“The Bank Job” Finale: Could You Steal £460,000?
The finale of Channel 4′s weeklong event game show The Bank Job aired this Saturday and came with a big twist. All other nights four contestants were narrowed to one, who went into the finale with the money they took from the vault. However, for the Saturday finale, two winners were crowned. A jackpot of £467,500 was available. How did they determine how the money was going to be given away? The classic Prisoner’s Dilema was brought back. British readers may know it as Share or Shaft. Americans may know it as Friend or Foe. Regardless, it asked the same question: could you steal a total of over £460,000 from a person standing inches away from you. For an American perspective, this is over $700,000.
Take a look at how it went below. I think that the Friend or Foe decision at the end came out of no where and felt tacked on to just do something with the two people left in the game, but it’s impossible to argue it was exciting. Each contestant has two cases…Cash or Trash. They’ll exchange cases. If both give each other cash, they split £467,500 and take home half each (over $350,000). If one gives Cash and the other Trash, the person who got the Cash will take home the entire £467,500 and the person who got Trash gets nothing. However, if both give Trash, neither gets a thing and the three losers from the day split the prize, each receiving over £150,000. What happened? You’ll be holding your breath.
[flv]http://www.flashgameshows.com/wordpress/videos/bankjobfinale.flv[/flv]
Video courtesy Channel 4 and Endemol.
So I do have issues with it, but was that exciting or what? The Bank Job had some issues, but most of it was due to the unnecessary decision to air the show live as opposed to taping it and ironing out some of the major kinks that severely hurt the show earlier in the week. It wasn’t bad, though, and I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing some new episodes.
Could you have done what they did? I couldn’t.
And just to top this off, remember UK game show prizes are tax-free. So $700,000 tax-free, which winds up as bigger than a regular US million-dollar prize.
It could hardly not be exciting at those stakes. Especially with the added kink of there being other contestants, who have got to know each other through Twitter over the week as well, with money at stake as well.
I agree that the prisoner’s dilemma didn’t really make sense here.
Ironically, I think they should have used something like, of all things, “Estate of Panic” (without the snakes and skeletons and whatnot).
Here’s what I would have done: in the third round, only the player who leaves with the most advances.
I’d have “given” the winner everything over 400K to start.
Among the 25 drawers, 1x100K, 2x50K, 4x25K, 8×12.5K, 10×0.
Play the game as before, with 2:00 on the clock. A correct answer earns a drawer and any money in it. The only caveat is that the player can only leave after finding a non-zero amount. If time runs out, the player loses everything.
In any case, any money the winner doesn’t leave the vault with gets split among the four eliminated contestants.
I was thinking of something similar:
Only the top player goes on after the third round- his bank starts with whatever he earned in the final night. The 25 boxes are set up by columns from left to right:
column 1- 4 25K, 1 0
column 2- 3 50K, 2 0
column 3- 2 75K, 3 0
column 4- 2 100K, 3 0
column 5- 1 BANK, 4 0
The finalist gets 1:30 on the clock. Whenever they get a question right, they pick a box from column 1- if it’s empty they have to stay in that column for the next pick and can’t leave. If they find money, they can either leave with that amount added to what they’ve earned in the final (which is taken out of the Bank total- giving whatever is left to the 4 eliminated players), or bin it and go to the next column. If they can get to the final column and find the BANK, they win it all. If they run out of time, they lose it all, including what they earned in the final, and the 4 eliminated players split the money.
I didn’t like the way they ended it- it made thematic sense a little (no honor among thieves), but it was too much of a deviation from the way the show had gone the whole week.
High Stakes Friend Or Foe, anyone?
Yep, totally reminds me of the infamous foe incident on season 2!!!!!
http://youtu.be/tmTosOSksMg
Granted it wasn’t the actual clip, but it is almost the same.
If we’re talking ITV, maybe Split or Steal from “GoldenBalls”
(anyone remember that one?)…
The boys were definitely way too greedy at the end, but it made for a great TV moment. I think this was the biggest-amount Prisoner’s Dilemma game in TV history, was it not? Even though that final game came out of nowhere, and shouldn’t exist in the next series, I loved the shocked expressions of the friends and families when George made the announcement about the eliminated finalists having a final shot at the cash.
Here are some other issues with the episode. All they did was cram 5 players in a normally 4-player main game. They could’ve extended the round clocks just a bit to adjust to the extra players in each round. I also think they shouldn’t do this show live next series, there were too many errors for them to risk it again. Too many awkward moments……..
Previous record was just over £200k on Shafted. That, too, ended with a double-steal.
Michael has said on Twitter that he could tell Darragh wasn’t going to share, and (after clearly anguishing about it as you can see on the clip – by his account, that’s the moment he figures he’s going with nothing) he opts to do unto Darragh as he (correctly) predicted Darragh would do unto him. Added bonus in that respect was knowing that three contestants with whom he had more sympathy would be getting the money.
You know, I agree it does feel tacked on, but it can also be rationalized with the admittedly rather thin theme of pulling off a bank heist. After the job is done, the two remaining thieves have to split the take. If they cooperate, they divvy it up and part ways. If one pulls a gun, he’s going to get it all. If they both pull guns, well, the money is still sitting there for the other accomplices to find later.
I could almost believe this is what they had in mind, if they’d been playing up the whole “robbing a bank” thing that the title of the show implies.
I’m not sure if the prisoner’s dilemma was the best way to go about things, but it sure made for a heart-pounding moment.
I’ve never understood having the Prisoner’s Dilemma in a game the way I’ve seen it done. The fact that contestants start with nothing to begin with makes it fairly pointless. You either pick Steal, in which case you get all or nothing, or you pick Share, in which case you get Half or nothing. Given those outcomes, I don’t see that there’s any reason to ever Share.
But then the tricky question is how do you fix it? My recent take is giving both players a stake to begin with, that they only ever risk if they go for a Steal. (Therefore, even if one person gets the majority stolen from them, they still keep that original small stake since they picked Share). It would make stealing an actual decision at that point; you’re risking something guaranteed.
Thoughts on that approach? Or does someone else have a better solution?
Just to make sure I understand this, it would go something like this:
Prize: £500,000
“Initial stake”: £25,000 each
Both choose share: each gets £275,000
One chooses share, one chooses steal: Steal gets £500,000, share gets £25,000
Both choose steal: each gets £0.
If I understand your suggestion correctly, what you’re suggesting is the lesser-known game of Chicken (a.k.a. Hawk-Dove).
To be pedantic for a moment, technically there is no “fixing” the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The Bank Job is about as close to “fixing” it as you can get without changing it to the point where by definition, it’s no longer the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
That said, I do think Hawk-Dove would at least be a far more interesting approach than Prisoner’s Dilemma, which we’ve seen so many times on several different game shows that it’s becoming a cliche.
Prisoner’s dilemma is an unfair situation to begin with… 2/3 possible outcomes are negative in some way, so knowing that, it seems foolish to ever select “friend.” At least the runners-up got to keep it and it wasn’t a flimsy excuse for the show to get away with not giving out the money.
You don’t want to overcomplicate the game, Cash or Trash does make it simply riveting. I posted it on the YouTube video of it, but I would’ve done something like Red or Black’s penultimate game:
—
10 vaults or so, 1′s got that heaping load of cash inside, imagine the sight of it. Questions are asked on the buzzer with the two facing each other. Win a battle and you win a vault. Pick the cash and you win the lot, pick an empty vault and the sweat continues.
—
I’d rather have a battle of trivia and luck which is what’s it been the whole time rather than trust.
I agree. A shortened version of the main game for two players, or a modified version for a single winner, definitely seems the way to do it.
Seems like I would most likely throw my Saturday game to ensure I’m in the lobby. I’d have a better chance of getting money that way.
If they do decide to keep this part in the second series or not it should make for an interesting final. people might go out early becausethey think they’d have a better shot of the money outside the vault then inside.
“Share among the three of them” not “share between them” dammit!
Still, what a fun and surprising ending.