NBC taking DOND ... to an island

[Matt Ottinger]

From Entertainment Weekly:

"Claudia Jordan...will be returning to the franchise where she got her start."

That's right, game show fans.  Claudia Jordan got her start on Deal or No Deal.

[Long live Jeopardy]

^She was also a 2001-03 model on The Price Is Right as well.

[PYLdude]

^She was also a 2001-03 model on The Price Is Right as well.

…which was kinda the point of Matt’s post.

[Matt Ottinger]

NBC had a half-hour preview of the show on Saturday and golly does it look like a mess.  Quite literally in this preview, since it involved the contestants dragging themselves through a muddy field to find cases.

It is exactly what it sounds like it is, a blend of Survivor-style challenges and the classic DOND game.  Because you don't actually have to "survive" on the island they've cast a wider net than Survivor would in selecting their contestants.  This group includes a skinny kid and a 62-year-old woman.  Still, the challenges are physically demanding, and it doesn't seem fair that those two are competing against far more athletic specimens of humanity.

The rules are...confusing, so far, and will probably take a full episode (or two) to make sense.  Suffice it to say that the entire first half-hour featured no actual DOND game play.  Instead, we're treated to the spectacle of the challenge, a lot of mumbo-jumbo about what the players need to do, and the inevitable cutaways of the players telling us what they're thinking and how they're going to win.  It was a lot, without being very much at all.

[Sodboy13]

So the impression I got from the ads of it being Extremely Cash-Forward Pretend Survivor was fairly on target. And it looks like we also get the occasional Fear Factor stunt to "add" to the proceedings.

[JasonA1]

It's got a second season.

https://deadline.com/2024/05/deal-or-no-deal-island-renewed-season-2-nbc-1235907947/

-Jason

[Jeremy Nelson]

The "Tribal Ceremony" at the end of the game is kinda anticlimactic. They play a short game of DoND with roughly 10-16 cases. If they make a good deal based on their case amount, the player can eliminate someone, but they get eliminated if they make a bad deal. At most points, the offers are no higher or lower than 2/3 of the cases on offer, so if the player takes a deal, it really only makes sense if the offer is higher than 2/3 of the table. Most games last until there's only 2 or 3 unopened cases. All money gets added to the "final case" for the finale.

The tonal decisions are off, too. When the player knocks a big amount off the board, they cut to reactions/smirks from the player's rival(s), but considering that the offers never let the game get out of hand, those smirks make no sense since knocking off high offers takes money from the final jackpot.

I think in Season 2, all offers should be personal guarantees to the players. That would have to change the win conditions of the elimination (win if you choose a right side of the board cade, lose if you choose a left side of the board case), but it's doable.

[Loogaroo]

Here's the thing: with a show like The Mole or even The Traitors, the team was completing challenges to add money to the final prize total. That number was rock-solid, and whoever won, they were assured to win at least a share of that pot.

With DONDI, these players are going through all this rigamarole to find cases to play a preliminary game by which they add money to one case out of probably 20 or more, which the ultimate winner will play one last game of DOND to try to win.

Meaning, all of this time and effort is being spent to build up a top prize that the winner will take home if and only if they're lucky enough to pick the winning case and then they turn down every banker offer.

Perhaps they scale the other cases to fall in line with the top value - the final case is already over $10M, so perhaps that means there's a $5M case, a $3M case, a $2M case, and so on. More than likely, the other cases top out at $1M and then grade out to a similar scale as what we saw on the original network show. In which case all the pomp and circumstance leads to Boston Rob (because it's going to be Boston Rob) pocketing like $300K at the end of it all.

I hope I'm wrong because otherwise this entire show just seems like a colossal waste.

[TLEberle]

Perhaps they scale the other cases to fall in line with the top value - the final case is already over $10M, so perhaps that means there's a $5M case, a $3M case, a $2M case, and so on. More than likely, the other cases top out at $1M and then grade out to a similar scale as what we saw on the original network show. In which case all the pomp and circumstance leads to Boston Rob (because it's going to be Boston Rob) pocketing like $300K at the end of it all.

I hope I'm wrong because otherwise this entire show just seems like a colossal waste.

I've been watching because the premise is intriguing, but my thought was they are going to resolve this final challenge, the amount of the pot goes in the big fella, and there is a better than one in five chance that the jackpot case is off the board after one round, and three-in-seven that it's gone after round two, when the preamble is done and the game gets interesting.

It's a clever idea and the personal offer element ensures that people are balancing the ready cash with whatever the consequences are, and the challenges are visually interesting (the reason I got into and stuck with Survivor, in fact) but it's absolutely something I bang out in ten minutes. The elimination every iteration feels totally random.

Maybe they'll suss all of this out by this time next year. I also remember Pirate Master, which was a jolly romp for a few around the time of Pearl Islands, then evaporated like flatulence in an elevator.

[Neumms]

…the reason I got into and stuck with Survivor, in fact…

Do you still watch Survivor, Travis? I was Jeff’s loyal friend and true up ‘til a couple years ago. Now I find the array of advantages too hard to follow and the challenges too much the same: collect puzzle pieces, drag pieces somewhere, do puzzle. I’m curious what you think, though. Maybe I should give the last season a try.

[TLEberle]

Do you still watch Survivor, Travis? I was Jeff’s loyal friend and true up ‘til a couple years ago. Now I find the array of advantages too hard to follow and the challenges too much the same: collect puzzle pieces, drag pieces somewhere, do puzzle. I’m curious what you think, though. Maybe I should give the last season a try.

Yeah, I do, though the bloom is off the rose. The coronavirus protocols as well as naked attempts to save money (shorter game that is also faster paced) and so many superfans who approach things with an almost religious fervor where every elimination is met with a metaphorical "Aw, you got me, well played" makes me yearn for the likes of a Russell Hantz or Jon Dalton who won't mind never seeing these people again if it means taking home the extra $900,000.

I happen to like the little extras like stealing votes and risky choices, but my hope was that the expansion to an hour would have given us more time at the Tribal Council (for as hokey as "The Apprentice" was there's a certain joy in watching a team disintegrate during the inevitable boardroom showdown in order to stave off elimination just one more evolution.)

In the old days Survivor was little more than win food or don't, win immunity or don't, and if you were on the outs in your tribe there was sweet fink-all you could do about it. Now pocket idols make players stress over every vote, and those low players on the totem pole can pull off massive blindsides that add just enough chaos to be intriguing.

Anything that's 24 years old is going to feel long in the tooth, but Survivor is going the same way as TPIR, Jeopardy and Wheel by reinventing itself.

[steveleb]

Honestly curious why this show is resonating so dramatically with non-NBC viewers, enough so that it’s otherwise lousy numbers inflate enough to warrant a legit renewal.  I’m obviously older and not a fan of survivor, and I know that show has never shown the kind of age or platform skew that this one has—and frankly, neither did shiny floor DOND. Anyone under the age of 40 is welcome to set me straight.  Numbers don’t lie, just the people that use them.   But this particular one has me totally stumped.  It can’t all be seeing Joe’s forearms, is it?

[BrandonFG]

This is the network that inexplicably renewed George Lopez’s sitcom and seems to be trying to make it a thing. I’m guessing they don’t have much else other than Dick Wolf dramas and The Voice.

[steveleb]

Actually they passed on two pilots I know of plus I believe they had some unscripted lotions they have not committed to.

Since the streaming numbers they claim justify the renewal are proprietary I can’t tell how much of the truth they stretched to renew this.  To me it’s abhorrent-and remember I had to watch every single episode of the original nbc series when GSN bought it.

I am truly curious who here does watch and like it and would be elated to have any insight as to why.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Actually they passed on two pilots I know of plus I believe they had some unscripted lotions they have not committed to.

Are we talking Lubriderm? Premium Nivea? I know every lotion can't be an Aesop, but man...

Anyways, the finale dropped on streaming this morning and...

1. we find out that the "banker" this whole time was Howie Mandel, who provided live offers for the final round while Joe hosted. It was actually nice to have him for the finale, and while Joe didn't have a ton to work with in terms of the DoND elimination games each episode, the fact that Howie essentially hosted the whole final game from the Banker's chair punctuates how good he was on the original show, and now I kinda want to see a version of DoND where the Banker is also the host.

2. the top case was more than $13 million, while the rest of the right hand side of the board consisted of the highest cases retrieved during the excursions throughout the season ($1-6 million). The left hand side of the board were cases going from $.01 to $1,000, so short of a really unlucky run, the game was set up for the final contestant to win seven figures.