THEY'RE LUCKY THEY AREN'T ON "GOLD CASE"...:

You Think It’s Easy to Schlep Those Cases in Four-Inch Heels? (EDWARD WYATT, 2/13/08, NY Times)

For the 26 women who take the stage each week on the NBC hit game show, life is not all glamour and sequins and witty repartee with the host, Howie Mandel. At this taping in mid-January, for instance, there was the 14-hour workday, 8 ½ hours of which involved some or all of the models standing on an Arctic-like soundstage in short, short sleeveless dresses and four-inch heels.

The models are a popular part of this game show that “has no trivia, no stunts, no skill,” as Mr. Mandel put it. “The first time I heard about it, I thought, there’s no game.” One television critic, Phil Rosenthal of The Chicago Tribune, put it less delicately, calling the program an elaborate version of “How many fingers do I have behind my back?”

The game is played like this: A contestant chooses one of 26 suitcases, each worth an amount of money, from 1 cent to $1 million. Leaving that chosen case unopened, the contestant opens the remaining cases, a few at a time, and the amounts assigned to them are wiped off the board. Periodically a caller known as the banker and working for the producers offers the contestant an amount of money to stop playing and give up the sum in the originally selected case. The trick is, that amount might be $1 million — or 1 cent.

Despite having no contestant win the $1 million grand prize in two and a half years of production, “Deal or No Deal’ is an unqualified success.

...where everyone guesses right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2008 2:17 PM