Well folks, by now everyone has seen the 3rd special tonight, and indeed…….

IT HAPPENED……….AGAIN!

What’s remarkable is that tonight’s show was kind of a letdown compared to the previous two……until the ending, and wow….WHAT AN ENDING!

In addition, we did have our first big Showcase Showdown money win at the wheel for these specials, that was also pretty sweet!

Many games are set up so that it’s a little bit more difficult to win than other times simply because of budgetary concerns. While they aren’t allowed to technically “force” losses they can simply make games harder to win and hope the contestant follows a particular tendency in the game to lose… If the contestant wins, oh well – after all, every game can theoretically be won.

In fact, for the other $1,000,000 games the rest of the $1,000,000 spectaculars – some of them were easier and some were more difficult than the One Away game we saw on the first one.

Steve, you must understand that the producers set up pricing games in a variety of difficulties from Very Easy, to Very Hard, depending on your point of view, I guess. But no matter what, every game is winnable, no matter what the difficulty, it’s all in the hands of the contestant.

BTW, when Adam won, he actually utilized a prime Showcase technique that more contestants should think of employing. It’s called “Shaving” a bid. If you initially bid too high on a showcase with danger of going over, you trim, or “Shave” it down to more reasonable number. Whether it results in a win is unknown until the results are revealed, but more often than not, your chances are greatly increased.

I love reading the reactions of the people who saw this clip on YouTube… It’s a dead-even split between OMGBESTPRICEMOMENTEVAR and OMGRIGGED. Now, I’m not going to point any fingers here, this is all speculation, but what if it were rigged?

I’ve been thinking lately about the possibility of how one could rig the games on the price is right. Not necessarily by planting a contestant (like the million-dollar winner, in theory), but by adjusting the difficulty of the games. This came about when a friend of mine went on TPIR and didn’t win a car playing “Stack the Deck.” (Bizarrely ironic, methinks.) Part of the difficulty of her winning came when she only won one of the three free numbers, by mispricing two items. What made this hard was that (if I remember correctly), among one of the pairs of items to price was one item worth $7.99, and another worth $9.99… It’s hard to say whether the price goes on one item or the other when the prices are so high, and the gap is so small. Almost all of the audience agreed on her three choices, two of which were wrong, and not by much. Part of me wants to say that that particular game was set up slightly in favor of the house (or some other card-related metaphor, there’s so many to choose from). Of course, this could just all be sour grapes over a friend not winning.

*PLEASE NOTE that I have no statistical proof to support what you will read in the following paragraphs. Remember, this is all speculation.*
But lately I’ve started to think about the Showcases. Most contestants in the daytime version, as far as my memory goes, will bid an even $1000 interval on a showcase, or sometimes tack on an extra $500. IF that’s statistically true, the producers can avoid giving out double-showcase wins by making sure all of the total values end with $251-499 or $751-999, as they will not be within $250 of the frequently-guessed bids. For larger showcases and primetime showcases, I’ve noticed (and again, no statistical proof here) that contestants will bid in $5000 increments. Ducking a DSW here is easier, since there is a larger gap for a total price to fall in.

Let’s apply this to the MDS in question. Erica’s showcase cost $45,554. Now that there’s a $1000 allotment for showcases, we can see that that actually falls very neatly between $45,000 (the $5k increment) and $46,000… coincidence? Of course, this is thwarted when Erica bids $42,700, not on the $5k-increment plan. An even $45k would have landed her the DSW. And when Adam wins a showcase worth $84,355, which really (a) is a pretty high number to randomly pick out, especially with fancy cars that you know have a “high price (but you have no idea how high)”, and (b) falls just under $85k, which could have made for a very dramatic overbid (by only $600 and change), that’s when you know you’ve got one amazing fluke right there.

So what does this all boil down to? I say that IF it were rigged, it was actually rigged in favor of Erica (or whoever would have bid on the first showcase), and it might have even been rigged slightly against Adam. Interesting twist, eh?

Please bear in mind once again that I have no statistical data to back any of this up, this is all speculation based on personal observations and a side of sour grapes. Please, feel free to tear apart any part of this theory, I might even join in with you guys myself. Just know that I am in no way asserting that this is the ultimate and forever-binding codex of the Million-Dollar Showcase Scandal.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the game for $1M. After the contestant didn’t win it on One Away, Drew was like “Ok, sorry, you didn’t win $1M but now you can try and win this POS worth nothing near that!” It didn’t work on some levels for me.

I hear a foreign car is going to make an appearance on Price sometime in the future…

the only other choices are the XLR or the viper, because of stubborn roger not accepting foreign cars!

I personally liked the $1,000,000 game better than the wheel bonus – either you can tell right away if the contestant can even have a chance at the $1.00 on the bonus spin, or if they get the $1M then it takes away all the suspense the rest of the show, or if they have the $1M spin at the end of the show it takes away from the showcase win at the end of the show. However, some of the $1M games had unique elements to them for the other MDS’s.

Drew was sick the entire week of MDS tapings – he was recovering from a strep throat and drank tea, coffee, water, or soup along with cough drops during the stopdowns. Drew was in complete disbelief when Adam won the $1,000,000 throughout the credit roll. You could tell when he stumbled reading Adam’s showcase ARP.

Anyway… It’s pretty common for contestants on Spectaculars to miss their Showcases by, like, $25,000. So the new $1,000 range for a Double Showcase Win doesn’t really do much.

In retrospect, I never did like the idea of the million dollars being winnable only through the Showcase Showdown. That’s too luck-based. As Bob Barker said on the first episode in 1972, the show is based on the pricing of merchandise, with big rewards for smart shoppers. So any gimmick to liven up The Price is Right should harken to the show’s roots. And the $1,000,000 thing they did for One Away did just that. :)

Was Drew Carey really sick? I thought he sounded bored…he was less excited in this episode than he has been in the daytime recently.

The One Away game was an interesting way to play the Classic Million Game. Very suspenseful. It actually requred some thought by the contestant.

If they kept the $Million for a perfect $1.00 bonus spin (and only did it if you had $1.00 on the first spin only, then on the bonus spin), the odds would be very low in getting the million — 400 to 1 odds per player if my math holds up, which amounts to once every 6 shows. If you did it that way, you could keep that excitement going all show long.

By the way, TPIR is way more watchable than when Bob Barker used to host it. It is good to see Syd’s name appearing as the lead Executive Producer at the end. It is more about the contestants now, and less about the host — which is as it should be.

As for the $1,000,000 idea, I agree with a prior post – I believe $1,000 is very liberal. I would like to see that tightened up a bit, so that it isn’t a million dollar giveaway fest.

Just my opinion. I didn’t mind the million dollar game idea at all, but as I was watching, I still didn’t think that that million dollar spin was a bad idea.

Nice done either way.

$700 (u in 60)
$1500 (500 per)
$4000 (1000 per)
$10000 (2000 per)

$2,500
$5,000
$10,000

Total
$44,700

Amne$ia: I didn’t see this, I was still abuzz over the Million-Dollar Win. But from the reviews I’ve heard, I should check it out, and see if I agree.

1 vs. 100: Say what you want about the writing (I still think the questions were a balanced mix of easy and difficult), but you can’t deny they have done most things right for Season 2, the set, the money tree allowing for deeper games and more tension, and Bob was great! There has to be a Season 3 in this show’s future, it’s just too good of game!