What were my options?

I can drag this out for a while. Even while couch ridden, I wouldn't watch Deal or No Deal, but I can talk about it at length. The game show originated in the Netherlands, but was imported to the United States after brilliant television executives finally identified the flaw in the previous prime time game show success, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Namely, the central question of the show was too difficult for American audiences to grasp. Deal or No Deal solves this problem by incorporating both possible responses in the question, while, and this demonstrates the true genius of the executives, remaining monosyllabic. Once the theory had been laid down, scientists only needed to add a heavy sprinkling of long-legged models without speaking parts, and the magic was born. Initial prototyping somehow oddly included weird facial hair, long spurned by the networks for its orgy origins, but scientists were unable to correct this flaw before release to the public.

Altogether these things added up to NBC's most popular television show for the network last year averaging 15 million viewers per episode. That's right, on average 1 in 20 Americans were watching this current nadir of cultural performance.

The premise of the show is so basic, so empty headed, that it has made a good candidate for analysis by economists, a group of people with unwavering devotion to the idea that human motivations are discernible.

In conclusion, if you watch this show, you and I are over. I mean over.





I had the artists in the marketing department work this up for me the other day. There is a sad little boy constantly bemoaning whatever it is that happens to him. I had it printed out poster size and affixed to the wall of his cubicle. I don't expect him to stop complaining, but at least I can laugh a little bit now. I think we all can.