Jøsh Saitz on Idiot Savants 1996

I was a contestant on a game show back in 1996. Each group of four contestants (including Time columnist Joel Stein, H. Scott Jolley and me) were on the show for 5 days in a row. At the end of each round, one person is eliminated until there are only 2 people left. They compete in a "brainstorm round" for a minute and the person with the highest score gets to compete against the clock in their particular "savant" category. In my case, it was Ridley Scott films for Joel it was the TV show Taxi, for Scott it was Madonna and Sarah chose American history, but she never made it to the savant round. The show was hosted by comedian Greg Fitzsimmons. This is the 2nd episode of the show and it never aired because the original airdate was New Year's Eve 1996 and instead of this episode, they had a countdown show. Joel Stein was eliminated in the first round and sent to the Dunce corner. The show was canceled before it ever got to reruns, so this segment has never been seen. It took me six months of fighting with the producers to get this tape from them, which explains the time code and poor quality.
Joel Stein hosted a week of programming on the cable network Trio and when he was on, he showed the Thursday episode, where instead of going to the Dunce Corner like the first 3 shows, he actually won a ski vacation!

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Jøsh
• Saitz
• Josh
• Negative
• Capability
• MTV
• Idiot
• Savants
• Game
• Show
• Ridley
• Scott
• Blade
• Runner
• Greg
• Fitzsimmons

[booboo900]

y the hell didn't it air?

[joshsaitz]

because it was New Year's Eve and they decided to show the top 100 videos of the year or some crap like that ALL DAY LONG. Bastards.

[joshsaitz]

I finally posted the Double Grand Savant round from the final day, so check out my other videos.

[sigmafan]

Hey, nice going. I have two questions. Did you enjoy the trip and how well did you do the rest of the week?

[joshsaitz]

The trip was really nice, but the islands themselves were a little ghetto. The rest of the week I did really well and in the end, I competed against Scott for the African Safari and he beat me by 100 points, which is OK because I really didn't want to go to Africa.

[concretetvron]

bummer.

[whackawhack]

I just found a tape with Joel Stein's ep from Trio, and I don't know if it was YOU, but when they asked what network UNHAPPILY EVER AFTER was on, you said WB, and they said you were wrong. THEY were, and never CORRECTED IT. Also, it was DON Novello as Father Guido, NOT Dan. Jesus, what a fucked up show!

[wickedcrafty]

I loved this show! One week they had Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) as a contestant (way before he was famous). He kissed Greg on the cheek! That's good TV!

[TrueSoreThumb]

Whoah! Even guys who've been on TV end up on YouTube.. Thanks for gettin these memories! I wish Producers'd be more willing to release these memories. Good work :3

Operaman, Bye bye~~!!

[Fradom]

One of the "gameshow girls", Shonda Farr, went on to play a robot named April on the season 5 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called "I Was Made To Love You".

screen cap:

http://www.whedonsworld.com/fi­les/Pix/Buffy/Guests/April/Apr­il01.jpeg

[spareflair]

Did you bring those gameshow girls to the tropical island with you? They're not bad.