The Desperate Psychic Housewives of “Deal or No Deal”
By Rodd • Jan 17th, 2008 • Category: 3 Column RIGHT, Deal or No Deal, Features, NBC, Reality
For those who have been missing “Deal or No Deal” this month, the NBC game show stalwart has been embarking on a “million dollar mission” to award a contestant $1 million. Each episode where a player fails to win the top prize, another $1 million suitcase is added to the board so that, sooner or later, even the gleeful, math-challenged chipmonk contestants of “Deal” will finally be able to stumble into big bucks.
Since this ratings-boosting stunt started, contestants have lined up to “No Deal Howie!” their way to record-setting six figure offers … then “No Deal Howie!” their way right back down to earn relative squat.
This has been enormous fun to watch.
The issue is that contestants believe they are psychic and that math doesn’t apply to them.
This week, two vivacious, happy, center-of-attention desperate housewives declared their belief that, in their heart of hearts, they just knew their randomly chosen briefcase has $1 million inside and so, therefore, they could not possibly lose despite taking chance after chance. Even offers of about a quarter of a million couldn’t shake their belief that, darn it, they are meant for better things.
On the sidelines, F&F (Friends and Family) sit, ever urging them to reject massive, life-changing sums of cash because, god darn it, they deserve more and “there’s a lot of money left on that board!”
The crux point of the recent “Deal” episodes has often been the same. About two-to-four offers into the game, the contestant gets up into the low six figures. About 25% of the board are million-dollar cases. The rest are 100,000 or much-much less.
Now. If these people worked for several years to save up $250,000, they would almost certainly never risk it all on a 25% chance of quadrupling their money (I know, the math doesn’t exactly work out this way — since it assumes players will “No Deal Howie!” their way until the bitter end, but if they hit one more $1 million dollar case then their offer drops sharply, and then that’s often exactly what they do).
At the crux point is also the part where the audience turns on the contestant. You go from rooting for low numbers, to rooting for the contestant’s own immolation.
I don’t care how many family members they have serving in Iraq, life doesn’t reward poor decisions and neither should “Deal.” Dammit.
Rodd
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Heh, everyone always thinks they know better. I wonder if they hand-pick pick their contestants to keep math’ish people out.
In case anyone is interested in the exact way to play Deal or No Deal try this:
http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/03/deal_or_no_deal_the_real_deal.php
On the extremely long contestant application, one of the questions is “Do you consider yourself a risk-taker?” I’ve assumed that if you answer “no” to that question, you might as well try to get on “Survivor” instead.
And it’s no big secret that they book contestants who can yell and scream a lot and have heartbreaking, tearjerking stories to tell the audience, but aren’t that great in the brain department.
“I want a baby more than anything in this world… so I’m gonna take it!”
… priceless.