Monday, January 22, 2007
“What are you watching?” JoAnna asked as she entered the bedroom.
Around 7:15 this evening, I experienced a little knot of pain in my lower right back, so I decided to lie down and work on today’s New York Times crossword puzzle with the TV on as background. I kept flipping around the dial – no to the Louisville-Connecticut game, no to some Kodachrome western on Turner Classic Movies, no to the Weather Channel – until I found something that grabbed my attention.
“Deal or No Deal,” I replied a little sheepishly. “I can’t believe I’m watching this show. It’s so inane. I’m trying to figure out the point of it. Is it just for some hyperactive person to pick a box and hope for a low dollar amount?”
JoAnna, who confessed to having previously watched the show, stood and stared at the TV screen for awhile. The contestant, a middle-aged woman wearing flared black slacks and an unflatteringly cut light green blouse, was in a constant loosey-goosey motion: dancing, bobbing, shaking, weaving, crouching, jumping up and down. A few times she looked as though she was going to take DeeDee Sharp’s advice and “Do the Bird”.
I’m sure the producers of this latest game show sensation, shown on NBC, figured out beforehand that the more animated the contestant, the better the ratings. If it wasn’t for this crazy woman’s gyrations, the hour of crassly manufactured suspense and excitement wouldn’t have been worth watching. I have to admit, though, that her antics wore mighty thin after 30 minutes.
“Let’s get this thing over with!” I heard myself say – just wanting to be done with it.
I held out to see if the woman was going to win a big payoff; she had a chance to bag as much as $500,000. With her face looking as though she was holding back a bowel movement, she resolutely turned down all of Howie Mandel deals, relayed to him via a portable phone by some guy sitting in a darkened glass booth in the background. And the purpose of this odd placement is…..? (What I want to know: What drugs do these people use while thinking up this stuff?)
Halfway through the show, Mandel welcomed three more people to a portion of the stage away from the main spotlight. They looked fresh from Mayberry RFD: the Sequel. One of the women was a cousin of the contestant. She appeared just as eager to shake a tail feather, while simultaneously conducting an imaginary orchestra with figure-8 arm movements as the rest of her body gyrated to a different beat. The man introduced himself as “the husband of that wild thing”, pointing a finger in his wife’s direction. Looking to be more of an introvert, he kept his body movements to a minimum most of the time. Whenever he was shown on camera, he looked confused and uncertain, as if seeing a different side to his wife’s personality.
As for the show itself.
After stripping away the multilevel set, the rock-show lighting, and the dramatic musical flourishes, what you have left is a strange variation on that cheesy 1950s game-show chestnut, Queen for a Day.
And how did the show end up?
After all excessive expenditures of energy, the contestant ended up with just $500 – not nearly enough to change her appearance so she won’t be recognized as that Looney Tune from Deal or No Deal. Nowadays, though, people seem to thrive on any kind of publicity – good or bad. And sometimes the bad seems to be preferable.
