My interest in Deal or No Deal sagged early in the week but came roaring back. I think Howie Mandel's terrific on it and the way the game's set up, it leads to some truly interesting, emotional moments. Okay, so they're artificially-created emotional moments. They're still real, at least by television standards.
Once upon a time, some game shows were rigged. Their producers would figure out what should occur to make for wonderful dramatic tension and to create an exciting story on the screen, and then they'd arrange to make that happen. This is no longer done, of course…but every so often, the reality of a game show works out as if it had been manipulated. That is, what transpires naturally causes me to think, "You know, if I were producing this show and I were rigging it, that's the kind of thing I would want to have happen." (This also was the case with Press Your Luck, an old game show that's currently rerun on GSN. As with Deal or No Deal, there's a vast amount of luck in how the game goes…but those who configured the game made it so that the luck often leads to interesting plot twists and situations.)
This past week on Deal or No Deal, they had one contestant who did about as poorly as you could do there. At one point, she turned down an offer of $172,000 to play on, but wound up going home with a big five dollars. She was a black lady surrounded by friends and a gospel choir from her church that was up and chanting, "No deal, no deal…" like it was some sort of hymn. Still, she crashed and burned. Later in the week, there was a black gentleman who was a single father and the coach of a girls' basketball team which had turned out to root for him. If you had to pick the contestant of the week that you most wanted to see win a pile of cash, it was this guy…but there was a moment when it seemed like he was going to repeat the disaster of the aforementioned woman. Howie, of course, has to let the contestants make their own decisions but you could almost sense that he wanted to slap the guy upside the head and yell, "Don't be an idiot! Take the money!" And I could imagine the producers, way off in a booth somewhere, fretting that their only two black contestants of the week would be the only two contestants to be utterly wiped out.
Fortunately, the basketball coach got lucky and bounced out of there with a quarter of a million dollars. All over America, I think people would have thrown things through their plasma screens if he'd left with chump change.
As I mentioned, the show has largely solved the problem of the awkward post-dubbing of some of Mr. Mandel's lines. It is still, alas, way over-edited in a manner that loses a lot of the "live" feeling. Whoever assembled Friday night's show apparently couldn't resist stealing reaction shots from other parts of the taping. In the last game, at the point when there were eleven choices left on the board, they cut to a shot of the silhouetted banker and in the background, the board had fifteen choices left on it. Then a few moments later, they went to another shot of the banker and then to a shot of the guy's family, both shots obviously from later on. In both of these angles, you could see the game board with only five picks left on it. Then the next time we saw it, it was back to eleven. This kind of thing happened several times during the week.
NBC is probably satisfied so far with the ratings they're getting with Deal or No Deal. It was up and down a lot as it went against some pretty formidable opposition, including special editions of American Idol but I'm guessing they don't think anything else would have done any better. The question is how long will it endure before it becomes repetitive. There was a fast drop-off with interest in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? as all of America got bored at the same time. In a way, what NBC may be doing with Deal or No Deal is not unlike the game itself, seeing how long they can press their luck with it.