I remember Bob from the TOC days, and recall as a 12 year old in 1972 thinking how "wrong" it seemed that he should be doing a DIFFERENT show -- at that time I guess I felt: Bob Barker IS Truth or Consequences just as many feel that he is TPIR today (or yesterday).
I've since watched Bob dozens of times on TPIR. Not a dedicated fan of the show or even per se of him, but now for the last several weeks, as a anthropology professor and astute observer of popular culture and student of American culture, I have found myself both shedding tears and pondering long and hard about the "meaning of Bob Barker."
I'll spare the longer version for the book, but I think my main thesis can neatly be told in the context of this thread. Mainly the point is: Let's use this opportunity to depart from previous assumptions about 'shows' and ratings. Let's give full scope to the phenomenon of Bob by testing conventions. They blew it with Katie, but this can work easily with Bob. He doesn't have to 'die'. You don't have to go thru the pain of another 'ending'. Just trot him out at some random interval, much the way the most motivated and engaged rats get their morsel of reinforcement in traditional lab experiments -- unpredictably.
Let him return for some UNDETERMINED number of episodes. Do NOT announce or even plan his last appearance. He says he's happy to do it? FINE, let him do it. Who wouldn't want to see him do it? He's got years of "rare" appearances left in him. Specials, fill-ins, cameos, RUN WITH IT!
Stop the sanctimony. He's never been about that – let’s USE that mischievousness. It's win win win. The new guy/gal doesn’t get shown up because we're all real on the fact that nobody is Bob. We won't be comparing. It will be an easier, funner pill to take. Who needs to know EXACTLY what day grandpa is dying? Sure for SOME people it would make life more meaningful, but it SHOULDNT!
There does NOT need to be an official last day. “Oh look, Bob Barker’s on again, great. Wonder if this is his last time?” What if it becomes campy? Kool. It’s ALREADY campy! Let the OTHER guy do the "serious" show, which it must become because no one will do camp like Bob did, and that’s why we love him. Bob is a "joke" -- an piece of very predictable FUN, because it juxtaposes a very elegant, gracious, kindly, genial, gentlemanly demeanor, with an absurdly materialistic, banal, pedestrian, sheerly "common" exercise in the crassest consumerism.
This is why I can see how Goodson could have figured Dennis James would work out better: DJ had, what on the surface would have seemed a more common touch. More intense, more effusive, most SWEATY. But it's his ability to BUFFER our own feelings of identification with the contestant, to BALANCE them, to allow us to ELEVATE OURSELVES above the vulgar fray of these pricing games without feeling guilty about ENJOYING them, that allowed Barker to SUCCEED -- DEEPLY succeed.
Rich Fields by the way would be perfect in this connection. He’s a member of the family. He feels LEAST like some violation of what we – the insiders – ie Bob’s fans – already HAVE. That’s the thing about this show: it’s NOT about the show anymore. It IS about Bob Barker. Rich has shown his stripes – total adulation of “Bob Barker.” Did you see him kiss Bob during the last few moments? He is a "son" who has the elegance only somewhere in the DNA. But because he's a son, we allow HIM to be emotional -- after all, he's "one of us" – we NEED someone now who can at least embody the LOVE OF BOB, if not actually OCCUPY the BODY OF BOB. No other host can fall better into that category. No one can replace Bob. But having Rich Fields do it, means we don't HAVE to “replace” him!
Will Bob ever be a parody of himself in this way? Lose dignity? The guy who has beauties suing him AND named after him, who karate chops talk show host’s desks, and says Prizes on a movie screen? Impossible.
Or as Nietzsche said: Laugh my friends! And don’t forget to dance!
