The Price is Right - 5/31/12 Episode

I'm calling today a 6-for-6 day on The Price is Right.

Technically, it wasn't, as neither contestant who played for a car actually won a car. But they showed some common sense (a rare concept on this show) and took home pretty good prizes, so I'm giving them the 'W.'

In today's second pricing game, we had Morningstar (yes, really) playing for a truck in "Temptation." One by one, the models trot out four prizes (usually, one of them is cash)...

...and you have to guess which of those numbers is the next digit in the car. You're given the first digit in the car price (in today's case, a '2'), so here, Morningstar has to guess whether the next digit is a '3' or a '4.' And so on and so forth. In addition to the $3,434 in cash, today's other prizes were a portable satellite receiver for $776, a 32-inch HD television for $499, and a trio of watches for $595. So, each digit is a toss-up.

The game is called "Temptation" because you can just keep the prizes without doing a thing, or risk it all on the premise that you guess all right digits in the car. If you are right, you get the car and the prizes. If you go for it and lose, you lose everything.

To me, it's an easy decision: take the prizes. Today, they were worth over $5,000 total. Why risk that on the 16-to-1 odds that you have the right price of the car? And yet, most contestants go for it. They almost always lose.

Morningstar, however, took the prizes. And it's a good thing she did.

In today's fifth game, Dennis was playing "Gas Money" for a shot at a Chrysler 200 LX. In this game, you're given five possible prices for the car. One is correct, and the other four have money values of $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 and $4,000. To win the car, you have to pick the car price last, accumulating your "gas money" along the way. You can stop and just pocket the cash at any time, but if you keep going and pick the car price before you're supposed to, you lose everything. The game is difficult because the five prices are all within about $1,000 of the one above and/or below it.

The Price is Right - YouTube Classics

In lieu of not being around to do episode recaps, here are just a few of my favorite The Price is Right YouTube highlights that I've discovered in recent weeks:

A dramatic playing of "3 Strikes" for an awesome car:

 

Going back to the Bob Barker era, here's a perfect playing of "The Dice Game":

A "Cliffhangers" malfunction just adds to this epic win, which also featured an appearance from a young Roger Dobkowitz (a couple years before he became producer of The Price is Right):

"You won a million bucks! You won a million bucks! You won a million bucks!" - Drew Carey, here:

 

The Price is Right - 4/30/12 Episode

Ugh.

That pretty much sums today's episode of The Price is Right, and that even takes into account a $1 spin on the wheel and an exact bid on bidders' row.

That was more than offset, however, by contestants' 0-for-6 performance in the pricing games. The first was the toughest one to take, as Kevin very nearly became the first to ever win $100,000 on "Pay the Rent."

Unfortunately, he took home $0.

Here's the set-up:

You get six grocery items, and each item or combination of items has to cost more than what you put on the "floor" below it. So, the items you put on the first floor (that blue "couch" and green "stove" you see in the photo above) have to cost more than what you put in the red mailbox there at the bottom. And so on and so forth, with the most expensive item up top.

What made today's defeat so heartbreaking was that Kevin played it correctly, and I genuinely thought he had it. What most contestants do is place the obvious least expensive item in the mailbox at the bottom, placing more expensive items above and leaving no chance of the top item being more than the floor below it. Most of these contestants take home the $5,000 or $10,000 - you can stop at any time, or risk what you've won already to move on to the next level - so that's not exactly a bad haul.

Kevin put the Twinkies (or "snack cakes" as Drew Carey and George Gray were contractually obligated to call them) on the second level, which was the right move.

Unfortunately, it didn't pay off.

I really enjoyed Drew's buildup, and Rachel looked legitimately excited about the prospect of a $100K winner. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

Nor was Erin's trip to Rome on this brutal "Range Game" loss:

Would Bob Barker have asked how to say "That sucks" in Italian?

The Price is Right - 4/19/12 Episode

There is a famous YouTube clip from a The Price is Right episode, toward the end of the Bob Barker era, of a contestant with absolutely no idea what she's doing on "Ten Chances."

Even people who work for a living and don't watch the show know of this clip, one of the very few moments where Bob became noticeably upset with a contestant.

I bring this to your attention because of Kendra's performance today on "Bonkers." She did everything wrong - including constantly looking back to the crowd during a TIMED game - and yet...

My favorite part of this is Drew Carey, normally pretty affable with contestants, having to yell in desperation, "Put the paddle up there!" Even as I was watching this, I was writing my scathing critique of Kendra in my head.

And then she won despite, as Drew said, doing everything you're not supposed to do.

Drew didn't get pissy like Bob did, but he reminded Kendra of her luck every chance he got. And there were many chances, as Kendra got all the way to the Showcase (with a 30-60-90 on the wheel).

She won that, too, with an impressive $18,000 bid on a trip to Aspen, home gym and jetski.

What a start
Kendra's "Bonkers" performance - the first pricing game of the day - was part of a tremendous start to the show. In the next round, the item up for bid was a limited edition Star Wars-themed XBox 360...

(Model-bots not included)

...which Robert won with an exact bid of $650, allowing him to pocket $500 in cash straight out of Drew's pocket. Robert was pumped...

...and so was I when the next pricing game came out: Any Number. My favorite game! (I didn't make it the background to my blog for nothing.)

What did The Price is Right look like in 1972?

I stumbled across this clip on YouTube the other day - it's the first ever episode of The "New" Price is Right, taped in 1972.



A few observations:

* That music at the beginning... unbeatable. And then the strange way the music just ends after the fourth contestant is named.

* A lot of people are dressed up - it kinda looks like they're at church.

* Everyone is just sitting there at the beginning. There's no jumping, yelling, preening for the camera, nothing.

* Sandy trying to "come on down" before coming on down was a thing.

* The Price is Right theme: an ageless classic.

* The faceless model giving Bob Barker his microphone.

* And speaking of Bob... 49-year old Bob with an absolutely flawless intro. He may not be a perfect human being, but he is a legend in TV history for a reason.

* The way the lights go down as Bob starts talking. Bob, the contestants and the forthcoming prizes are THE show. That's it.

Compare it with how things look now: