Contestants Becoming Ill Mid-Game

[Jeremy Nelson]

This is something totally off kilter, and I\'m not sure if it\'s ever happened- I know people have had to postpone defending a championship because of pregnancy or illness, but what happens if a person has to get rushed to a hospital mid game for some reason or another?

 

Here\'s my example. We\'re midway through Double Jeopardy. Player A, the champion, has $22,000. Player B has $7,200. Player C is sitting pretty with $-1,200. Let\'s strike Player C with the hospital visit, since more often than not, their only effect on the game at this point is keeping Player B from preventing a lock game. 

 

I know this is all speculative (unless someone has a copy of the rules readily available), but what happens? Are Player A and B awarded anything? Is the episode scratched and replayed with a replacement player? Would Player C be invited to play again once they\'re well?

 

Just wondering.

[Matt Ottinger]

In the recorded history of game shows, going back to Professor Quiz in 1936, has this ever been an issue?

 

We may have officially run out of things to talk about.

[BrandonFG]

There was that Sale of the Century contestant that broke out in hives after a balloon drop when she won that Mercedes... 

 

Seriously, would fainting spells count? That\'s about the closest I could think of.

[Jay Temple]

It never happened mid-show, but I know there were instances where a family on Family Feud couldn\'t make the next taping. (In the one that I remember clearly, a team member was sick.) They brought them back at the next taping. I think it\'s enough to say that a good producer will have a plan in place.

[WarioBarker]

The Price Is Right had an incident that may or may not count (neither the incident nor resolution occurred on-air) -- on June 9, 2010 (Golden-Road recap thread here), one of the first four called down (Rhonda) fainted in Contestant's Row during either the second game or the third One-Bid round. When she came to, she told the staff she didn't feel well enough to continue playing, so her sister Janet was brought down to finish the show for her. (Janet won her way up, but lost One Away and the second Showcase Showdown.)

Other than that, nothing comes to mind, but...

In the recorded history of game shows, going back to Professor Quiz in 1936, has this ever been an issue?

The odds of this situation having never arisen in the past 77 years are astronomical.

[TLEberle]

On one of the more recent episodes of The Cube a contestant managed to injure herself while jumping up and down in celebration of a victory. She decided to abandon her game at that point (I think she had ten or twenty thousand pounds to that point), and get taken to hospital to have her leg scanned.

From reading Trebekistan, and various accounts, I would think that if you\'re sick mid-game you were sick before going on and should have removed yourself from the pool that day or you tough it out until the game is over. I know that at various points over the last couple of weeks there was no amount of money you could throw at me to where I could stand up straight, hold a signaling button and play the game. I wanted to lay out, wait for my fever to break and try to pull in a radio station on my alarm clock.

[Fedya]

I would think that if you\'re sick mid-game you were sick before going on and should have removed yourself from the pool that day or you tough it out until the game is over.

It\'s possible to feel and look perfectly fine only for something awful to stike suddenly like an aneurysm or heart attack. Consider the case of actor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Shawn#Death\'>Dick Shawn

[J.R.]

Wasn\'t there a Jeopardy contestant in the 80s who fainted during Final Jeopardy?

[TLEberle]

Yes. He was roused during a tape stop and things kept rolling.

[BrandonFG]

Here\'s another one that just crossed my mind. A Dog Eat Dog contestant was taken to the hospital after going unconscious trying to hold his breath underwater...

 

http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/reality-contestant-passes-out-during-stunt-286.php\'>Source

[TLEberle]

Here\'s another one that just crossed my mind. A Dog Eat Dog contestant was taken to the hospital after going unconscious trying to hold his breath underwater...

I wonder how they would have handled a 2-2 tie in the final.

(Survivor contestants are medically evacuated from the game at a shocking pace, and Amazing Racers have been pulled out too. I think that if a contestant has to withdraw midgame that you\'d continue with the remaining players and the evacuee would have to come back again if he can.

[Brig Bother]

I was actually in the audience for an episode of the BBCs Beat the Pack when a contestant fainted one question in, they just decided to start the show again with an alternate who was two minutes away from being sent home. That guy apparently would get to play in a later recording.


I know, cool story bro.

[JMFabiano]

Not being \"ill\" per se, but wasn\'t there the guy who injured his foot after winning a game on Whew?

[pyrfan]

There was a contestant named Gee on \"Password Plus\" in 1980 who started near the end of the show on Tuesday. His celebrity partners were Lucille Ball and Dick Martin. He won his first game with Lucy on Wednesday\'s show. When Thursday\'s show started, Allen Ludden made a reference to back problems that Gee was having. Gee won his second game but only got $200 in Alphabetics with Dick Martin. They went back to the main set, where Allen introduced a new contestant, and then they went to commercial. When the show returned, Gee was gone due to the back problems, and Allen said that Gee would be back at a later date, when he was feeling better. They introduced another new contestant and then flipped a coin to see who would have the first option. Gee did return a few weeks later, with Betty White and John Astin, and the producers let him play that Alphabetics over again.

 

Later that year, by the end of the Friday show of the Susan Richardson/Bowzer week, two new contestants had played to a $100 tie, which would be broken next week. (Coincidentally, the next celebs would be Lucille Ball and Dick Martin.) On Monday, Allen brought in one of Friday\'s contestants and explained that the other was unable to return due to a \"family health problem\" and that she would come back to the show as soon as she could. They introduced a new opponent for the returnee, and they started a new game from scratch. The returning player did get to keep the $100 she won on Friday, though.

 

Not an illness-related situation, but on a 1979 \"Hollywood Squares\" episode that\'s on the Internet, it\'s explained that the previous week\'s contestant knew da lovely Lennon Sisters, who were on the show the new week, so the producers asked him to come back at a later taping. His challenger had been in the middle of a game with him, but she started a new game with a new opponent.

 

Spin-off question: Aside from the above example and the situation with \"$100,000 Pyramid\" champ Keefe Ferrandini being friends with guest celeb Terry Lester and having to sit out a week, can anyone think of other examples of returning contestants having to skip a taping because they knew one of the stars personally?

[PYLdude]

I\'m also reminded of the very recent Jeopardy example involving contestant Priscilla Ball- she had won a game but fell ill after the taping and wasn\'t able to return for the next day. IIRC she won on what would\'ve been the last episode of the tape day.