‘The Deal’
February 20th, 2007 by Adam
With the kind of rapt attention that can only be paid to car wrecks and carnival sideshows, in the vacuum of activity between orientation and commencement of classes I find myself daily watching the Aussie version of Howie Mandel wonder-showzen ‘Deal Or No Deal’. It’s similar to the U.S. version, but with differences key enough to make me really interested—in fact, I think it surpasses the original in almost every aspect. For starters, the show is only good for $200,000 total—a pretty penny, but not so much cash that each episode must be a ratings whore. There are no professional models being paid to dress alike and smile dumbly through Vaseline coated teeth. The audience is broken into ‘blocs’ and at the beginning of the episode one bloc is chosen, and one person from that bloc actually plays. The rest of the bloc gets up on stage behind the cases, including the contestant’s family which makes for interesting drama when someone’s mother totally screws them out of $100,000. To sweeten the deal, each audience member chosen gets to guess what is in the case they’re about to open, and if correct they win $500—every once in a while they call a ‘Mega Guess’ and if the person correctly chooses the amount in their case they win $10,000.
With the one-word name recognition of The Donald or The AIDS, “The Deal” is actually a rather ingenious facsimile. The host is less obnoxious, the pace much faster, the drama less played out and boring. There are no giant light rigs or cheesy interplay with the mysterious banker in his darkened booth, and the producers down here have stumbled upon the most brilliant of ideas (pay attention NBC)—to use The Deal as a vehicle to promote other network shows. Last week was Ugly Betty week, and each day the initially chosen case (and final check) is brought up to the podium by an Ugly Betty look-alike and two or three times during the broadcast the host is sure to parlay the contestant’s situation into a cheesy joke about the show. For all the shamelessness of the ploy, it takes all of two seconds, can be slightly humorous, and is guaranteed to boost ratings for whatever show they rep. This week they’re having contestants from some dance show come play on behalf of a random person who pays only .55 to register for the chance, trumping the bullshit text-a-thon side game of the original.
The Aussie version struggles to be different, but in that struggle they seem to have surpassed the frivolity and vomit-inducing glitz of the original. Given the reduced production costs, no models, and much smaller sums of money given away, The Deal has managed to captivate public ardor without becoming droll and laden with advertisements.
Giving away smaller increments to more people, and keeping a faster pace, means that both watching and participating are much more enjoyable. The average person takes home around $20,000 dollars Australian, and while that pales in comparison to the regular six figure payouts in U.S. dollars, there’s almost no one in Oz or the States who couldn’t find a heap of useful or things to do with that much money— that much scratch would pay for my entire academic program and most of my living expenses for the year.
The funniest bit? When things go wrong, they go very wrong and it’s not unusual for a contestant to walk away with a paltry payout, which is almost more fun to watch. In fact, it often comes about that more money is given away to audience members correctly guessing their case values than to the contestant themselves– the ‘celebrity’ today playing for John Doe ended up with $100 dollars, but the audience took away $1,500 and the last woman even caught a Mega Guess and missed a 50/50 shot at winning $10k.
I’d try to be a contestant on the fucking thing, but I doubt they extend those honors to non-citizens. Shit on being the foreigner—it’s so much harder to turn my nose up at people.
Adam