Archive for the ‘Deal or No Deal’ Category

It seems you animals just can’t get enough of the Captain covering Deal or No Deal so here we are again! Howie, in his bald majesty, struts around like a drunk Art Carney and laments about how wonderful his job is, leaving out the stories of those hungry years when he slept in OJ Simpson’s guest house. Before too long we march the models out like shock troops to the riot and start the show.

This week’s contestant is Dimitra Apostalobulas (from the Greek word Apostalo meaning ‘Show Me The Filo‘) of Chicago. Dimitra is 32 years, a first generation American and like a lot of her fellow native Americans she has recently been fired, losing her copier sales job because she sucked at it. So with her lucky Greek Kobinskini beads she picks case 22 as her lucky case and we begin.

She quickly starts off doing well, revealing $500, $5, $100, $200,000, $200 and $750 in her first cyclone of picks. The banker, instructing her to “Call him Zeus” offers her $33,000 but she NoDeals that with the quickness and we move on.

Her second round reveals heartbreak as $500,000 and $1,000,000 are consecutive picks. But following that are $25, $75,000 and $1,000 so all is not lost. The banker offers $27,000 and we get to meet her family. Her younger brother George is a portly, swarthy oaf of a man. Then we have the mom who calls herself The Mom, so there you go and finally Angela, her older sister. We’re then introduced to the fine tradition of breaking plates to celebrate. Opa! they cry. Opa, for those that don’t know, is the Greek equivalent of Yee-Haw. Dimitra NoDeals faster than Hermes and we’re on our way.

The disturb-o-fest continues as Dim reveals $50,000, $25,000 and $50 (which incited her brother to break some plates). Finally she picks $10,000 and the banker calls down to offer her $54,000. Before she gets a chance to decide, her mother now unveils another Greek tradition for wishing luck on one another – spitting in someone’s face. She demonstrates on Dimitra to the combined groans of Howie, the audience and the entire fucking civilized world. Dimitra decries that “the Greek gods were defeated!” and NoDeals. I’ll pretend to understand what she means like everyone else and move on.

We get more gross-out moments when after $10, $100,000 and $1 are revealed the banker brings a girl down with a vial of his own spit. Like WTF? Who’s writing this shit? Anyway, the offer is $77,000 and Dimitra NoDeals.

She shoots herself in the foot a bit as she reveals $400 and $750,000 getting an offer of only $44,000 from a self-admitted happy banker. But mommy tells her to NoDeal so she does. Then she reveals a paltry $300 inciting a group hug and more plate breaking as well as as $91,000 offer. But with $200,000 and $400,000 still available, she NoDeals again telling Howie that she “came to play.”

The girl holding the next case she picks asks to borrow her Komboskini good luck bracelet. This review is starting to look like an Ikea catalogue. Something in that voodoo bracelet works, however, as the penny is revealed and sparks plate breaking and the first sighting of the Bartokomous Dance of Joy in over 20 years. The banker offers her $109,000 but she NoDeals.

Three cases left Dimitra reveals $300,00 cutting her safety net in half. Just $75, $5,000 and $400,000 remain. The banker tries to pressure her out telling her “Goodbye” and offers her $95,000. Her family tells her to deal. Will she buckle? Like a fucking belt, boy howdy. We find out her next pick would’ve been only $75 and would’ve netted her a $210,000 offer. Her case ended up containing $400,000 so she done fucked up pretty bad. You could see in her eyes that all her hopes of locking her mom up in a convalescence home and running off with her roller derby superstar girlfriend were quickly fading as her family closed in around her both figuratively and literally.

When you fuck with Zeus you either get the beard or the lightning. Sorry Dimitra Apostalobulas, this time you got the bolt. Opa!

Last week I brought you the story of the fat redneck Brooks Leach and his fantabulous journey from brief 15 minutes of fame to nowheresville. If you need a reminder, click here. In fact, click there anyway because someone named Layna Leach left a comment to that post about how, as a journalist, I lack ethics. Newsflash: I am not a journalist nor do I claim to have ethics. Ethics stop us from pointing out the obvious, specifically that Brooks Leach is a tremendous doughboy with neither the smarts nor testicular fortitude to win. But that’s old news, we’ve got lamer fish to fry.

Tonight on Deal or No Deal we are thrilled to have with us Will Cockrell, an auctioneer and horsefucking enthusiast. Alright, that’s not fair. I used a animal fucking joke last week and the police never indicted Mr. Cockrell is anything criminal nor did they ever apprehend the one-legged mental institute escapee witnessed by Mr. Cockrell to have committed the alleged crime. But Will Cockrell is nonetheless standing before us hoping we love him and that he wins lots and lots of money.

When he’s not molesting auctioning livestock or practicing his team roping (fancy redneck talk for lassoing) he’s married and has two kids. Howie doesn’t let him get too far with his fancy auctioneer-fasttalking and forces him to choose a damn case and get on with the game. He grabs number 23 and we’re away.

His first pic is $750,000 which only fills me with glee as we all know Captain Obvious loves the banker very, very much. He also unveils $500, $50, $50,000, $300,000 and $200 in his first run. The banker comes back with his first offer of $17,000. Will wants to build a barn and buy a couple more horses, however, so he NoDeals.

Hitting on women in front of a national television audience and, as we’re about to discover his wife as well, he continued on to reveal $750, $500,000, $25, $0.01 and the cool $1,000,000. That’s a lot of big numbers knocked out quickly, go banker! The offer comes down for $10,000 and Will’s support corner is revealed. Eric Redbird is a fellow auctioneer and Mr. Cockrell’s “newest best friend.” What the fuck, are you twelve? Are you blood brothers too? Gonna go home and play Nintendo after the show? It just confirms what I said last week: the south is full of retards and deserves to be nuked. Also present is his wife Tina who brought his favorite lasso and Ted Nuce, a champion bull rider from the mid-eighties and most likely gay cowboy. So with his corner of sub literate mooks complete, he wells together all his emotion and NoDeals, further continuing the rodeo references and embarrassing yelping.

He pops open cases containing $5,000, $10,000, $300 and $75,000 and also shows off his lassoing skills on Howie who, as usual, looked halfway between frightened and mortified as another southern yokel shows off their idiocy in a real physical manner. The banker comes up with a $29,000 offer which gets NoDealed. We continue with the cheesy rodeo references and I actually grew horns and bucked around a bit as a result.

$1,000, $200,000 and $1 gets an offer of $34,000 and another NoDeal. Then an impressive duo of $400 and $100 raises the offer to $48,000. Going once, twice… NoDeal. $10 brings the offer up to $72,000 and his kids beg him to NoDeal. His wife, however thinks that it would help alleviate their worries – all legal or horse-related I’m sure. But gay cowboy Ted Nuce comes through and convinces our hapless auctioneer to NoDeal and continue the show as well as their covert affair.

He screws up and pops open the case with $100,000 which drops the offer to $61,000. The banker puts out the ultimatum to “put up or shut up, mister auctioneer” and in the end he chooses shut up and takes the deal. They play the hokey pokey with case numbers and it turns out his case had the $400,000 in it which means mister rodeo just lost $339,000 and that could’ve bought a whole lot of horses and pudding, for him to enjoy with Ted Nuce and Eric Redbird. As the crowd applauded you could hear the slow sucking sound of his wife and children losing all respect for him.

Next week we’ll meet Karen Kulcsar from Jersey, a self-admitted “ultimate football mom” who gives the word crazy a brand new definition. She’s loud, she’s relatively unstable and oh, did I mention the air horn?Next week, I promise.

After a week long laptop-related hiatus, Captain Obvious has returned for some Deal or No Deal goodness. It remains the most consistent show out there, delivering more for my entertainment hour than any other show. Howie isn’t what we in the industry call a powerhouse nor is the premise original or captivating, but there’s still something about the show that incites chuckle after chuckle as these knuckleheads are paraded in front of us to make bad and badder decisions regarding potential money.

Our celebretard this week is Brooks Leach, a fat man with a big plan to defy the man and leave with his head in his hands and no cash in his hand. He succeeds beyond his wildest, fattest dreams.
Our charming interview segment introduces us to this gem of a southern gentleman. Brooks Leach hails from Mount Vernon, Arkansas. He loudly confesses that he “loves to party and loves beer.” His impressive girth is, apparently, thanks to eating poorly and drinking a lot and not from a disciplined life of exercise. So I lose my first bet to Mrs. Obvious, this isn’t a trend. Brooks has also sworn off long term relationships, having become single recently. And before you start lining up outside this big man’s door, ladies, you should also know he owns his own company and sleeps with a Doberman. Yes, that’s right. Our fat, drunk hero is also a self-employed dogfucker who shuns commitment. I can almost hear the faint cries of the throngs of women aching to be his next trophy bitch.

And you can almost hear the gears in his thick skull equate one million dollars with one million PBRs. It’s like fucking Christmas up in the hizzey. He swaggers around like he’s drunk, rambling and firing off witless witticisms to Howie who is looking more and more uncomfortable the longer he stands next to Mt. Gonnadrinkanother. Brooks chooses case #17 as his own and we’re under way.
He unveils $25, $5, $400, $75, $300,000 and $5,000 in his first go-around, much better than I predicted. The banker, my bestest friend in the whole world comes back with a lifetime of foamy, bottled goodness for our portly putz… ROOT beer. We all lollerskate a bit and he turns it down, no doubt only because it’s root beer and not the real deal. Afterall, Superman has Kryptonite and this fat man has beer. But not root beer. No deal.

His next round is equally impressive, unveiling $750, $500, $200, $100,000 and $10,000 netting him a banker offer of $66,000 but he’d have to be as dumb as he looks to take it and he doesn’t, which starts to convince me he might know what he’d doing afterall. Little did I know he’d soon prove me wrong. He goes on to uncase $50, $50,000, $25,000 and $1 getting a tidy sum of $119,000 but with $200,000, $400,000, $500,000, $750,000 and the cool million still in play it’s just too early to pack his saddlebags and ride on out so he flips the cover over the button and NoDeals it. His sister, one of his appointed supporters reveals he still sleeps with a nightlight on. You taking notes, ladies? This one’s SINGLE.

So he keeps on trucking, knocking out $400,000, $1,000 and the penny and seeing a hefty $218,000 offer come down the pipe. This is where he fucks it up. He should realize that the game is nothing but luck and common sense. He’s danced around revealing really big numbers for the most part and that luck simply cannot hold out for anyone save a Jedi. Or the Pope. Or Darth Pope. But this ginormous unitard just can’t imagine this Old Country Buffet ever running out of potatoes or good fortune so he NoDeals and keeps the show running.

Straight into the ground. Two cases. $200,000 and the million, just like that. And just like that, the offer tanks to $152,000 but STILL this jackadope NoDeals, thinking somehow he can turn it around like some ice cream cone. There’s nothing but cool, creamy failure on the other side, tubby.
One case later he’s knocked out $750,000 leaving only $500,000, $75,000, $300, $100 and $10. The banker in his infinite wisdom and handsomeness drops the offer to $73,000 which our hard-headed and stubborn protagonist NoDeals, of course. And then, just like other terminally ill people experience a sudden upswing before the inevitable fall he uncases $75,000 to raise the offer to $85,000 and then, subsequent to rejecting that offer and uttering his most honest statement of being “a butt,” $300 to get his last, best chance offer of $147,000.

For those keeping score we had $500,000, $100 and $10 remaining. My god, man. Take the fucking money and go buy yourself a haircut and liposuction. But of course not. He NoDeals and then immediately unearths the $500,000, torpedoing any chance at real money. The banker offers him $50 to get his fat ass off the show, he NoDeals it and chooses to take what’s in his case. And what’s in his case?

Ten bucks. Just enough for nine items off McDonalds dollar menu. And you know it would be nine double cheeseburgers and no parfaits, salads or small diet cokes. He rejoices in the way only a drunk fat man can and we watch him waddle down the hallway in some sort of loser parade in which he is the grand marshal.

Farewell, Brooks Leach. You were fun to watch sweat, even more fun to watch lose and the fattest thing on TV tonight.

When we last joined Bobby Howie and company, Myra Laing was about to choose her next case with only 4 cases remaining. Our Grandma with the golden bucket went ahead and chose a case that contained only $1, leaving $200, $400 and $400,000 to be discovered. The offer from the banker came down for $83,000 and after much old-lady pacing and at the behest of her gaggle of daughters we accepted the deal. Her next pick would have found the $200 and the offer would have increased to $115,000 but her next pack from there would have unearthed the $300,000 so she did and didn’t make a good decision. Good that she got something, bad that she could’ve gotten a little more. Her case, it turns out, contained the $400 so bully for her. Bye grandma, take your retarded bucket of twelve thousand pictures with you back to the retirement village. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.

That fish is named Peter Shine, a cop from NYC. He quickly establishes himself as the alpha male and emasculates Howie in front of all the hookers girls. He wants Howie and everyone else for that matter to refer to him as Shine Box, partly because he used to shine shoes when he was younger and also because that was his nickname at fat camp. In the audience is his wife and son and in his support pit are his partner and buddies from the force. It’s so refreshing to see a married man comfortable enough with his bisexuality to bring his lover on the show and have him stand beside him in a show of solidarity. He’s here, he’s queer and we’d better get used to it.

Petey’s excellent adventure was quickly derailed as he unveiled the one million dollar case three cases in. But that was alright by this boy in blue, he kept persevering. He NoDeal’d on offers of $11,000, $29,000 and $91,000 as he blew through cases like they were unarmed pedestrians on a routine traffic stop. He flinched when he revealed the $300,000 but the next two cases contained only $10,000 and $750 so the banker, undoubtedly afraid for his driving record offered up $136,000 but with a twist, too. Down the walkway came a woman straight out of a Robert Palmer video with an unnumbered steel briefcase in her arms. It was a bonus, straight from the bottom of the banker’s cold, dark heart. One dozen donuts. From now on and probably for all eternity I now am siding with the banker. He’s my kind of people.

Shine Box deliberates for a commercial break and then comes back to NoDeal it. Take that, banker! I personally apologize on Peter’s behalf, by the way. The banker didn’t deserve that disrespect. So Mr. Shine has to go show off by picking $200 and $50 right in a row, bringing up an even loftier offer of $195,000. You could see his wife spending it in her head but he figured he had six cases left and only one under $75,000 so he might as well keep going, if only for another case or two. Hooray!

Celebrations ended quickly as he revealed $200,000 and the offer dropped to $177,000. The cases remaining had $25, $75,000, $100,000 and $750,000 so he had to go for it. After all, he’s a brutish thug after my best friend the banker’s money. His wife, obviously the brains behind the marriage suggested the case that ended up containing $25 which of course drove the audience batshit insane. Shine Box did the splits as several people died in the ensuing riots. Once the commercial break was over and order restored, the banker’s biggest offer tonight came down: $261,000. Oooooh what a conundrum! With nothing under $75,000 remaining and still the three-quarters of a million up on the board how could his officer resist? Well, not at all.

His next pick brought doom as he eliminated the $750,000 case. I actually audibly called this one, I just had a feeling it was gonna happen. The banker, my buddy, came back with a much lower offer of $144,000. Stubborn lil’ jackass NoDealed and asked if he could open the next case himself. Far be it from Howie to deny an overzealous clown suicide so bounding up to his fate went Shine Box to reveal $400,000 and his last chance at anything over $100,000. Go Peter!

Ooh a commercial for The Office! I’ll be reviewing that on Thursday as well as an all new episode of Deal or No Deal where apparently sisters get to compete for $2,000,000.

Back at the ranch Peter goes balls in and has to make the decision of whether to accept the new offer of $83,000 or move on to do the switcharoo. He moves on and decides to keep his case instead of swapping it for the last remaining standing girl. Time for the big reveal!

We open the case and our officer of the law has landed himself a cool $100,000. Better than the last offer, far worse than the $260K he could’ve gotten. But in the end justice prevails and my new best friend the banker saves a dime or two. I’ll see y’all Wednesday for Lost and Top Chef!

Myra Laing came up with a little gold bucket. Plopping it down on the podium she greeted Howie and the rest of the world with enthusiasm and gusto. Grandma was in the house and ready to win herself a cool million!

“What’s in the bucket?” we all thought. Pills? Butterscotch candies? Her teeth? Someone else’s teeth? Turns out it was photographs of her relatives, all twenty thousand of them. Whenever it would be her turn to pick a case this bucket of pics would be delved into, plucking from it one picture with a smiling face on the front, number on the back. Her first pick, and the case that she was going to keep by her side until the bitter end, was case number 4. From there out, however, it was a wild ride.

Myra knocked out a lot of numbers both big and small. $0.01 here, $200,000 there. Three of her four daughters cheered on, screaming and jumping as their mom got that much closer to the big payoff – for her and them, if not a little delayed. She alluded to her fourth daughter living in England with her son-in-law who was currently fighting in Iraq. I’m assuming he’s part of the army but maybe he’s just like Russel Crowe, fighting ’round the world.

So guess who shows up as a surprise for dear ol’ grandma? Yeah, like you didn’t NBC that coming a mile away. It’s the missing daughter! Huzzah! Anyhoo, grandma continues to eliminate cases left and right with reckless abandon. Oops, there’s goes $750,000. Oops, there goes $1million. Yeah. Offers from the banker plummeted to a dismal $17,000 but towads the top of the hour granny got some steam behind her and surged ahead to come down to 8 cases remaining with $300,000 still in the hunt.

What will happen? Join us on Monday to find out, one Battlestar and one Heroes away.

The banker called and he wants us all packed and out of his house by the end of the month.

Nicole Cuglewski, the Polish hostess for the Cleveland Cavaliers went head to head with Bobby, er Howie next to her tonight on Deal or No Deal. With her family and, erm, dentist in her band of supporters she quickly knocked out the low amounts leaving $200, $300 and then nothing between those are six and seven figures other than $10,000. Dr Claw, or the banker rather offered her $19K, $70K, $90K, $170K and then $162K before Nicole picked case number one, revealing $300. With only 5 cases left the banker had no choice but to come back with an impressive offer of $222,000. She made her little whimpering orgasm noises while her band of Polish brethren urged her to take it. Faced with the Deal or No Deal she hemmed and hawed, exclaiming oh my gawwwsh.

So she decided to go for it. Then she further cornered itself into the nerdhole by relating that at the end of polkas people chant “One More Time!”

One more time indeed. Dad’s lucky number 17 brought $200,000 leaving our poor Polish milkmaid with $200, $10,000, $400,000 and the cool million. The banker pooped a little when he came back with his next offer of $247,000. The Polish corner deliberated as if they were the ones playing and not just riding her coattails. Again, they urged her to take it while the studio audience chanted “One More Time!”

She was just about to take the deal when Howie tried to talk her out of it. We got to sit on the edge of our seats while she hovered over the button like it was a public toilet at the Taste of Chicago. Then she acquiesced and took it, the pansy. Turns out her next pick would’ve gotten her an offer of half a million. If she had turned that down the last case had $10,000 and hers had $400,000. So in the end the polack lost $153,000 for being a spineless, short-sighted dullard.

The lesson we learned? Never trust the Polish with your financial investment decisions and your family’s advice is always wrong, 100% of the time.

So tonight Anita English got closer to the one million dollar prize than anyone else on Deal or No Deal. The audience whooped and hollared as our black heroine tried to stick it to the man and his evil devil money. It really made for good TV, we were hooked from start to finish. But seriously, at least give the banker a silhouette like Dr Claw from Inspector Gadget. Adds an ominous overtone to what is otherwise a waiting game to see how much longer we have to wait for Howie Mandel to put a surgical glove over his head. Or was he the one who smashed watermelons?

So Anita goes home with $313,000 instead of the $1 that was in the case next to her. Yes, dramatic reality game show television wins as her next choice would’ve eliminated the one million from the game, leaving her with $1 or $50. So good for Anita, it could’ve been so much worse. You could’ve been on 1 vs 100 with Bob Sagat!