Bingo. The classic game that mixes puzzle and chance. It has always been one of my favorite forms of gambling (especially when when I was little and it was for prizes). The last time I played was on a cruise and I was lucky enough to win a free drink. This of course led me to want to play every round offered over the course of the vacation, which leads me to the point of this Bingo discussion. The addictive quality of Bingo has been underused in television and movies, but when it is used, it is very effective for laughs.
There are of course many ways besides cruise ships to play Bingo. There are professional tournaments, games held at churches and community centers, fairs, and nowadays you can even play online at websites such as www.partybingo.com. The options for finding your own game to join are endless. In television that is another story. You have to search high and low to find the classic game featured anywhere. Sure, there was the short lived ABC gameshow National Bingo Night in 07, followed by Bingo America on GSN, which lasted until 09. But before reading this article, did you even know these gameshows existed?
What brings about this sudden urge to chat about B
ingo? Well, just this past week NBC’s Matthew Perry comedy Go On was smart enough to feature the game in its new episode. It used a church game of Bingo attended by Perry’s character Ryan to set off the chain of events for the rest of the episode and got some laughs along the way.
Of course this pales in comparison to the hysterical use of Bingo back in the sit-com Roseanne. You remember the episode I’m talking about. Barr’s title character reluctantly goes to a game of Bingo on a girl’s night out only to win fifty bucks. From there she goes all out, with the big hair, multiples boards and markers and becomes a “pro” (pictured to the right). She only stops playing when her family literally carries her out of the game.
Any I missing any classic uses of Bingo? What is your favorite television show or movie to use the game?
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