Deal or No Deal

I had one of my favorite episodes of a show I liked coming on at 10:30pm. It was only 8:00pm. I needed something to do for two and a half hours, so I flipped through the TV Guide, hoping to make a little schedule that could last from at least 8-10. Well, it turned out I didn’t need a schedule. I just needed the 2-hour Thanksgiving Special of Deal or No Deal.

If you’ve never heard of Deal or No Deal, you might just pass it off as one of those silly little “win a million dollars” game shows. But it’s more than that. It’s a high-stakes, decision-oriented game, with a stressed-out contestant trying to take what a dozen people tell him and then turn it into a decision.

Let me tell you how it works. The contestant stands on a stage with the host. On some bleachers across the stage, twenty-six women each hold one numbered box. Inside each box is a monetary value. They range from one penny to $1 million.The contestant starts out the show by picking six boxes. As each box’s value is revealed, he hopes for a small amount of money. Why? Say he picks Box 12 and it contains $100, which is a relatively small number compared to the other values. That means that the $100 value on the board gets knocked away. The ultimate goal is to knock away all of the boxes that contain low values, and leave the $1 million box left. This is where it gets very interesting, though.

After the first six boxes are picked, there appears a mysterious man up in a booth. He is known as “the banker.” He kind of averages out the values on the board, and offers a deal to the contestant. Say the contestant had a board with many high values left and not many low values. Then the offer might be somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000. Now the contestant must decide whether he wants to take the deal, or keep playing in hopes of getting more money. All the while, the contestant gets advice from his family and friends, who stand on the corner of the stage.

Last night, on the Thanksgiving Special, I saw a guy get down to four boxes. He had picked all but the Cranberry Sauce (hey, it’s Thanksgiving), $300, $1 million, and $2 million. They added in the $2 million as a surprise. He had a deal of about $550,000. He said no deal, and picked another box. Unfortunately, he picked $2 million, so that was out of the game. This brought the offer from the banker down to $307,000. The guy took it, not wanting to risk going home with cranberry sauce.

You might not think you will like it so much, especially with all of the frequent commercials, but you will find yourself cheering for the contestant to win big money. I hope everybody who reads this give it a shot, and if you’ve seen it already, share with me one of your favorite moments via comment!