Deal

Ok, so I don't know what cosmic forces were involved in engineering a situation where I watched the entirety of "Deal or No Deal" last night, but it happened so let's just move on.

If you haven't seen the show, I'm gonna skip explaining the intricacies of the format or the crucial points of the game.  Let's just say the show works because inevitably the contestants end up TURNING DOWN hundreds of thousands of dollars to often end up with a 4 or 5-digit figure. I know this.  And yet I cannot keep my contempt of last night's contestant under wraps.

First of all, her name is Margarita.  Nothing wrong with it in principle, but when someone like Howie Mandel gets his hand on a first name that also happens to be the name of an alcoholic beverage ... vomit.  But that's beside the point.

The real reason for my contempt is this woman's utterly delusional attitude that she sustained whilst screwing herself and her (apparently) very large and relatively poor family out of a lot of money.   Some key points about last night's episode:

• NBC has plenty of money to spend since they're not paying the writers so they put up 6 $1 million cases on the board instead of just 1 $1 million case.
• They also interviewed Margarita ahead of time and discovered that she would like to make enough money to buy her dad a new truck.  So NBC also put up a "Truck" case.  And this is an expensive f'ing truck.
• It has always been -- scratch that -- recently become Margarita's dream to learn how to fly a small plane.

So Margarita starts picking cases and she's doing well.  And since the board is so f'ing loaded that she sets records for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd offers (which are in the $100K, $200K and $300K range respectively).  In classic fashion she turns them all down.  This is all expected.  So let's fast forward to when her family actually starts telling her to take the deal.  This is always an interesting moment on the show because usually the family says "no deal" forever because, hell, it's not their money.  So you know it's kind of a big deal if even the family is saying "holy crap, this is a jack load of money, you cannot pass this up."  

This moment came with an offer close to $400K.  The family is screaming "DEAL!" but the truck and quite a few $1 million cases are still on the board so Margarita passes.  Well, kudos to the casting directors once again because Margarita proved to be a model participant (as far as NBC is concerned).  She dwindled her offer all the way down to below $100K.

Here's where my contempt comes in.  All the $1 million cases and the truck are now gone.  The offer is at $40K (compared to what once was ~$400K).  During Margarita's fall from riches, she's been going on and on about how she "knows in her heart" that there's a big figure in her case (which at this point could actually be $100K).  She's turned down so many huge offers, it seems likely at this point that she's just gonna go the whole way and pick her case over all the offers.  And I'm fine with that.  Margarita's been so damn bubbly about lucky she is in life and how happy she is, how much she loves her family and how lucky her whole family is, why not go the whole way and see if karma is really looking out for you and you picked a good case from the start?

I'll tell you why not.  Apparently because Howie's gonna throw in $15K worth of flying lessons on top of the $40K.  AND SHE TAKES THE DEAL!!  Let's recap:

• She's been offered hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Nah.
• The whole point of the show (according to her was to buy her dad a new truck).  She could have bought him 10 trucks assuming she took the $400K deal.
• She's gone on and on about how she's SURE her case is big and she's going all the way.

But she forgets about all that crap once Howie throws in some crappy flying lessons on top of a crappy $40K deal.  She has the balls to say "Thank you for making my dream come true" just before taking the deal.  "Thanks for making my dream come true!?"  What about your dad's dream of a new truck?  The dude is sitting right there in the audience and you've already fully f'd him over by passing on money that could have bought him a nice truck.  And now you f him again by taking some crappy deal that they drummed up specifically to tug at Margarita's own personal and selfish heart strings.  And that's it.

She essentially said "f my family and f my so called luck that I've been banking on.  I'm gonna learn how to fly some crappy small plane, bitches!"  And of course to cap it off, there was $100K in her case which would have been plenty of money to buy herself some lessons and buy her dad and a new truck and still have more than $40K left over.

Ugh.

Oh and to cap it off, this girl's from Arizona and I heard her doing a radio interview this morning.  Everyone was congratulating her on her great attitude!  What the hell!?  She was saying crap like "the experience was priceless" and she was so lucky to be chosen, that's all she could really ask for anyway.  Uh, no.  You actually could have asked for $400K and you could have got it.  AND THEN she goes on to say that her family is not very well off and for most of her family, it was their first time ever flying on a damn plane!  And she says THAT'S priceless. No, it's not!  Since your family is so damn poor and you were so lucky to have been chosen for the show, don't you think you sorta owe it to them to cash in on this once-in-a-lifetime experience as best you can?  Apparently not.  According to Margarita, flying on a plane and going through the roller coaster of the show is way better for her family than having Margarita walk with hundreds of thousands of dollars.  And the radio hosts heard all this and said things like "You're a special person" and "You have good karma.  Good things are going to happen to you."  No!  Good things already did happen for her and she pissed it away for some damn flying lessons and screwed her family in the process!

Am I the crazy one here?!  Isn't this girl TOTALLY unlikeable?

I guess I now remember why I never watch this show.