I never particularly liked the original half-hour Let's Make a Deal with Monty Hall. Too thin in "game," too condescending to its contestants and audience. Wayne Brady, who I usually find funny and entertaining, is hosting a new hour-long version and I figured I'd give it a couple tries. Maybe, I thought, they've put some meat on the format…and at least the host will be worth watching, right? Well, no.
I don't much like the Wayne Brady version and I sure get the feeling that Wayne isn't too wild about it, either. I've never met the man and have heard no buzz about his off-screen attitude. But on-screen, he sure looks like when he finishes each episode, he tells the producer, "Okay, I did another one. Gimme my check and let me outta here." Maybe the first version worked because Monty never seemed like he could do anything else…or maybe it was because he owned the show. Either way, it seemed to matter to him. He connected with the traders and also with his announcer and prize model.
The game itself is pretty much the same as it ever was. They've jazzed it up a bit with elements not unlike The Price is Right, which strikes me as exactly the wrong way to go. Price is Right follows Deal on most stations, making for a two-hour block of a format that's already gotten so stale you could fry it in butter and sell it as a giant crouton. But the odd thing about the new Deal is that they seem to have forgotten that the star of that show was always the money and big prizes. The new one has tepid prizes and a lot of zonks. At the end, they still have The Big Deal behind which is (allegedly) the most dazzling thing-someone-might-win of the day…but the prizes aren't all that grand; not in an era where giveaway shows give away millions. And instead of two players picking from the three doors, which was how it worked in the Monty days, only one gets to select. That means there's a 66.6% chance each day that the show ends on a losing note and a thud.
It's better than the last revival of Let's Make a Deal, which was a prime-time mess, and CBS is said to be satisfied with its ratings. They're down somewhat from the soap opera programming that used to inhabit that hour, but the costs are a lot lower…and that's the way that game is played these days. It's just a shame to see Wayne Brady waste his talents…and also to see that the first time in many, many years that a network decided to schedule a new game show, all they could come up with was a new low money version of an old big money program.