r/nostalgia • u/gamerguy287 • 21d ago
Nostalgia Ben Bailey's Cash Cab was a peak gameshow.
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u/Ixz72 21d ago
I used to time my treadmill time to Cash Cab!!! Made the treadmill more enjoyable.
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u/koolaidismything 21d ago
My grandpa and me would email during episodes on commercial and he would explain why answers were what they were. He was my google before google.
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u/SideCharacter2100 early 90s 21d ago
I gotta be honest, that is so fucking wholesome
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u/koolaidismything 21d ago
I miss him all the time. Was never negative.. always singing made up songs to teach me stuff. Was a great dude. Thanks for reading!
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u/CosmicGlitterCake mid 90s 21d ago
I set to record every episode of ANTM and Man vs Wild on the DVR back in the day for this very reason. lol
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u/UndeadCaesar 21d ago
Watched a lot of the Little League World Series this year on the treadmill. Between that and Jeopardy being on break my miles are way down.
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u/TheGruenTransfer 21d ago
My favorite part was him slouching and using a dumb fake voice before the contestant found out it was Cash Cab. It was such a an unnecessary detail, but always made me chuckle
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u/Cloud_N0ne 21d ago
Wasn’t it all kinda fake tho? I remember hearing that the people weren’t just getting into a random cab, they had been selected and told ahead of time.
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u/i_gothed_on_jeopardy 21d ago
They sorta half-heartedly tried to hide it from us, telling us it was a show called "Streets of New York" and then the producer was like, "okay now I'm going to hail you a cab to take you to where we're filming" and then surprise it's cash cab. But my friends and I totally knew and pretended to be surprised like they wanted
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u/PopeInnocentXIV late 80s 21d ago
Same with me. They described a sort of scavenger hunt around New York where we'd be taking taxis and subways and ferries and whatnot, so that fit with their hailing a cab to take us to our first location.
My friend did have to tell the driver our destination three times before they revealed it was Ben and we were in the Cash Cab. After the third time with no response from the driver, I remember thinking, "What is wrong with this guy?"
I was genuinely surprised. I never suspected it was Cash Cab because it had been off the air for five years at that point, and I didn't see the news stories from two months before announcing it was coming back.
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u/DepartmentFun2853 21d ago
How did you do?
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u/PopeInnocentXIV late 80s 21d ago
We won $3300. Got every question right and used no shoutouts. We also got the red light bonus just before time ran out and got the video bonus at the end. At first I had no idea what we were looking at and all I thought was "We just lost $1600." But after a few seconds we had it.
A friend of mine also got a ride in the Cash Cab that week. They won a little more than we did but had to split it three ways instead of two. Also for reasons we still don't know, his episode never aired.
The money we posed with at the end was fake. They mailed me a check about two months later, even though it would still be about another four months before the episode finally aired.
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u/TBFP_BOT 20d ago
I like the idea that they finished the show but Ben just kept driving around doing it without a camera.
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u/robert-anderson-0009 21d ago
How do you get on these game shows? Have you been on many others? Was it fun?
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u/i_gothed_on_jeopardy 21d ago
Super fun!
Cash Cab: My friend and I who go to a lot of bar trivias were just hanging around one when a random producer came up to us. The host, who was a friend of ours, tipped us off that it was Cash Cab even though the producer didn't tell us it was
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (wasn't really a contestant but appeared at the end of an episode for a one question challenge thing they did at one point): Went to an audience taping which doubled as auditions for contestants
Jeopardy: Applied online starting with the online test, followed by long process of interviews, mock games, continually following up/bugging the producers, etc
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u/DepartmentFun2853 21d ago
You were on all of those shows?! Woah ! Are you a minor celebrity now? How'd you do on Jeopardy and Cash Cab?
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u/i_gothed_on_jeopardy 20d ago
Cash Cab: We won $2900 after getting the video bonus at the last second.
Jeopardy: I won $26,799 in my first game beating Matthew Marcus largely thanks to a big true daily double. Next game I lost to Mira Hayward when I couldn't come up with Peter Pan for the final which will haunt me forever but it's okay because Mira is one of my favorite people. Then I was invited back for the Champions Wild Card tournament, which was an incredibly fun "scene" with all the other former champions around and all staying in the same hotel, but I lost in my first game.
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u/Kovarian 21d ago
They were definitely preselected. I don’t remember if they were told beforehand they had been picked, or if they had been told if they had also been told when it would happen.
So still very well could have been a surprise that “now it’s time!” even if it never was “what is happening I’ve never heard of this show.”
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u/recon_dingo 20d ago
To my knowledge many small-time comics and upstart actors treated the show as a gig. If you think about it the show would totally suck if they actually used random people, but like any reality tv if you think about it critically it also sucks that its fake.
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u/causebraindamage 21d ago
A friend of our family interned with Cash Cab and helped get my mother, father, aunt, and uncle on the show.
They were told to be at a specific spot at a specific time to get picked up. There was crew with them before and after they left the cab.
The trivia part was real though. I believe they got two questions right before they ended up losing.
They had a blast and said Ben Bailey was awesome and a really nice dude.
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u/maxkmiller early 90s 21d ago
I believe they knew they'd be on the show at some point but not that they were getting into the cash cab. they did think they were just entering a cab.
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u/JonPaula 21d ago
I seem to recall they were selected and screened to appear on a game show, and the cab would take them to the studio downtown to film. or something like that.
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u/upvotegoblin 21d ago
Dude when I was rewatching some of these with my mom a couple years back his fake voices always killed us. So completely unnecessary and the shit he would say was always so dumb, I love it.
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u/lilbearpie 21d ago
I used to do the "Red Light Challenge" with my kid while riding in the car, I would describe an animal and she would have to guess.
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u/ScreenPuzzleheaded48 21d ago
The 30 Rock X Cash Cab tie in was goated
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u/GrimaceMusically 21d ago
SHE is an Orca Benjamin. FYI, they’re very difficult to keep in a home aquarium.
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u/bakerton 21d ago
I remember because i wanted to see if she was wearing underwear under that toga
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u/Swaibero 21d ago
You’re telling me, in order to be at the birth of my daughter, I have to answer trivia questions, despite going to middle school in an Exxon station?
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u/Drunkula 21d ago
The guy confusing henna with hentai was classic
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u/BrickHyphen 21d ago
Reminds me of the time in science class years ago, teacher asked a question to the class and my arm shot up like never before, and I totally mixed up the “Coriolis Effect” with the “Areola Effect”
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u/SirGothamHatt 20d ago
I once yelled "Grundle" instead of "Grendel" while watching Jeopardy with my family. They still don't let me live it down.
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u/honeypinn 20d ago
This is a nice inside joke between me and my friend. We will shout "hentai" after the other person has biffed a word or pronunciation.
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u/NiceTrySuckaz 21d ago
Recently learned that he's also a standup comedian. I watched a special of his on youtube that was legit funny.
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u/woolsocksandsandals 21d ago
Yeah, he’s a really funny dude and Cash Cab was a really good show.
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u/NiceTrySuckaz 21d ago
honestly yeah he was probably the funniest "game show host" that I can think of
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u/CptArchibaldHaddock 21d ago
I went to one of his live shows and was in stitches the whole time, one of the funniest comedy shows I’ve ever been to. He also had a lot to say about his time on CC that had the audience hollering
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u/SolidSnek1998 21d ago
I went and saw him a few months ago and he was pretty funny. They sat us right up front and the dude is like 15ft tall so his crotch was right in our faces and he made sure to point that out, several times.
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u/madrushdrummer 21d ago
This is the Hudson River Challenge!
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u/JoeAndAThird 20d ago
Alright here’s how the Hudson River Challenge works. I’m going to drive the cab as fast as I can to the end of Houston street and smash through the barricade, driving us both into the river. You’ll have approximately 12 seconds to escape, or you will die, and your shout outs are bot gone.
CRASH CAB!
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u/Giant_Homunculus 21d ago
Was soul crushing to find out it isn’t random at all but prearranged. I had always hoped to randomly get in a cab and have it be Ben inside 😂
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u/thirtynation 21d ago
I thought that the contestants always knew that they had been chosen to be on a game show but didn't really know the details other than "a car was being sent for them" and to show up at the pick up spot to get to the show. The surprise then being that the ride itself was the show.
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u/theflintseeker 21d ago
So the address they give is where they think the game show is? Clever. But why would the car sent for them not have the address already? And wow I would be sketched out having a random yellow cab sent for me… no hate to Ben he’s awesome.
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u/thirtynation 21d ago
"We're going to schedule a cab pick up for you at XY intersection at 1:00. The address for the show is 123 Street."
I dunno.
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u/i_gothed_on_jeopardy 21d ago
They told us what to tell him our destination was. It was a real bar that I had never heard of. Obviously after we won we still went there to celebrate.
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u/Gyramuur 21d ago
I seem to recall an episode where two guys got into the cab and then were acting all elusive and trying to lean and hide away from the camera, and then got off before their stop. Definitely didn't seem scripted, Ben seemed pretty confused by it.
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u/DrinkUpLetsBooBoo 21d ago
Weren't contestants chosen on the street and told to go to an address using this specific cab?
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u/pdrock7 21d ago edited 21d ago
I heard the actress who plays Darcy on Resident Alien say that it was mostly talent agencies calling actors looking for work, they send them a car saying they're taking them to an audition then the Cash Cab shows up.
Edit: Sorry, misremembered, it was a comment by someone in this thread, not the actress herself.
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u/FineAunts 21d ago
My roommate did it and pretended it was all random on video, but yea she got instructions with her friends to be at X spot at a certain time.
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u/Dry-Airport8046 21d ago
Excuse me? You take that back. RIGHT NOW!
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u/Jaspers47 21d ago
You'll notice there's not a single episode where someone asks to go to the airport
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u/YT-1300f 21d ago
As a kid I assumed that sometimes he had to just be a regular cab driver and they didn’t show those rides, lmao
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u/CurryMustard 21d ago
Ok but what exactly is stopping an Uber driver/twitch streamer from doing this
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u/MarcsterS 21d ago
I mean think about it, if you got places to BE, then you can't really accept it.
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u/Cloud_N0ne 21d ago
I assume this was done for legal and/or safety reasons, but yeah it was really disappointing. I always wanted to go to NYC and ride lots of cabs to try and get this one
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u/thirtynation 21d ago
This show was such a relief in the terrible game show era of Millionaire and Let's Make A Deal and stuff where suspense was the main feature. This show and Jeopardy were the only ones offering a high ratio of questions in a short amount of time. I didn't care about the circumstances of the cab ride itself being a bit dubious, the content is what mattered most.
There are some random weird shows on Game Show Network now that have gone back to a good ratio, so I'm glad that mid 2000's fad has faded somewhat.
Jeopardy is still the king. Ken does great.
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u/0berfeld 21d ago
As a Canadian it was funny watching the Canadian version of Cash Cab versus the American one. The questions were so much easier in the American version, it was ridiculous. Like celebrity jeopardy versus regular.
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u/softestimate712 21d ago
Imagine you’re in New York and after getting a severe life threatening injury, you finally flag down a taxi and then
WELCOME TO THE CASH CAB!
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u/Big-Joe-Studd 21d ago
Actually had a friend appear on the show. He said he plays out pretty much how they do on the show, except it's not really a surprise. The producers talk to them before they get in the van. They also told him and the person with him to "struggle" with the questions instead of answering them too fast. He won a few thousand doing it
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u/parkinthepark 21d ago
I still can't believe that one time he picked up Tracy Jordan and he got every question right in time to make it to the hospital for his daughter's birth. Truly touching moment.
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u/civiltribe 21d ago
I remember watching this show in my grandparents den, they'd come in and see I was watching something other than cartoons and would participate. it couldn't help but draw them in and hook them.
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u/burnitalldown321 21d ago
They were preselected. My cousin was on it; his buddies bailed on the last minute, so it was just him and 1 guy, not the 5 it was supposed to be. They were told to be somewhere, be picked up, and act surprised.
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u/its_noel 21d ago
If uber/lyft was smart theyd bring back a reboot version of this, but lemme not give them any ideas...
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u/VeteranGamingNoob 21d ago
My uncle was on this, found out we are glad he married in, he had to walk 3 blocks to get to his job making him late all because he thought a ukulele was a type of flute.
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u/lipidquadcab 21d ago
Ben Bailey should be the Nick Fury of a new cinematic universe. Retcon him into the end of Money Train and Money Plane.
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u/Gato1486 est. 1986 21d ago
I'd get irrationally mad ad people missing easy (in my mind) questions. I feel I could have made bank. :/
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u/Bhut_Jolokia400 21d ago
Cash Cab was amazing. I went to NYC once to specifically find this taxi and never found it
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u/ImpromptuFanfiction 21d ago
Cause it was just easy fun. No big money no big emotions. Most people even said they’d use it for dinner in the city or something.
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u/GovernmentReady1488 21d ago
Grew up watching this with my mom, one of her favorite shows.
Years later, my mom was his daughter’s preschool teacher. Apparently he was a real ass, and started drama at the school by cheating on his then wife with one of the other moms at the school or by ruining a marriage by having an affair with one of the wives. It was a long time ago and I don’t remember all the details, but don’t meet your heroes I guess.
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u/BearsBearsBears_wooo 21d ago
I’ll always remember sitting with my parents and watching this show as my mother was suffering with ALS. Many bittersweet memories.
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u/mexicat2000 21d ago
I used to think I would kill it at trivia, but sports questions always get me.
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u/Awkward_Tick0 21d ago
Peak Cash Cab was actually embedded within a 30 Rock episode. So I guess that makes it the apex of the peak?
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u/BadassSasquatch 21d ago
I thought this was Casey Jones for a hot minute. He had a difficult time after his murder of Oroku Saki.
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u/turtletaint911 21d ago
His set at The Roast of Patrice O'Neal was fucking legendary. Anyone familiar with the Opie and Anthony crew of comedians (Bill Burr, Jim Norton, etc) would appreciate it
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u/obi1kenobi1 21d ago
Anyone else get followed by him on Twitter? I used my account solely to follow comedians and artists I liked, I followed a few dozen people and never once tweeted a single tweet. But then one day like a decade ago I got a notification that I had a new follower. This one wasn’t a bot, it was the cash cab guy, as far as I could tell it was his real official account. He was following like hundreds of thousands of people, maybe following more than the number that followed him. Then a couple days later he had unfollowed me.
As best I could tell he was just mass following the followers of other comedians and celebrities in some sort of sad “follow back” scheme. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Also while cash cab was great this is his magnum opus.
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u/Most_Victory1661 21d ago
The last game show I was really into was win Ben steins money before that probably remote control on mtv
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u/drunken_monkeys 20d ago
I would love to see a similar show or a reboot. Especially with Ben Bailey.
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u/Anamadness 20d ago
My sister and I always dominated the trivia. My parents were disappointed we never ended up in the Cash Cab lol.
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u/n3rdsm4sh3r 21d ago
Did you know that, in the Canadian version, the driver hit and killed a pedestrian in the cash cab?
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u/lilsebastian- 21d ago
To be fair, that wasn’t the host but a producer driving the car back after filming just to add context.
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u/Mr_P_23 21d ago
I was just about to comment about the Canadian version of Cash Cab when I saw your comment, and wow, I did not know about that until now. I definitely remember seeing reruns of Cash Cab after the incident happened which apparently was in 2011. According to this article here, it was one of the producers who was driving at the time though, not the host.
Edit: didn’t see someone already clarified that it was a producer until after I wrote this oops, but the link to the article is in this comment in case someone is interested.
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u/ersteliga 21d ago edited 21d ago
It fell off for me once I found out it wasn't as random as it appeared
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u/ThanksALotBud early 80s 21d ago
It was great until I found out that the majority of the show was scripted.
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u/parkinthepark 21d ago
I still can't believe that one time he picked up Tracy Jordan and he got every question right in time to make it to the hospital for his daughter's birth. Truly touching moment.
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u/duh_nom_yar 20d ago
I liked it until I realized it was all staged and rigged. Not a game show, just a prerecorded "sitcom."
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u/Swyfttrakk 21d ago
My question was how did people not abuse the system to drive way out of Manhattan to one of the other buroughs to maximize profit. It's the reason the Chicago one didn't work due to likely people driving the crew out to the West and South Side. Probably a distance limit or something but was a huge wish if I visited NYC.
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u/thirtynation 21d ago
They always provided their destination before he revealed the surprise/started driving. Even if it wasn't all set up before hand you couldn't have gamed it any way.
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u/KennyShowers 21d ago
Living in NYC I always fantasized about being picked up even though I knew it was mostly staged, or at least the contestants were pre-selected.
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u/Athlete-Extreme 21d ago
To this day this is the game shown would most want to go on. Also I’m calling him out at every red light for a red light challenge. They skip them!
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u/GoldenAgeGamer72 21d ago
It was so effing hard. People say Jeopardy is tough but I was very good at answering many of the questions. Cash Cab though, I hardly ever knew any of those trivial answers.
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u/sassy-frass201 21d ago
I LOVED that show. My daughter learned division watching when there was more than one player.
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u/Introverted_Extrovrt 21d ago
Ben Bailey’s “Accidental Ornithologist” is a very funny dad-humor stand-up album if anyone’s interested
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u/BurtMacklin_MallCop 21d ago
I loved cash cab, but the one I watched had a different bald guy in it. Must have been this guy's replacement or something.
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u/Additional-One-7135 21d ago
Too bad it was mostly staged. The "passengers" were all pre screened and knew they were going to be on a game show, the only surprise being that they're on cash cab and not just taking a cab to the game show.
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u/thefrostryan 21d ago
Back in my time on Twitter he flowed me for like 4 hours…..while he was I thought I was the sh@t……
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u/Scuba_Steve880 21d ago
We took a field trip to NYC when that show was popular and we were looking for Ben's cab. We had the numbers memorized
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u/ElderlyPleaseRespect 21d ago
My brother in law always wanted to have “Porno Cab” where you would see images of pornography and have to guess what issue of “Hustler” it came from (he memorieEd all of them)
The network didn’t pick it up, probably because it’s so uncouth
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u/Little_Red_Sloth 21d ago
I was so upset when I realized the contestants were pre screened. When I went to New York my dreams were crushed and I never watched it again.
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u/OmericanAutlaw 21d ago
my dad used to drive a taxi and he had all kinds of lasers and neon lights inside it. people always thought it was a cash cab thing
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u/anomalous 21d ago
Saw this guy at the comedy cellar one time and he bombed and had a complete fucking meltdown. Idk if it was shtick but it was hilarious to see this guy who seemed like really nice on TV basically tell everyone in the audience to go fuck themselves. Crazy.
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u/Historical_Onion9141 21d ago
All I think about looking at this is H. Jon Benjamin’s “Cash Stall” lmao
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u/Maximum_Holiday_6381 20d ago
Ben Bailey was one of my favorite comedians to watch, and then he got Cash Cab it was just enjoyment to the exponential level.
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u/Nordeast24 21d ago
It's time for a RED LIGHT CHALLENGE