Swampscott clan to appear on ‘Family Feud’

SWAMPSCOTT – According to a survey of 100 randomly selected people, families will do what activity as a way to bond?According to members of the Baer family, the number one answer was to endure auditions, keep up witty repartee and answer similar types of questions on television, as the family will make their television debut on the game show Family Feud this Thursday.”Getting into college was easier than getting on to Family Feud,” joked Brian Bloch, who sat with three of his familial teammates – his mother Marilyn Baer, stepfather Arnold Baer and cousin Lori McHugh – on Thursday night. “We were laying it on pretty thick -“As bad and loud as we are now” – Arnold Baer interjected and then he put his hand on Bloch’s arm, “how did you say it?””We’re either going to get on the show or get a restraining order,” Bloch finished, and his family erupted in laughter.They got the former.Thursday, Nov. 17 at 3 p.m., Marilyn and Arnold Baer, McHugh, Bloch and his wife Alyson will appear on an episode of Family Feud, the long-running game show where families gather to guess the most popular answers that random people gave when asked a specific question. But an encyclopedic mastery of trivia won’t help, and the right answers for you may not be a right answer according to the survey. But reflecting on their experience – the show was taped in September and, no, they wouldn’t let slip if they won – family members agreed that the goal isn’t necessarily to get the right answers.”We thought winning was important,” said McHugh, recalling the family’s audition. “It’s not.””It’s not winning or losing, it’s how you play the game,” Marilyn Baer said.And it takes a very special family to play the game.Marilyn Baer said that the journey to Family Feud started in 2009 after her mother – a manicurist who used to do her daughter’s nails each week – passed away. Marilyn Baer made an appointment with another manicurist on Thursdays at 3 p.m., which happened to be the time that a big-screen television at the salon was tuned to Family Feud. When open auditions were announced for Saugus in 2010, the family was ready.But they weren’t selected. The next year, they came prepared.”We tried very hard,” Marilyn Baer recalled. “We jumped around, you have to clap the right way – in front of your face, they don’t want you to look like a seal – and then we got a piece of paper and they took us upstairs to the Hilltop Steak House.”Her husband took over the story. “There was another family there,” Arnold Baer said. “I told them I’d give them $10,000 to leave.”Even when they got to taping in Atlanta, the family didn’t know if they would make it to the air. They played several rounds of mock shows and tried to remember the extensive list of directions: how to clap, only wear clothing approved by the producers, always look at the host – except when you are introducing yourselves to the camera.The Baer family didn’t do so well on that one.”The taping comes to a screeching halt,” recalled Bloch. “(Host and comedian) Steve Harvey comes over and says, ‘Baer family, I like you a lot,’ but where are you supposed to look when you’re being introduced?'”But members of the family said the most interesting part of the experience was filming an hour-and-a-half segment before a live studio audience. The show airs for 22 minutes, so a lot of the taping never is seen, which family members said was too bad because Harvey essentially does a standup routine during the show, poking fun at contestants – Arnold Baer’s pronunciation of ‘pasta’ caused a two-minute riff, for instance – and Harvey is “very funny,” the family members agreed.But that editing also makes them a little nervous to see the final product, family members said. But they also agreed that it was an experience they would love to do again and will always remember.”It’s a very unusual shared experience,” Bloch said.But of course, it takes a special family.”Everyone else has said ‘I could never get my family to do it,” said Marilyn B