Deal or No Deal or Break Your Legs?
March 22, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzI don’t watch much TV. I usually just watch an hour or two from my bed right before I sleep, usually Law & Order or Colbert or whatever is good at 3 AM.
A few weeks ago though, I was channel surfing and came across Deal or No Deal. I had heard a lot of people talking about the show, and so took the opportunity to watch it, as I had never seen it before.
God, do I hate it. At first I thought it could be pretty decent because I thought each show there’d be a totally different game. I later found out that the game is ALWAYS the same stupid game! In the episode I came across, the woman kept saying “No Deal!” acting all cool and brave, and at one point she was offered around $300,000, to which she of declined. At the end, she ended up winning only $5,000! LOL! After being offered many times $300,000, $260,000, etc.
What I absolutely hate about the show is that no matter what, people win money. They get money no matter how stupid they are. Now, the game is of course based completely on luck and the bank offer is just a mathematic offer based on the probabilites of the numbers left, giving the bank a tiny edge. The question of accepting the deal or not should never change for the person.. they should know coming in what they’re going to do. Either you’ll take a certain amount, or you’ll gamble to go for a higher amount. So there is no wrong answer you can give, and no matter what, you win money, even if it’s only 1 cent, but that’s highly unlikely. A typical ‘bad’ turnout would be somebody walking away with $5,000 or $10,000…
As bad as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is, at least people have to work for it (somewhat) and have the possibly of winning nothing and going home.
Anyhow, after thinking about this, here is my idea for a game show:
There needs to be consequences. I’m tired of watching other people win money for doing absolutely nothing.. how is that entertaining? My idea is that there is true risk involved, and contestants can actually leave worse off than they came.
The idea is that the contestant has around a 75% chance to win (unlike 100% in Deal or No Deal) and a 25% not just to lose, but a 25% chance to actually OWE money. There was actually a show many years ago that I vaguely remember. I believe it on was FOX, and was cancelled after just a few episodes. I remember only seeing a commercial for it I think. Anyhow, it was exactly what I’m talking about.
The show each time is different, and they have a bunch of different ‘games’ each time. The particular one I remember is the show had a family, and gave them a big box of baseballs and had them all stand outside of their nice big home. They had 1-minute to break all of their windows. If they broke all of their windows in the alloted time, they’d win some money. If they didn’t, they’d win nothing. But! They’re left with a house full of broken windows, lol! See, I’d watch that! Wouldn’t you?
Like I say, there has to be consequences. I’m a nice guy, but I really don’t find it enjoyable watching other people win money basically doing nothing but picking cards. See, even if you make the games fairly easy to win, as long as there’s a chance, around 25% or so that they won’t make it, there’s hope for viewers watching that they might lose.
Another example would be the show finds a hot valley chick and offers her $10,000 to shave her entire head. If it’s not entirely shaven within 45 seconds, she wins nothing, but a bald head. The idea is to choose elements that will really be a true pain/bother for people. She must be really upset that she didn’t win anything and has a bald head now, she can’t be all jolly for the camera. The producers of the show could find the right situations.
Another example, given to me by trigatch4 when I was talking to him about this on AIM, would be to offer a guy $30,000 if he could break all of his car windows in a limited amount of time. If he didn’t do it in time, no money, lol.
I don’t know. Am I just being a jerk? I just really can’t stand Deal or No Deal and don’t understand how others can enjoy it. Hell, just make it so 3 numbers in the field are “-$1,000”, “-$5,000”, and “-$10,000”. That alone would make it a lot better 😀
5 Responses to “Deal or No Deal or Break Your Legs?”
Take a briefcase with a million dollars in it and put it in the middle of an arena. Throw in a couple of hungry lions … now that’s a gameshow!
lol…we shall call it Gladiator.
The American deal or no deal looks/sounds rubbish, the English one there’s a lot more losers.
That reminds me of the SNL skit with Chris Farley and Mike Myers. As the skit went further, they started cutting off fingers for wrong answers.
[…] halfway through them. My attention span just isn’t that long. His latest post on how much he hates deal or no deal pretty much mirrors a lot of my feelings. Stupid people doing no work getting given money or stupid […]