The celeberty episodes did drag the game big time. The regular players seemed to manage the game more effectively in terms of answering questions. However, there should've been a null & void contract rule as was stated earlier. To improve on that, if the original player missed, the second player answers it right, but that imediately terminates the contract(null & void). The same null & void rule would kick in if NEITHER player answered the question correctly.
Even better would be a timed round instead of a $1,000($2,000 later on) bank winner so that whichever player had the most money banked wins. As for ties, a tie-breaker question is used, if a player buzzed in(assuming they had buzzers on there), a right answer wins, a wrong answer gives the game to their opponent. That's what they SHOULD'VE done. It was a good game but the contract aspect was kind of akward at best.