Oh, boy… what a conundrum…
You see, I loathe the “competitive reality show” phenomenon that has overtaken primetime television in recent years. Survivor and its highly contrived ilk long ago wore out their welcome for me and the American Idol-style talent shows alternately bore and irritate me. However, I reserve a particularly strong flame of hatred for the mind-numbingly stupid modern-day variants of the traditional quiz-show format. I think it’s the way they all try to generate artificial suspense by having the contestants deliberate for ridiculously long periods of time (usually not very believably — I mean, come on, how hard is it to answer the lowest difficulty level of these softball questions? Is the sky is blue or green? You honestly don’t know that one? Well, then just pick one!) while ominous “the clock is ticking and which wire is Jack Bauer going to clip” music plays in the background. This technique was developed for Regis Philbin’s thankfully deceased Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but it endures in the even-more-annoying Deal or No Deal, in which contestants essentially play three-card monte by choosing from a range of metal attache cases in hopes that one of them will contain a cool million bucks. (The difference, of course, is that the contestants aren’t betting their own money and so have nothing, really, to lose by just picking one, a scenario that makes the delayed-response thing even more obnoxious. It’s not like Howie Mandel is pulling cash out of their wallets for every wrong choice they make!)
Needless to say, I don’t watch Deal if I can possibly avoid it — which is sometimes tricky, because my parents love the damn thing, so I have to be careful about when I choose to visit them — but now an item on the Official Star Wars blog has piqued my curiosity… not to mention my prurient interests.
If you’ve never seen the show, part of Deal‘s schtick is that the attache cases that may or may not contain the million-dollar winnings (well, the cases actually contain cards with a dollar amount written on them) are held by 26 lovely female models, all wearing identical dresses (I believe they’re usually red). But according to the Star Wars blog, an upcoming episode will have the Deal models dressed in the classic Princess Leia slave-girl outfit from Return of the Jedi, a.k.a., the “metal bikini.” Can any loyal fanboy whose puberty was haunted by sail-barge fantasies resist that diabolical kind of lure? Especially when Vader, Chewie, R2-D2, and Carrie Fisher herself are also supposed to be on hand? I guess we’ll find out…
(As an aside, I will admit that the idea of a Star Wars-themed episode did make me smile, even if I dislike the show, because it brings back a lot of fond memories of How Things Used to Be. Back in the late ’70s, every variety show on the air, from The Muppet Show to Donny and Marie did an SW episode. It seems like strange timing to do one now, though; I’ve been thinking lately that SW in general, and the original trilogy in particular, is fading from the pop-cultural radar now that the prequels are complete. Perhaps Deal or No Deal skews heavily among people in my demographic?)
OK, so here’s where I admit that I’m a sucker for these game shows, much in the way that you are not. That said, some things these shows that you might not know:
1)) Millionaire isn’t dead – it’s on daytime television now (where game shows used to live). I believe the host is Meredith Viera, who also hosts the Today Show in the mornings on NBC.
2) Just about every Deal or No Deal contestant has a “theme” that the show plays off throughout the hour. Typically, it’s pretty forced “Hi, Howie – my favorite color is blue!” and then everything on the stage is blue that night. My guess is they found a Star Wars super-fan to be the contestant, so they’re playing off of that.
The other night, they showed a preview of some of the things they have planned for next season. I have to hand it to them, they’ve got some really creative ways to keep the show interesting. In addition to the Star Wars thing, they’re also putting a glass booth on the stage at some point, where people can grab money as it blows around them, a giant wheel that they spin at the end that allows you to double (or half) your winnings, and “winner take all” games where two people play, and whoever wins the most money keeps the total of both (but they’re not allowed to watch each other play, so they don’t know how much the other player “Dealed” for), etc.
A guilty pleasure…
Well, to each his own, Brian — lord knows I have my guilty pleasures, too. But I personally just don’t get the popularity of the game shows, or the competition shows, or the makeover shows, or any of that so-called “reality” programming. Just not my thing, I guess.
Even so, I did not know about the daytime Millionaire or that Deal regularly does theme shows, so thanks for setting me straight on those points…