrics just sound bad. Yeah, it sounds like I'm talking smack about the rap, but truly it's really whack.

It also doesn't help the fact that chuck looks tired after all of this and just wants to be with his family, doesn't get into the rap and the commercial probably has a bigger budget than a whole week of Lingo. Yeah, the bright lights, Chuck in an LL Cool J rip-off garb, not to mention the limo at the end of the video and I bet it cost quite a bit for the dancers as well, take out all of those and put them in Lingo and you'd probably get another week of Lingo. Now if the rest of the video wasn't bad enough, at the end...

Chuck Woolery Break-dances. Now, I'm probably thinking he's got the aid of a turntable and some great editing, which is probably not that far off. Thankfully after this, the commercial is over and we get the plug in for Naturally Stoned.

While the reality show was hit or miss, the commercial was all miss. It's just poorly produced, Chuck feels like he'd rather host "Think Like A Cat" again. But that's another thing we'll talk about later on. The Dancing, the rap and the presentation was all bad. There was nothing redeeming here and it looked like the beginning of the end for Chuck at GSN.

And it almost came to pass as Chuck was legitimately pissed off at GSN about the reality show and it causing his third divorce, and the third season of Lingo, although still good wasn't helped out much by the annoying Brit Stacy Hayes who joined him as the co-host, having Lingo being put on ice for two years, and then being brought back two years later and being yanked off the air again. The final death kneel was Think Like A Cat and after that disaster, Chuck was gone from GSN.

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