RARE FIND from 1977!

[RJermaineSchex]

Courtesy of videoarchives1000, here is the 6/27/77 episode of Second Chance (!)

(part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OqjP...layer_embedded

(part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vVgU...layer_embedded

Finally! A regular episode of the series. (The finale exists in audio only.)

[JamesFF]

I wonder if there is any more home copies of this show. I read that somebody had pulled a "Michael Larson" on one of the episodes and took home $80,000.

[TheKid965]

I wonder if there is any more home copies of this show. I read that somebody had pulled a "Michael Larson" on one of the episodes and took home $80,000.

I rather doubt this, at least the part where Larson was able to memorize the gameboard patterns, which is absolutely how he was able to do what he did. Even if VCRs (a crucial tool in Larson's preparations) were commonplace in 1977 -- they obviously existed, but were still very much luxury items -- the light on the Second Chance board moved (at a guess) about 5-6 times faster than its descendant on Press Your Luck, and early VCRs had very bad, or nonexistent, freeze-frame/slow-mo capabilities... which would be almost necessary to slow the board down enough, unless you had a keener-than-average pair of eyes. With all of that said, it's certainly theoretically possible that someone with enough patience could've figured out the patterns (it's been verified that Second Chance used them, and that they were either the same or very similar to the pre-Larson patterns from Press Your Luck, just flashed much faster), but Second Chance had such a short shelf life that the window of opportunity for this person actually getting on the show would have been miniscule at best.

Mind you, I'm not saying that an $80,000 win couldn't have happened at some point. The harsh truth is, unless a complete run of episodes turns up somewhere (very unlikely at this late date) we'll never know one way or the other. But if it did happen, chances are it wasn't because someone "pulled a Larson."

[AlohaDave]

This is indeed a rare and magnificent find. I've been waiting 35 years to see an episode of Second Chance. Even at age 15 in 1977 I knew immediately that this game was something special... so completely original and so EXCITING compared with the 20 or so other game shows on the air that year. When PYL premiered in 1983 I literally jumped up and down and yelled "oh my god, it's Second Chance, oh my god, it's Second Chance" within the first five seconds of the show.

What I did NOT remember, until watching this newly found episode of Second Chance, was how perfectly crafted the game already was in it's first incarnation. In other words, the rules of the game, the strategy of the gameplay, and the overall production design had already been perfected in 1977. When it was reborn in 1983 very few improvements were needed. It was already a classic "game" in 1977 but sadly got lost in the shuffle of network game shows and unceremoniously prematurely cancelled. Thank goodness it got a revival and ultimately landed in the pool of game show classics as Press Your Luck.

Too bad the Press Your Luck board didn't open on a giant hinge (like a book) as did the Second Chance board. What a magnificent set design detail that was. Unfortunately that visual is mostly missing from the first few seconds of this newly found video.

Also of note... the music when Jim Peck runs out from behind the big board at the start of the show is the SAME as the commercial-break bumper music from The Moneymaze two years earlier on ABC.

If anybody who loves Press Your Luck but is not old enough to have seen Second Chance is reading this, do not miss this opportunity. Watch this long lost classic on the link posted in this thread. This particular episode is a nail-biter. It stands up with the best of any PYL episode, and it certainly outshines any episode of the well-intended but sadly lackluster third incarnation "Whammy".

Also of note... this show arguably showcases the most skillful hosting job Jim Peck ever did in his career. Was he a math genius? HOW in the world did he verbalize all those exact dollar calculations so quickly? Was Second Chance highly edited during the spinning rounds? If so, it was slickly done.

[TheKid965]

The discovery of this episode does finally settle some long-standing questions about this show, that have previously only been able to be answered by those with fading memories of seeing Second Chance in its original run. We can now fairly see what changed between the now widely-circulated third pilot (heretofore the only visual evidence of Second Chance known to exist, aside from on-set photos taken during the pilot phase) and the series proper:

• The contestant podia underwent a slight revision. They were spaced closer together, and the 18 backlit dots representing points/spins changed from two rows of nine to three rows of six. They do appear to be numbered like the ones seen on the pilot.
• The backlit Devil graphics behind each contestant were scrapped, replaced by popup cards very similar to the Whammies. Based on this episode, it can be presumed they popped up in a different order than seen on Press Your Luck; 3-1-2-4, perhaps, looking from left to right.
• There were no "Devil cartoons." Some people recalled seeing at least one.
• They added light borders around each contestant's hexagonal score display. This visually denoted whose answers were correct, as well as whose turn it was to spin.
• A blooper on this episode reveals (to us) that there was a slot in front of the score displays in which contestants dropped their old answer cards.
• The "gift box" spaces indeed remained on the board from the pilot. (There had been some speculation, when the audio recording of the finale was discovered, that the idea had been dropped in favor of simply displaying the prize slides directly.) However, they now opened immediately upon hitting those spaces, rather than waiting a moment for the close-up.
• There were no returning champions. (From the finale, we do know that if all three players finished at zero, all three were brought back on the next show to try again.)
• And of course, the biggie: There was an Eggcrate display on the board for the second round, it did randomly shuffle between five amounts ($1,000 to $5,000), and it did offer a free spin ("+ ONE SPIN" in Press Your Luck parlance) to whoever landed on it -- the only space in the entire game to do so. This was at one point so hotly contested that even some who'd seen the episodes firsthand were beginning to wonder if their memories were simply failing them!

Some minor questions remain unknown, however, including:

• Were the spaces on the board consistent throughout the run, or did they change from day to day (or at least from taping to taping)?
• Did the Free Spin space exist from the beginning, or was it added mid-run? (This episode appears to be from the last 2-3 weeks of the series.)
• Were the shuffling dollar amounts on the Free Spin space there all along, or was the extra spin first tacked onto, say, the static $5K space seen on the pilot?
• What's the deal with the last three circles on each players' spin display? If you notice in this episode, they seem to light up whenever someone lands on the Free Spin space, but the picture quality has degraded too much to clearly make out what they're supposed to represent.
• Was there a live studio audience, or were the cheers and laughter canned? We never see so much as a hint of a Peanut Gallery, if there was one.
• And, last but not least, what about the urban legend (mentioned earlier in this thread) that someone was able to hit Second Chance up for eighty grand, á là the (in)famous Michael Larson?

These questions, however, will likely never be able to be answered accurately unless and until more episodes turn up somewhere, and I'm not optimistic that'll ever happen.

Of course, we never thought we'd see even this much of the series again, so anything's possible... just not very probable.

[CardSharks8689]

But if it did happen, chances are it wasn't because someone "pulled a Larson."

Right. Especially when the flashing light bouncing around the board was moving at turbo speed. There's absolutely no way anyone could pull a feat like Larson did 7 years later.

And did Second Chance and Dawson's Feud air back-to-back in 1977?

[kaos42]

\Some minor questions remain unknown, however, including:

Did the Free Spin space exist from the beginning, or was it added mid-run? (This episode appears to be from the last 2-3 weeks of the series.)

Were the shuffling dollar amounts on the Free Spin space there all along, or was the extra spin first tacked onto, say, the static $5K space seen on the pilot?

What's the deal with the last three circles on each players' spin display? If you notice in this episode, they seem to light up whenever someone lands on the Free Spin space, but the picture quality has degraded too much to clearly make out what they're supposed to represent.

Yes it did, yes there was, and those lights were for the Free Spins. Also, any passed spins would flash between red and white. Not sure if passed spins would count as earned if the devil was landed on...

[TheKid965]

Also, any passed spins would flash between red and white.

That was seen on the extant pilot as well.

Not sure if passed spins would count as earned if the devil was landed on...

This rule was also in place for the pilot. Not sure if it was changed for the series, but given that the rule we know was carried over to Press Your Luck I would tend to doubt it.

[RJermaineSchex]

Not sure if passed spins would count as earned if the devil was landed on...

Yes, they did. Peck clearly says, "...unless you hit a devil..."

[patnvanna83]

Yes, they did. Peck clearly says, "...unless you hit a devil..."

no relations to "The Devil" from "The Joker's Wild" i hope! (LOL!)

[MrExclusive1989]

That is a very rare find as a matter of fact, I always hoped that someone held a rare copy of a game show that is believed to have been completely wiped. I read somewhere that a rumor of someone winning $80,000 in one episode of Second Chance may have been been coming from Jim Peck, the host himself, but that episode will unlikely appear, perhaps gone forever.

[patnvanna83]

i wish that someone from Youtube would show the whole entire episode of the 1987-1988 Australian version of Press Your Luck with Ian Turpie,or the UK version with Paul Coia from 1991-1992.

[CarShark]

Truth be told, I've always had trouble believing that story, because (and maybe this is just my ignorance of TV procedure at that time) I would have thought that if a super-rare event like that happened, someone would have kept that episode for posterity.

I'm also surprised at how "finished" the game looks.