Slinger, who has a very readable blog over here, baited me to comment on Deal or No Deal. Three things on Deal or No Deal.

1. The show becomes unwatchable very quickly. Last Christmas when they had the first week, I was absorbed. It was amazing the choices people would make. It was great to see people go from doing really well, then through hubris end up with 10 dollars. It was great to see people with no chance in hell of doing anything then turn out to win 200K. Immediately, being a numbers guy, I began to strategize. Then I realized that there is no strategy. Pick a number and hope that you are lucky is the strategy. There are 26 cases. 5 have a lot of money. So pick a case and you have a 19.2% chance of picking a big amount. Then play it through and hope that towards the end you will still have a lot of the big cases.
2. The people they pick to be on the show are the same types of people that when walking down Broadway or in Union Square here in Manhattan that you can tell are tourists. The kind of person that goes to their husband or wife to ask which fanny pack they should bring on vacation. These are the kind of people who get "my kid beat up your honor roll kid" bumper stickers to put on their 1989 Chevy Trailblazer, without irony. Not that there is anything wrong with these people, but there is a disturbing thing about television. On television, real people appear nuts. I don't know if this is a cause or effect. Part of me thinks, that for ratings producers intentionally try and get wackos. But part of me wonders if the shine of the spotlight makes people not act normally, and maybe that is why TV is better left to the professionals. Spend an hour watching Real World, Survivor, The Apprentice or DOND and tell me if any of these people really reminds me of your friends or relatives. I am going to guess not.
3. Howie Mandel is awful.