I just watched the What the Blank! pilot and my thoughts are: Fred has the chops to be a good host for Match Game. He knows when to crack a joke and keep the celebrities in check. Also, he has good fun with the contestants and celebrities. Randy West does a great job announcing, as always.
However, the execution of this version seemed like they were going for a parody of Match Game, rather than letting Match Game be Match Game. Probably the most cringeworthy things for me were the inner monologues of Fred and the celebrities, which were distracting, and the fact that we couldn't really keep score of the main game, relying on Randy West's announcing (which was done very well).
It was neat for to have the celebrities write on video writers, kind of anticipating modern tablets, but it seemed like they were put in for the sake of appearing modern.
Many of the questions foreshadowed the Monitor Match questions the current version with Alec Baldwin features, but the jokes were drawn out too much and I was left waiting for the questions to see what could be good answers to them.
Having a photo accompany the Super Match was an interesting touch, but two of the three top answers could have been given without needing the photo, so what was the point of it, to get another laugh in? This also goes for the head-to-head match.
Of note, kudos to the pilot for having good payouts: $25,000 for matching the top answer in the Super Match and then matching the celebrity head-to-head, rather than just $5,000 for the 1998 version of Match Game. In another bit of foreshadowing, the payouts for this pilot carried over to the current version of the show with Alec Baldwin.
Finally, it seemed the pacing was way too slow to fit as many jokes in as possible. Some of the funniest moments in Match Game came from the deliberations of answers, rather than the reveals. It's a shame that most of the deliberations were edited out or so short. The jokes during the reveals made the game move along slowly.
Overall, there were lots of issues with this, but it was better executed than MG2 with Charlene Tilton.