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Celebrity Bowling

If you think 2017 invented TV trainwrecks thanks to 5 alarm fires like Megyn Kelly Today and the new TRL, then let Amazon Prime Video teach you a history lesson. The subject: Celebrity Bowling, a half-hour sports (?) show that ran in syndication from 1971 to 1978. Amazon currently has 91 episodes of Celebrity Bowling available for members to stream while doing chores, looking up intermittently to say, “Huh?”

Celebrity Bowling isn’t a total mess, although it’s presented with all the professionalism of just hitting a record button. It’s surprisingly engrossing if you give in to the hypnotic rhythm of bowling balls gliding into pin after pin. If you’re tuned into ASMR videos, then host Jed Allan’s hushed commentary might do the trick, especially if you find someone whispering that an actor is “a fine athlete and even finer person” soothing. But part of the show’s can’t-look-away-ness comes from the fact that it’s a half hour of celebrity fun that hates celebrities.

Look at other star-powered game shows: Match Game gets celebs liquored up and encourages them to think dirty, Hollywood Squares sets them up to deliver zinger after zinger, and Hollywood Game Night demands actors shout and claw for attention. Celebrity Bowling is a star-filled affair that–seriously, take this in–doesn’t mic the stars. You cannot hear them. You are watching celebrities bowl, and that’s it. The host sticks a mic in front of their face two times: to name the audience member they’re playing for and, if there’s time, to plug a project. Sometime’s Allan’s microphone mysteriously cuts out as soon as it gets near a star’s face, as if the microphones have anti-celeb tech, and other times the outro music starts playing while a bowler is mid-sentence.

That doesn’t mean the celebs aren’t worth hearing from, because this show packs in some talent (along with the usual coterie of movie-of-the-week stars and journeyman thespians). Rue McClanhan, Ed Asner, Charles Nelson Reilly, William Shatner, Richard Dawson, the Brady Bunch kids, my beloved Bob Newhart, Alex Trebek looking exactly like my dad did in the ’70s–it’s a real murderer’s row of stars that will make you say, “It’s weird to watch them bowl.”

If you’re at all invested in the celebrity involved, though, you won’t mind that they are doing literally none of the things you care about, like acting or talking. Being a devoted Bob Newhart fan, I found myself rapt by his games, sucked into the same black void that also swallowed the show’s two lonely lanes. As Bob is the best bowler on the show after cowboy king and restaurant namesake Roy Rogers, I felt empathetic stings of defeat when Bob didn’t get a strike.

I guess this makes bowling one of the few sports I can watch on TV (along with women’s gymnastics and men’s water polo, like any good gay man). There’s also something deeply funny about watching French actor and, as Allan puts it, “international star” Jean-Pierre Aumont get gutterball after gutterball. Why is bowling so telegenic? That’s a true mystery, and the answer lurks somewhere in Celebrity Bowling’s void.

Elsewhere, the show answers questions you never thought to ask. Before watching Celebrity Bowling, I had no idea that Rue McClanahan was a firecracker of a bowler, knocking down pins like Blanche knocked down men.

Ed Asner? Surprisingly mediocre! It was easy to assume that game show mainstay (and my personal hero) Charles Nelson Reilly would be a bad bowler, but it was still riveting to watch him and his teammate Robert Clary (Hogan’s Heroes) earn the worst score in Celebrity Bowling history. Most surprising of all, though, has to be Alex Trebek–and not because of his bowling skills. While Trebek is all business now as the host of Jeopardy, 36-year-old Trebek is kind of a scamp, wearing a custom tee with “Alex Trebek, What The Heck!” on the back.

Then again, most of the celebs on Celebrity Bowling up their scamp factor, possibly because they know they can’t rely on words. All their instincts to entertain are instead channeled into physical movement, meaning running amok, physically taunting the other team of stars, or, in Nipsey Russell’s case, just plain shouting at the top of his lungs. Usually the worse a bowler is the more of a scene they cause, and this is where the show fights back.

Allan, who’s joined by an actual bowling expert who is seldom seen and never heard, seems to get exasperated by celebs that don’t take the sport seriously. Watch the infamous Reilly & Clary vs. McClanahan & Masak episode to hear Allan slowly unravel, whispering tips to bad bowlers over the one microphone that works. Episodes where great bowlers like Newhart and Rogers face off are a subdued affair, with the comparatively energetic Newhart mustering out some light chuckles and a mild-mannered “woo.”

Also, like, sidenote because I have to shout out all the ’70s fashion because that’s a major selling point. Work it, Bob, Blanche and Bill!

Maybe Celebrity Bowling was right to stifle all that actor energy, thus creating a weird, simultaneously boring and intense watch. When Chris Hardwick updated the idea a few years ago for the YouTube series Chris Harwick’s All-Star Celebrity Bowling, everyone was miked and things could get cacophonous. The editing made the episodes more “these celebrities bowled” instead of “these celebrities are bowling.” On the ’70s version, you’re seeing celebs totally out of their element in an environment hostile to antics. It’s fascinating, but it also leads to moments where lone-mic-haver Allan talks about a fly while Ed Asner lets a ball rip.

Is Celebrity Bowling a valid depiction of celebrity or bowling? A resounding “no” to the former, and an “eh, sorta?” to the latter. Instead, every episode is a bizarre black hole of bowling that will suck away 22 minutes of your life, leaving you with questions… and lots of GIFs.