Thoughts on watching The Price Is Right

Cafe Society
1

I’m home sick today, and I watched TPIR.

The royal blue and lime green set looks even more garish than the old one.

Drew Carey somehow makes everything he says sound creepy, yet I like him.

One guy stood in line since 11 pm the night before. Who has that kind of devotion?

The contestants are generally very young and vivacious, but the ads skew old and decrepit. Is TPIR essentially porn for senior citizens?

Speaking of which, do they deliberately select for contestants who aren’t wearing a strong bra? They must.

Every time I see this show, they have uniformed servicemembers as contestants. Is it permissible to wear one’s uniform in that context? Or do the services just look the other way because – let’s face it – everyone loves TPIR?

Ghost Whisperer commercial. Is Love anorexic? She looks like Posh Spice.

Does anyone ever win any of these games? Some of them seem absurdly difficult. I feel like people won more when Bob Barker was hosting, but maybe that’s just nostalgia.

One woman in Contestants Row spent the whole show there. More than once, the guy next to her blocked her out by bidding one dollar higher. When he did this on the last bid, she was ticked. Literally, she nearly smacked him. What kind of consolation prizes to those leftover contestants get?

Scruffy young guy (the one who’d been in line all night) and young servicewoman with little-girl voice in the Showcase. The guy passed on a big TV and a trip to Hong Kong. I thought he’d regret it, figuring the second showcase would be a home wine cellar and living room furniture. I was wrong; the second was a crotch-rocket motorcycle and a trip to Monte Carlo. Showcases seem to have been simplified. His bid was $12000 low, but he won when the woman overbid. Not very impressive.

They still urge spaying and neutering. Nice to see some things don’t change.

2

Re: the bolded part. I haven’t watch a lot of TPIR lately, but I seem to recall that right before the second Showcase Showdown, the announcer would say something like “Contestants not appearing on stage will receive…” and then describe whatever it was.

There’s usually three types of contestants: servicemen, college kids and people wearing goofy homemade TPIR shirts. Bob Barker was a serviceman himself. (Navy, I believe?)

In the showcase; if the first revealed bid is way under, the second bid usually went over. If the first bid was an overbid, the second bid usually got really close (maybe even close enough to win both showcases.)

3

They should ban people from bidding $1 more than another person.

Lots of game shows have military people in uniform on. Bob Barker was in the Navy.

4

The consolation prizes are actually pretty nice, roughly on par with the lower end of items up for bidding. Better than a case of Comet and a board game of the show.

The Game Show Network has the same sorts of ads, but all of daytime TV has the same ads. (Until you get into the afternoon, when ads aimed at stay-at-home moms start showing up in place of reverse mortgages and scooter chairs.)

The showcases have gotten more impressive. Almost always one has a car (or an similar big prize) and the other doesn’t. However, I saw one episode where the showcase without the car was worth more; I think it had three or four vacations, which I’d select over a car any day.

What I’m surprised at is how stupid some bidders can be. I’ve seen bids $25 and $50 less than previous bids, even from the last bidder.

5

I can’t search for it at work, but I seem to recall a Family Guy clip that dealt with this.

6

I seem to have been under the impression that contestants got to bid in the reverse order from when they entered, so at one point, if she had been there the whoole game, the contestant would have been able to bid last. Or is it random? That would be okayer. But it would truly stink if somehow she was in a slot where she had to bid first every time.

7

In EVERY episode I’ve seen, one of the showcases has a vehicle of some kind (car, motorcycle, boat, RV etc) and it is always the more valuable showcase. Most of the time, the first contestant will pass if the first showcase doesn’t have said vehicle. A couple of times though, I remember seening a contestant who had already won a car bid on the non-car showcase if it had something else they really wanted/needed (trip to Europe, appliances, furniture, etc).

8

Drew Carey decided to keep the spay and neuter statement , he said it was part of the tradition of the show.

9

I think it’s called “Consumer Porn”.

10

The bidding goes from left to right, as the camera face the contestants. When a new constestant comes down to the “front row”, (s)he bids first, and then the contestant to camera’s right goes next. After the contestant in the “4th” slot bids, the #1 slot goes.

11

Not the greatest, but here it is.

After the initial four contestants, additional contestants take the place of the previous winning bidder and starts the bidding from there. To get the final bid, the person just after you has to win the previous bid. It’s possible that an initial contestant wouldn’t get the final bid ever.

12

Why is that stupid? If you think the person before you bid too high, of course you’d bid below them.

13

If you’re the last bidder and you think everyone else bid too high, the only sensible strategy is to bid $1. Trying to hit the price exactly is a fools game.

14

I happened to catch the episode this morning. That service woman seemed to have forgotten that overbids lose, because she immediately started cheering like she won. They cut away pretty quickly.

15

Seriously? Because the price would have to be between your bid and the next highest, which in this scenario is a range of $25. This doesn’t give you very good odds unless you know the price exactly (which is very rare).

16

What is a ‘strong bra’? Do I want to know?

17

Drew Carey has definitely come a long way hosting the show. He used to seem very bored and non-enthusiastic when he first took over. Now he seems genuinely enthused about it.

I think the viewers are basically split between college-aged people (who are generally home during the day and up early enough to watch), and retired people (who are generally home during the day and up early enough to watch.) I guess there’s a few stay-at-home moms (or dads in my case) thrown in, too.

18

Something that stops the bouncing. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it isn’t.

I like Drew’s announcing, though my classes don’t let me watch this semester.

19

I completely stopped watching TPIR when I saw a contestant get the price EXACTLY right in the showcase, and Drew didn’t even care. If Bob were still hosting, he would have made a HUGE spectacle out of it…I don’t think that’s EVER happened before in the history of the show, so it was pretty significant, and Bob kept tabs on those things.

20

He didn’t react because he thought he was cheating.