After watching what didn’t bore me to death of the last two episodes of Deal or No Deal Island, I’ve decided that there is no need for me or anyone else on the planet to do a running commentary of the second to last episode. Quick recap: The 4 finallists are Rob and a trio who formed a clique whose thing is making high-pitched owl sounds at random times (I’ll just leave this here: 
), including the completely-out-of-her-depth Amy. Buncha shooting the breeze before the final 2-part contest. First part is to open a lock in a lectern to release a map, the combination being the total number of cases that have been added to the Final Case (essentially a progressive jackpot that’s been building all season). Once they have the map, they need to use it to find a key clearing at the opposite end of the maze, find an unlock a case by memory, and return. The last person to return is out, as well as the lowest remaining case of the remaining three. The higher value cases are harder to retrieve, so there’s a calculated risk in going for the gold. Shots of Rob’s thought process accompanied by a brief highlight reel. Amy gets it first. Rob, who’s been bulletproof up to this point, makes the incredible blunder of illegally looking at Amy’s podium, which means he has to enter last with a big time penalty…aaaaand, cue horse race narrative! 
Episode ends with Amy struggling and Rob hustling.
Deal or No Deal Island season finale (part 2) - NBC, 1 hour, 5/13/24
0 Recap.
1 Final moments of part F-1. Amy returns first. Host Joe Manganiello (definitely one of the best reality TV hosts from what I’ve seen, although I did zap past all the extremely long boring parts so I don’t know for sure) delivers the bad news to Rob. So the legendary Boston Bastard went the distance but didn’t enrage half the country by winning (and it goes without saying that this contest has exactly one winner and twelve groin-kickees). Oh yeah, mighty convenient how it just happened to work out like that.
You know what, the hell with conspiracy theories, I’m going a step further and saying that NBC not only clearly rigged the game, they would’ve been flaming idiots not to. There’s no accountability in reality TV, no audits, no disclosure, no oversight. Hell, has anyone ever even threatened a lawsuit? If you bring someone on to be the star bad guy, you damn well make sure he’s completely untouchable…up to the finale. Once he’s gone the distance, he’s served his purpose and is henceforth fair game, so the rulesmakers are absolutely giving him no favors. His slip-up at the lecterns was actually the best-case scenario, allowing them to milk his doomed final run without him having any realistic shot at playing for the grand prize…no one actually wants the bad guy to win, after all. So yeah, sometimes the system works. Sorry, that’s just reality. TV. 
4 Now the second moment of truth, the amounts in the three cases, the lowest of which is out. Jordan got 3.5 mil. Stephanie got 3 mil. Amy got 3.75 mil. Stephanie takes the walk of shame.
7 F-2 proper begins with the final contest. The contestants start at the bottom of ladders at the opposite ends of a tightrope. Once on the rope, they must make their way to the center (they have vertical ropes hanging from above for balance so this doesn’t turn into one of those The Challenge neverending torturefests). Fall and they have to start from scratch. First to retrieve the golden case hanging over the center wins and will head to the ultimate Deal or No Deal game. Amy falls. Amy gets back up. Amy falls. She made it maybe a twelfth of the way to the goal. Jordan falls but recovers quickly and is making good progress on her second attempt. Amy bounces on the rope in an attempt to dislodge Jordan, apparently forgetting that she’s on the opposite end of the rope. 
It’s for naught; Jordan wins in a rout. Amy made it this far through the generosity of fools and white knights and bleeding hearts and moronic “strategizing” and alliances and finagling and plain ‘ol dumb luck. The instant it came down to a straight woman-to-woman physical contest, she was dead. To her credit, she had no illusions about having a prayer and remains friendly in defeat, wishing Jordan the best of luck.
17 Jordan opens the golden case…the highest amount retrieved from the maze, which is added to the Final Case, in other words following the exact same procedure as the preceding 11 days. Yay consistency? 
The final value of the FC is $13,857,000, which is by far the largest ever TV show prize that no one is ever going come within an ultramarathon of winning. 
Seriously, aren’t shows that constantly tease enormous payouts and never actually pony up the most irritating thing? Remember that execrable Million Dollar Money Drop?
18 One last order of business, finally learning the Banker’s identity. It’s… gasp!.. choke!.. Howie Mandell, which I think half of Primetimer called by about week 2 and is about as shocking a revelation as learning that the Cybertruck is a piece of crap designed by a delusional moron. (Aside: Doesn’t this mean that, officially, it was him throwing all those insults and making garbage offers in the original show and Silhouette Guy was a just a random nobody he pretended to talk to on that “phone”? I mean, yeah, anyone with a functioning brain figured that out, but it’s still pretty wild for NBC to come clean and say it to our faces.) Jordan provides some analysis: “This is not host Howie, the two-faced scumbag who pretended to be all sweet and nice while continually mocking the contestants and pulling a truly lame ‘Charles’-esque blame shift on some meaningless patsy and hoping we’d all buy it. This is the misanthropic Howie who’s become a total albatross for America’s Got Talent.” Or something.
23 The defeated contestants are the audience for the ultimate Deal or No Deal game. Being powerless to do anything other than watch someone else win the top prize has to be frustrating, but at least they get seen in the final. Life is full of compromises. Some of them compliment Jordan’s victory. Mandell makes his entrance and shoots the breeze with Jordan. The amount of the FC goes up on the screen.
26 It all comes down to this! All right, how the DOND games have been working on this island is that the big-money cases the contestants have retrieved take up the right side of the board, with “The Banker’s” much smaller preset amounts taking up the left. This makes getting a good case a coin flip, which makes getting a better deal with either the Your Case or the Banker’s offer also an even proposition. (It’s actually much more generous than the original show, where the median was something like $750, making it much harder to win even a decent amount.) However, since there was no retrieval mechanism this time, all the cases except the FC are presets. On the left is .01, 1, 25, 50, 75, 100, 300, 500, 750, and 1,000; on the right is 1M, 1M, 1.5M, 1.5M, 3M, 3.5M, 4.5M, 5M, 5M, 6M, and the ultimate prize of 13,857,000.
Now, keep in mind that the FC represents the cumulative efforts of all the contestants over the past 11 rounds. It’s the carrot, the crown jewel, the wizard award, the whole reason they decided to be on this show in the first place. Which means that the only positive outcomes to the season are one of the following:
- Jordan chooses the FC and no other to be her Your Case (remember, swapping isn’t allowed anymore), a 1 in 22 (4.55%) shot, and goes the distance, along the way turning down what are sure to be at least a couple very tempting offers.
- Jordan doesn’t choose the FC, avoids ever opening it, lasts long enough to get a really good offer, and takes it.
If at any point she opens the FC, everyone’s efforts were completely for naught. The whole season could literally go into the toilet in an instant. Additionally, there’s a very real chance that Jordan could, like the unfortunates on the old show, knock out all the good cases and walk away with a meager amount, which means that everyone, INCLUDING her, gets completely hosed. That’s how much pressure she has riding on this.
All right, imma just skip ahead a tad…
50 Case #18 opens, and…yeah. 
56 Offer of 1,230,000 on the board, and after a long deliberation, Jordan accepts. Thankfully they’re not doing the whole what-WOOHHUUUDD-you have picked cosmic bullcrap that was the ruination of game shows in the aughts (if I didn’t start a Pit thread about that loathsome practice, I should have), but Mandell still insists on opening the Your Case to find out if he gets to laugh in her face for ten solid minutes. Thankfully that’s a no, as it’s a measly $1,000. (There were 4 lows and 2 highs remaining at that point, so this isn’t a surprise.)
58 Five months later, Jordan is happily gestating the first of what is certain to be far too many children. 
Final verdict? If you’re into contests with dumb stupid idiotic moronic brainless luck playing way too much a factor, brazen manipulation, nonsensical strategies, and completely illusory big payouts, this is the show for you! Oh, or if you just enjoy people doing things in a beautiful tropical background. I admit that I really enjoyed the action parts (the divebombing contest was probably my favorite), and seeing ordinary people have to plan and make decisions on the fly is just as entertaining here as in Survivor. It’s all the dumb, predictable, and MEGA BORING stuff I can’t tolerate. It’s kind of like the Dead or Alive Xtreme games. Of course I dig busty chicks playing beach volleyball while wearing next to nothing, it’s all the crap about relationships and gifts and limited time events and money and LUCK LUCK LUCK LUUUUUUUCCCKKKK that make it unplayable.
So there you have it. Deal or No Deal Meets Survivor, and it’s pretty much what you should’ve expected. For better or worse. (More the latter, IMO, but you can decide for yourself.)