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"Deal or No Deal" is a game show that personifies the American way of life—the pursuit of vast amounts of unearned money, and the broken dreams of grandeur that follow. The show is really about two things. First, it is about one person using his/her astoundingly bad judgment in order to make even worse decisions, based on the advice received from family and friends, whose sole purpose is to cloud said poor judgment. And second, it is about the players, hosts, models, and audience members spitting as many clichés about prevailing against all odds as they possibly can fit in the hour time slot.
If you haven’t seen the show, I will take you through it. There are 26 unopened briefcases on the stage, with money values ranging between one penny and one million dollars. Behind each of these cases is a model that believes that her appearance on this show will vault her into the coveted ranks of the Hollywood pornography industry. These girls only need one big break and they will be able to quit their waitressing job at IHOP and finally get that adult film producer to allow them to be in his next big project. Good for you girls, you should be proud—I am sure that everything will work out just as you plan them to.
The contestant, who stands below the stage with the great actor/comedian Howie Mandel, chooses one of these 26 cases as his lucky case. The model that stands behind this lucky case is done for the night—her 2.2 seconds of fame having expired. The contestant then proceeds to choose cases from the remaining 25 in hopes to eliminate the smaller amounts of cash money. After a predetermined number of cases, NBC gives the contestant an offer, which is simply offering a little less than the average of all the money amounts remaining. The contestant then is faced with a quandary; he can either take the deal, or try to eliminate more of the petite money amounts in order to make the next deal higher. Regardless, the contestant is certain to make the wrong decision.
After the first few rounds, the contestant is usually faced with a board of money amounts that isn’t exactly favorable. Success in this game begets more success, and failure begets more failure (the contestants don’t ever understand this, though). Let’s say there are five cases left, and only one large amount left on the board; $300,000. The banker, or NBC, or whatever, offers the contestant fifty-some-odd thousand dollars to get off the goddamn stage. What is great about this juncture is that the contestant then gets to ask his family what to do. He asks his wife, and she says, “We came here to win, Baby! Nothing tremendous ever happens without some risk! No deal!”.
All right, so this guy is backed into a corner because he knows that if he picks the case with the 300 grand in it, he is going to go home with 250 bucks to await all of his friends that will tell him that he is pussy-whipped. But if he doesn’t listen to his wife, she will nag his ass until the end of time and probably have an affair with the next DOND contestant who has the balls to go for it. He needs more help. Howie asks his five-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy what they think: “No deal Dad! No deal!”. Fuck. Now he is really screwed, because if he doesn’t listen to the little ones they will be crushed and he will look like a heartless bastard on national television. He knows that his children have absolutely no concept of money, so their opinions mean less than shit. But the wise people at NBC make them come on the show just so they give unsound advice like this.
Our contestant thinks it over as Howie Mandel furthers the suspense with a couple commercial breaks (that Howie is a tricky one) and our contestant then turns to his wife for one last piece of advice: “You can do it, Baby! I know you can!” Goddamn it bitch, if the game had some sort of skill involved then I would understand this sort of advice, but since it is totally luck, I don’t see how I am going to be able to “do it”.
Finally, the contestant is forced to make a rather long speech about how taking risks is the meaning of life and how as long as he has his wife’s love that that is all he needs to make him happy. “No Deal!” he screams, and everyone applauds or raises the roof or some other our-of-date display of approval, for some reason.
Howie asks him to choose another case, and he asks his son to choose, and of course the little bastard chooses the one case with $300,000 in it. It was inevitable though. Even if he didn’t choose it this round, he would again ask his family and they would tell him in cliché form to “Go for the glory!” or “You have to be in it to win it!”, or perhaps maybe “There’s nothing worth pursuing in life that doesn’t involve a little risk! No Deal!”. They would force him to open more cases until the predestined bust out.
When he does shit down his leg, his wife will most definitely come running to him and say, “I love you so much, you did your best.” It’s your fault you dumb strumpet, and again, I didn’t do my best, because it is a game of luck. Can someone do their best at a slot machine? Jesus. And how much does your love buy me in jet skis and 24-packs? Then his kids will come up and say “Good try, Dad!”. You sons of bitches cost me $57,000, and you are going to work that off when we get home.
Bad decision-making hasn’t been this fun since the free-swinging 1970’s. What a great show.
 | | Ask the kids, they know what to do |
*Addendum 1 – In one episode, because the contestant was a high school teacher, the producers decided to bring in the cheerleaders from that high school to cheer for the contestant with “G-O. Let’s go” over and over again. I an sure that this spurned the contestant to do her best.
*Addendum 2 – I think that there should be a whammy case—one that when picked, allows the model that holds the case to walk down the stage and kick the contestant in the testicles/uterus. This might cut down on the high fives, pounds, roof-raises, double pounds, and Arsenio Hall audience-ish antics.
*Addendum 3 - The photos used in this article are from http://www.nbc.com/Deal_or_No_Deal/ - don't sue me.
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