Greedy or No Greedy?

As a game show nut, I am hooked on NBC's "Deal or No Deal." But I'm noticing something odd about my reaction to it. Normally, on a game show, you root for the contestant. If someone is working hard and using their knowledge and skill to amass a huge amount of winnings, you cheer for them. I'm noticing, however, that a lot of the time on "Deal or No Deal," my reaction is the opposite. Often I find myself hoping to see the contestant fall flat on their face.

Why? A few reasons. First, the game requires no skill whatsoever. No knowledge needed, you're not competing against anyone else, it's just you and the banker. As such, it's a win-win situation. No matter what, the folks who walk on that stage are gonna walk out with more money than they walked in with.

That said, I have not seen a SINGLE contestant who didn't get rediculously greedy. Someone with an offer on the table of 100,000 dollars who turns it down because there's a one-in-10 chance that their case has 750,000 gets NO sympathy from me. It was 100,000 bucks. More than I have earned in my entire life, basically. And they were just HANDING it to you. And you said no in the face of rediculous odds. Why? Not because you were confident in your abilities to play the game - the game is 100% chance. You said no because you were greedy and figured that the offer would go up even more. So when that next case opens up and it's the 750,000 one, and the offer suddenly gets busted down to under a grand, well, sorry, but you reap what you sew.

Last night, there was a woman who reached a point where the bank offered her nearly 200,000 dollars. Enough, she proclaimed, to pay off all of her student loans. And she turned it down. She got lucky, her next case was a small amount, and the offer went up to about 400 grand, and that's where she stopped. Bully for her. But it ticked me off to no end. She came on proclaiming that she wanted to earn enough to erase her debt, she was faced with just that option, and she went on. That, my friends, is just plain stupid.

In a game of chance, sometimes fortune favors the stupid. More often, however, the odds catch up with you. That's why watching "Deal or No Deal" has become somewhat of a cathartic experience - there's an exact moment where a contestant stops being a sympathetic figure who's trying to earn some cash, and starts being a greedy b*stard. And when that moment comes, you just watch and wait for the train to jump the tracks.

That may make me a bad person. But I can live with that. :)