I’m Not Taking The Deal
by A.C. Hawley
If you are unfamiliar with Deal or No Deal, I very well think you may be a hater of America. I will put aside my seething contempt for your incompetence to explain Deal or No Deal.
Deal or No Deal starts with thousands upon thousands of submissions from people around America, trying to make the saddest sob story for why they need the opportunity to win the “life-changing” (that’s a term bandied about with alarming frequency given the falling dollar) million dollars.
I’m not really sure what the criteria are for being a contestant on this show, but I can guarantee you that an automatic lock for getting onto the show is being a first responder from 9/11 or a service member because NBC loves America…dammit.
Deal or No Deal is hosted by the mastermind behind Bobby’s World, Canadian actor-comedian Howie Mandel. In what has to be the sweetest hosting job behind hosting The Price is Right, Mandel walks around sans phallic microphone and talks to the contestants and hot women with briefcases.
And, no, this is not some Grace Jones type business; the briefcases that the women hold represent varying amounts of money. These briefcases are the essential essence of Deal or No Deal. They are so important that they required redundancy.
The contestant who is lucky enough to make it on stage chooses one suitcase amongst the 26 to make theirs. That suitcase will be with them for the entire course of the game. And, this is where Deal or No Deal gets really challenging.
After selecting that first suitcase, the contestant must start eliminating the other briefcases. The briefcases all vary in value from a penny (.01 cents to the numerically inclined) to the fabled million.
The contestant does not know how much is in the suitcase they initially chose. Seeing as the goal is to win as much money as possible, the contestant is aiming to eliminate all other values except for the million.
After each set of selections, the set goes red and Mandel gets a call from a man in the shadow behind him. While he may play keyboards, his name is not The Hacker; his name is The Banker.
“Little Red” — Kate Nash (mp3)
“Try Not to Breathe” — R.E.M. (mp3)
The Banker’s sole goal is to get the contestant out of the game for as little money as possible. As you can tell, this part of the show is a decision-making experiment, the ones that psych and statistics students always advertised for in colleges and universities. And, ironically, it takes about the same amount of time. Some deals are obviously bad, but some deals are quite lucrative to put it mildly. So, the contestant, after each of these deals, has to answer a simple question that is always asked with such a ponderous tone by Mandel: Deal or No Deal?
the first wheel of fortune
At the beginning, the contestant has to make the decision alone. After a couple of rounds, the contestant’s family, dressed in clothing that strikes an eerie resemblance to the outfit worn by many a drunk girl doing a Friday bar crawl in Wrigleyville, comes out to help.
If you have not been able to tell yet, this show requires little of what people would consider “talent” or “skill.” This isn’t Twenty One, Greed, Wheel of Fortune, Press Your Luck, Remote Control, pretty much any show that requires you to know stuff.
All a contestant needs to be successful in Deal or No Deal is a rudimentary grasp of the English language. And, from some of the sentences I’ve heard on this show, bums liquored up on Boone’s Farm have a better grasp of English. Contestants don’t even need to be able to count; Mandel counts for you.
Given the high level of intelligence required to be on this show, this is one of the most popular shows on television. While it is not overtaking the behemoths that are Dancing with the Stars or American Idol, Deal or No Deal has a solid set of followers and is routinely in the top 50 of all television programs in ratings.
Seeing as 30 Rock and The Office can’t break the top 50 and both won mad awards for being awesome, Deal or No Deal and its no award-winning ass must be doing something right.
And, that something is allowing Americans to indulge their inner egotist. This is not surprising as game shows have always been a way for the viewer to get involved and feel better about themselves, yelling at the television when the person on screen doesn’t know that Ravel wrote the Bolero, Jefferson City is the capitol of Missouri, the Coen Brothers wrote Fargo, or that Kevin Federline’s album is called Playing With Fire.
As long as Chuck Woolery keeps telling us he will be back in two-and-two, this will always be the case. And, this reality is one expounded upon by the people who created Deal or No Deal.
Deal plays off of this primal reaction, but takes it in a different direction than one would expect.
Unlike other game shows where participants have to be able to spell five-letter words (Lingo; don’t scoff, I saw a dude spell rifle r-i-f-e-l), recall clichés (Wheel of Fortune), or know information (Twenty One, Mastermind (a.k.a. The Best Game Show EVER), Jeopardy), Deal presents its viewers with a proposition as simple as its premise. Deal asks its viewers to put themselves in the place of the participant and determine what they would do.
Being placed in such a situation allows for the inner egotist to come out. Unlike with the thinking man’s shows, there is no right or wrong answer in Deal or No Deal.
When to hold and when to fold are completely subjective within the context of the game, so the contestant on screen makes an independent decision with the obvious goading from both family and audience.
No matter what the reality of the situation is on screen, the person at home is CONFIDENT that they know what they would have done, whether they would have taken the money or taken the deal. This confidence will lead to the person at home calling the person on screen an idiot or worse if s/he decides in their mind that they have made the right decision or that the real contestant is taking the wrong strategy.
Since no one knows the answers in Deal or No Deal (the answer being where the million dollars is located), the viewer can never actually be wrong. And, what does everyone love more than to be told that they are loved? To be told that they are right.
Deal or No Deal gives every viewer of the program in the 73 countries that have a variation on the program an opportunity to be told they are right on a weekly basis. And, this, more than its contrived drama and made-up eye candy, keeps viewers returning, whether they know it or not.
A.C. Hawley is a West Virginia-based cultural critic and commentator. His blog is ohstewardess.blogspot.com. He can be reached at acisnoone at gmail dot com.
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