We started it once and didn’t make it past the first episode. Tried again, and the rest of the show was actually pretty good.
They do play Deal or No Deal at some point in the show but the emphasis is on team play, challenges, etc - much like Survivor. They clearly took a lot of clues from that show.
Best of all No Howie…and a lot of Boston Rob.
Howie is an executive producer and I thought Boston Rob was only on the first season. They’re showing a second season now and the “name character” seems to be Parvati.
Yes, that’s correct but I think there are only 2 episodes of season 2 so far.
Howie is producer but he only makes a cameo last ep. He doesn’t MC.
It’s a fun watch.
There’s actually a couple of them
I know about this one. Even did the first season in my reality TV finale thread. I find the “Face The Banker” portion just as unbearable as the original game show (roughly the same pace as plate tectonics, 100% pure dumb moronic brainless luck while the apologists constantly yammer at you about how it isn’t, and that whole “what-WOULD-you-have picked” cosmic bullcrap, where the contestant receives massive emotional abuse if wrong and wins diddly-squat if right, which is the single most offensive trend I have ever seen in television). so I only watch everything leading up to it. It’s pretty fun stuff… lots of scheming, lots of strategizing, lots of butting heads, all kinds of second-guessing. And then there are the contests themselves, which are almost always a complete circus and, like all good reality TV contests, do a fine job of pointing out the doofuses.
I won’t deny that there is a certain level of manipulation (there’s now way in hell Rob Mariano makes it to the final without a lot of help), but I’m fine with that. I’ve watched enough of these things to realize that there needs to be entertainment and sometimes they need to sacrifice “honesty” in favor of something the viewers are actually willing to watch. Remember Splash, which had the brilliant idea of being a PURE, HONEST, FAIR, SERIOUS COMPETITION WHERE EVERYONE WOULD BE JUDGED EXACTLY THE SAME AND IT WOULD BE 100% OBJECTIVE WITH NO FAVORITISM, and the result was that the best-looking contestants got ejected first and the final was all wrinkly old guys? How that train wreck made it even that far, I’ll never understand. That’s not going to happen on DONDI. The producers know that lovely bikini ladies bring in numbers, and they will damn well hold on to their meal ticket.
Right now it’s way too early to pick up on any trends, so I’ll keep watching, and with any luck I’ll have something more current pretty soon.
You must have missed the thread title - it’s for people like this kind of entertainment. This isn’t about how fair or much manipulation goes into reality TV. It’s about watching some relatively mindless FUN TV that rivals Survivor.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, granted. And it apparently riles you a bit. But Survivor premiered in 2000 and DoND premiered in 2005. Both are still on the air so a large number of people enjoy and are faithful to watching.
You missed the mark here. Maybe if you had actually watched instead of tuning it out you would have seen that they virtually breeze through the Face the Banker session. And it has a twist the to it the original doesn’t. That’s really the beauty of this incarnation, this part is quick. (I, myself, am not a fan of the original DoND)
And because of that, it’s a completely different show than the original. The original DoND ran for about 45 minutes and it was all Face the Banker. In the Island version (also 45 minutes), Face the Banker only lasts about 5 minutes.
The rest of the show is rope challenges, or swimming in swamps, hell a couple of contestants actually got bitten by live snakes.
I loved it, and that’s what this thread is about.
I’ve seen the Face The Banker part. If it’s been sped up, it’s not enough for my liking. And it’s still essentially a game of chance, which I don’t find intriguing. I have lots of other things taking up my time, so I’m cool with half an episode’s worth of entertainment. The contests are a riot, at least! 
Also, I’ve been around the block many times, and one of the harsh lesson’s that’s been repeatedly drilled into me is that trying to determine in advance what I’m going to like or dislike is a fool’s game. There have been a lot of things that sounded very promising that I ended up disliking or even despising (Am I really going to bring up Son of Zorn again? Oh, heck with it, here you go. 
), and there have been more than a few things that I never saw myself totally getting into that I did. (36 volumes or Ranma 1/2, baby!) So maybe the new banker is only pretending to be female, and maybe someone gets attacked by an octopus, and maybe Dr. Will makes the final only to be called away for an emergency surgery and he tries to explain that he’s not that kind of doctor but nobody listens, and maybe there’s that one ultra mega special case that reverses the effects of all the other special cases, but then someone finds the SUPER ultra mega special case that reverses that case…who can say? To paraphrase that Marvel editor: KEEP WATCHING!
(I do have a strong feeling that I’m going to enjoy this season more than Special Forces World’s Toughest Test, for whatever that’s worth.)
I disagree. Choosing cases is chance. Knowing when to bail is strategy. My wife used to watch the original so I was treated to it occasionally. The reason that show works is greed. It’s relative child’s play to walk away with around $300,000. The trick is, you have to walk away. They don’t, so the “deal” starts dropping. You can almost hear their thought process, “once it goes back up, I’m making the deal”. Of course it never does. When the offer get too low, they start hoping they have the million so they ride it out and end up with pittance. But if you walk in with the attitude that you are taking the deal at set number, say $250,00 and stick to it, you can come ahead almost every time.
By the way, if you like Survivor, you will be glad to know that on Australian Survivor in a few months, the competitors include:
Cirie
Parvati
Tony (the two time winner)
Their season was only 15 days long on the island, instead of the whopping 47 days Australia usually does for their seasons. Probably shortened for budget reasons and to motivate people to return to the game without a full game ahead of them.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
One aspect of this version is that a player needs to beat the banker in order to stay on the show. In the traditional DoND, the player can leave whenever the amount of the deal is to their liking. If they’re happy with the deal, then it doesn’t really make a difference whether the money in their case was more or less than the deal. But with DoNDI, it matters if their case is more or less than the offer. If they take the deal and their case had more, they get kicked off (bad deal). But if their case had less than the offer, they get to decide to gets kicked off (good deal). It adds another layer to the deal part.
However, the deal part is still a cheezy and mostly chance. I wish that part of the show had more strategy to it. I like the format where the final player is taking a huge risk of being kicked off, but if they win, they can decide who to kick off. It’s a great risk-reward scenario, but with so much to chance, gameplay doesn’t matter all that much. They need to have a show with this format where chance doesn’t play such a big part at the end. Perhaps they could have something like “Who Wants to be a Millionaire Island”. Something where the final player can use more strategy other than “knowing basic odds and hoping for the best.”