Grab your dauber: ‘Bingo Night’ brings big balls to prime time

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Trying to create a phenomenon with an unproven format, no stars and a Friday night time slot takes a lot of balls.

Roughly 80 of them.

But that’s what ABC is bringing to the table — along with a production budget of what looks like dozens of dollars — with “National Bingo Night” (9 p.m. Friday, KTNV-TV, Channel 13).

Before you stop reading, you should know that this isn’t your grandmother’s bingo. ABC’s press materials describe it alternately as “high-energy” and “high action.” But that doesn’t quite do it justice. “National Bingo Night” infuses the game with all the artificial excitement of “Deal or No Deal” and the low-rent grandiosity of “American Gladiators.”

Originating each week from the “Bingo Plex,” “National Bingo Night” employs a 2 1/2-story, one-ton “Bingo Sphere” that keeps those balls, each about the size of your head, in motion.

In addition to the 75 numbered bingo balls, there are balls representing prizes such as a trip to Hawaii, a home entertainment system and, naturally, a date with Fabio. There also are two “dreaded gutter balls” that cause “very, very bad things to happen,” although it sounds like their role hasn’t exactly been thought through.

And overseeing it all is NBN Commissioner Sunil Narkar. Outfitted with a striped referee shirt and a bad porn mustache, his primary responsibility is to say, in a thick Indian accent, “No bingo, game is still on.”

“National Bingo Night” is hosted by Ed Sanders of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” And Yesenia Adame retrieves and displays the balls. But “Commissioner Sunil” is the only thing you’re going to remember. He’s the early favorite for the must-have costume this Halloween.

Sunil makes good use of his chemistry degree from the University of Bombay by patrolling the 200-member audience and confirming whether anyone has gotten a bingo.

Each of them, you see, is competing against the featured contestant. Except that contestant isn’t really playing bingo. He’s playing some cockamamie game like “The Bingo 500,” in which a ball is selected, he guesses whether its number will be higher or lower than that of the previous ball, and if he’s right, he adds that number to his “mileage.” If he gets to 500 miles before an audience member gets a bingo, he takes home the princely sum of $50,000. If he doesn’t, that audience member wins either $1,000 or $5,000. (The graphics and the voice-over didn’t match on the rough-cut episode I saw.)

Yes, it sounds like somebody at ABC has been sneaking into the mescaline cabinet. But wait, as they say, there’s more.

Viewers can print out game cards at abc.com and play along at home for a chance to win what the network calls “tens of thousands of prizes.” But if you do some digging, you’ll find that all but five of those prizes this week are either a $5 Kmart gift card or a Rascal Flatts CD.

Still, I expect most viewers to play along, because if you’re just watching to see if somebody in the studio audience can string together five numbers in a row, you’ve obviously lost either your remote control or your will to live.

I’m not slamming bingo. It’s an important part of our local economy that provides joy to thousands. I just can’t believe it’s on TV. In prime time. On a network. During sweeps. In America.

But while the whole thing looks like an old SCTV bit — either that, or somebody at ABC has seen “The Producers” one too many times and this is his “Springtime for Hitler” — “National Bingo Night” just might be crazy enough to work. After all, the last thing that looked this slap-your-head ridiculous was “Dancing with the Stars,” and ABC has ridden its blend of obscure “celebrities” and spray-on tans to the top of the ratings.

And if it does become the phenomenon it’s trying to be, “National Bingo Night” will need some companion shows. That’s why I’m developing “Extreme Pin the Tail on the Donkey” and “High-Stakes Hokey Pokey.” But only if they’d fit into Commissioner Sunil’s busy schedule. They just wouldn’t work without him.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.