Screens: TLC
I know what you were thinking last night as you watched the second of the evening's two episodes of Best Funeral Ever. "Holy shit, Previously.TV: you have so much pull that you got TLC to air a special episode pegged to Game Show Week?" It's a reasonable assumption, and yet: no, the special theme funeral for a deceased game show fan was just a coincidence!
What happens is: the survivors of the late Alfred "Tip" Anderson come to Dallas's Golden Gate Funeral Home to plan a homegoing, as the company calls it, for their loved one. And in getting to know the late Tip, funeral planners Shondrea and E learn that one of his greatest loves was game shows. This leads the whole funeral home staff to brainstorm ideas as to how a game show theme could be applied to the funeral...and it all comes together at the climax of the episode.
Contestants called down from the congregation, Price Is Right-style, to answer trivia questions about their late loved one while standing at a podium his casket?
Check.
Prizes awarded for correct answers? Check. (They're prizes that belonged to Tip and were, we're told, among his most prized possessions, though not so prized that they're actually mentioned in his will, I guess.)
And look, I don't want to turn this into the quiz show scandals, Part II, but when Tip himself wins the game despite answering NO questions correctly, I have to suspect that this thing might be fixed. For the bonus round, Tip's coffin is stripped of its buzzers...
...placed on a wheel...
...and spun. Tip could win such prizes as "Peace" or "Eternal Life," but ultimately lands on "Salvation."
As a still-relatively-young person, I haven't given a great deal of thought to the question of how I'd want to be memorialized on the occasion of my death, but knowing there is a team of funeral professionals ready to mount a fairly convincing game show to mark a person's passing is interesting. But since, as much as I love games, I couldn't stand for my survivors to play a round of Celebrity in my honor if I couldn't play myself (and, I imagine, they're not aiming for me to haunt them), I guess a Beverly Hills, 90210-themed funeral will be a good second choice.