The Price is Right - 6/5/12 Episode

Having done this blog for two months now, I know there are two things more than any others that are guaranteed to drive traffic to the site: pregnant models and Daniel Goddard.

Today, we had both. Gwendolyn was on the show today, and people seem quite fascinated with whether she is pregnant (yes, she is).

As for Daniel, well...

Oh, right, Manuela is in the picture, too.

Over the course of today's episode, my blog's hit total for the day went up fivefold - mostly due to search queries along the lines of "male model price is right" or "who is the male model on the price is right." There was also a "why is daniel goddard on the price is right so often" mixed in. So, thank you for the traffic, Daniel.

Moving on to the games, we had a really nice win on "Lucky Seven" today. After a strong start, Shannon went with the dreaded '5' twice. Here's how it turned out:

Considering she had $5 left for the last two digits, going with a '5' on the fourth one was a logical play. I thought the '9' screwed her over; the '5' as the last digit is as good a guess as any, but a lot of times The Price is Right sneaks a random '2' or '8' or some such number in that spot.

Overall, contestants went 3-for-6 on pricing games today.

Bidders' row FAIL
There was a lot of terrible bidding today. In the first round, Tacara bid $500 for two pairs of Christian Louboutin women's shoes. Even I know you're looking at about $2,000 there.

It got worse in the second round. Bidding last for a trip to Disneyland, Tacara (far left) went with...

Sure. Why bid $1,501 when you can go $500 higher for no reason? The actual retail price was $1,646. This is not hard, folks.

Tacara had some company from Joyce in the third round. After bids of $625 and $645 for five (5) pairs of wooden watches, Tacara and Joyce came up with...

I'll reiterate, yet again, the golden rule of bidders' row: There are no prizes under $500 these days. This is 2012, not 1984. If you're convinced the $625 and $645 bids are too high, and you're bidding third, bid in the $500-525 range and hope the last contestant bids $1 or over $645.

Joyce wasn't having any of that logic, though. This $615 bid is amazing. With a bid of $625 already on the board, you're limiting yourself to literally 10 options - any price between $615-624 - to win. If you really think it's $615, Joyce, you bid $301 here, giving yourself 324 prices (anything between $301-624) to win. That's more than 10.

The actual retail price was $600. Incredibly, Tacara won.

Fast-forward to the final item up for bids. Drew Carey just about always says to the final contestant to come on down, "You have one chance. Don't blow it."

Well, here's Wanda blowing it:

Robert, bidding last and taking his cue from previous idiotic bids, went $1,200 when $801 would have sufficed.

The Price is Right sometimes rewards the foolish, however, and Robert won anyway. He then nailed "Safe Crackers" for a trip to Rome, which was enthusiastically presented by Daniel.

Bonkers FAIL
After her performance on bidders' row, I didn't have much faith in Tacara playing "Bonkers."

Tacara proved me correct.

"Bonkers" is now officially second, only to "Cover Up," on my "Games That Contestants Fuck Up With Mindboggling Stupidity" list. Why on Earth Tacara - and she's not the first one - would ever put the paddle above the '8' is beyond me. They're giving you that number. And this was for a spa (as modeled by Manuela and Daniel above), so chances are pretty good it's more than $6,000. Those two paddles should have been automatic, meaning you just had to find one of the four combinations of the other two digits to get the win.

This should have been pretty straightforward. But, I've asked this before and I'll do so again: do contestants even look at the numbers in this game? It doesn't seem like they do.

On the bright side of life, however, we did have...

DIABEETUS

As reader Daniel Kaproth pointed out on Twitter today, we had the exalted "Triple Crown" of The Price is Right commercials: Diabeetus, the Hoveround Singing Guy and The Fonz talking about reverse mortgage. The only thing missing from making this a "Grand Slam" was the "I got too much to do, TO DIE" cancer lady.

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