WARNING: As with other episodes of the show, some content is suggestive of Adult themes.
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Show # 5132 (Season 5, episode 132)
Location: Studio 33, CBS Television City; Hollywood, CA
Air Date: 4/1/03
Host: Tom Bergeron
Executive Producers: Henry Winkler, Michael Levitt
Supervising Producer: Steve Radosh
Director: Chris Darley
Associate Director: Greg Schowengerdt
Editor: Ron Diamond
Assistant Editor: Kevin Deselms
Post-Production Supervisor: Sondra Zaharias
Online Video Finishing: Erik Peterson
Audio Post-Production: Paul Feenstra, Bob LaMasney
Post-Production Facility: Keep Me Posted; Toluca Lake, CA
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Ron recalls:
“For a while in the early 2000s, I was editing game shows, which was a lot of fun. And as luck would have it, I was also part of the crew brought in to replace Whoopi Goldberg and her team, beginning with the fifth season of Hollywood Squares.
“Leading the new crew -- and my boss for the duration -- was Henry Winkler (along with his producing partner, Michael Levitt).
“Henry is one of those rare people who seems so polite in person that you think he couldn’t actually be that nice, and maybe it’s all a put-on. But it isn’t. Henry is one of the nicest, kindest people I’d ever want to meet.
“Over the following two seasons, we did 360 episodes of Squares. Apart from the usual show format, there were also special theme weeks (like TV crimefighters, classic game show hosts, blondes having more fun, plus the USC marching band, and much more).
“Though my all-time favorite episode just might be this, from early 2003.”
** SPOILERS **
“A typical episode of Squares shot in the studio would run a few minutes over its allotted time -- intentionally. That gave us room to tighten up the pacing as needed in post-production (by virtue of dozens of individual edits). Each show took about a day to do.
“As you’ll see, this was a very unusual episode -- because of its highly irregular nature, it came in more than 15 minutes(!) over its allotted time.
“In fact, there was so much material to work with, it took us two full days to choose all the right moments, and whittle it down to what you see here.”
"What made this episode especially unusual, is that where extraneous chatter is normally something we'd take out ... that was actually what we highlighted here -- even to the extent of removing some actual gameplay, which would otherwise never happen.
“When all was said and done, the big question we had afterwards was: Was Tom really fooled? All reports said that he was. And watching this again nearly 20 years later, it still looks to me that he was genuinely surprised by the whole thing. I’m actually amazed he held things together as well as he did. Tom is the epitome of cool, a consummate pro, and was a joy to work with throughout the series.
“Since this episode was quite unique in retrospect, the only thing I wish we’d done differently would have been submitting it for a Daytime Emmy award. Do you think it could have won?” :)
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Copyrights are acknowledged.