Saturday, March 4, 2006

Deal Discussion

For those of you interested in Deal or No Deal, here's a link to an audio clip from NPR. The focus is on an economist from the Netherlands who's using the show to assess the ways in which people take economic risks. The story runs about four minutes.

• Posted at 9:10 PM · LINK

Wheeler Dealer

My interest in Deal or No Deal sagged early in the week but came roaring back. I think Howie Mandel's terrific on it and the way the game's set up, it leads to some truly interesting, emotional moments. Okay, so they're artificially-created emotional moments. They're still real, at least by television standards.

Once upon a time, some game shows were rigged. Their producers would figure out what should occur to make for wonderful dramatic tension and to create an exciting story on the screen, and then they'd arrange to make that happen. This is no longer done, of course...but every so often, the reality of a game show works out as if it had been manipulated. That is, what transpires naturally causes me to think, "You know, if I were producing this show and I were rigging it, that's the kind of thing I would want to have happen." (This also was the case with Press Your Luck, an old game show that's currently rerun on GSN. As with Deal or No Deal, there's a vast amount of luck in how the game goes...but those who configured the game made it so that the luck often leads to interesting plot twists and situations.)

This past week on Deal or No Deal, they had one contestant who did about as poorly as you could do there. At one point, she turned down an offer of $172,000 to play on, but wound up going home with a big five dollars. She was a black lady surrounded by friends and a gospel choir from her church that was up and chanting, "No deal, no deal..." like it was some sort of hymn. Still, she crashed and burned. Later in the week, there was a black gentleman who was a single father and the coach of a girls' basketball team which had turned out to root for him. If you had to pick the contestant of the week that you most wanted to see win a pile of cash, it was this guy...but there was a moment when it seemed like he was going to repeat the disaster of the aforementioned woman. Howie, of course, has to let the contestants make their own decisions but you could almost sense that he wanted to slap the guy upside the head and yell, "Don't be an idiot! Take the money!" And I could imagine the producers, way off in a booth somewhere, fretting that their only two black contestants of the week would be the only two contestants to be utterly wiped out.

Fortunately, the basketball coach got lucky and bounced out of there with a quarter of a million dollars. All over America, I think people would have thrown things through their plasma screens if he'd left with chump change.

As I mentioned, the show has largely solved the problem of the awkward post-dubbing of some of Mr. Mandel's lines. It is still, alas, way over-edited in a manner that loses a lot of the "live" feeling. Whoever assembled Friday night's show apparently couldn't resist stealing reaction shots from other parts of the taping. In the last game, at the point when there were eleven choices left on the board, they cut to a shot of the silhouetted banker and in the background, the board had fifteen choices left on it. Then a few moments later, they went to another shot of the banker and then to a shot of the guy's family, both shots obviously from later on. In both of these angles, you could see the game board with only five picks left on it. Then the next time we saw it, it was back to eleven. This kind of thing happened several times during the week.

NBC is probably satisfied so far with the ratings they're getting with Deal or No Deal. It was up and down a lot as it went against some pretty formidable opposition, including special editions of American Idol but I'm guessing they don't think anything else would have done any better. The question is how long will it endure before it becomes repetitive. There was a fast drop-off with interest in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? as all of America got bored at the same time. In a way, what NBC may be doing with Deal or No Deal is not unlike the game itself, seeing how long they can press their luck with it.

• Posted at 12:51 PM · LINK

Big Comics for Big Kids

In the seventies, most of the major comic publishers experimented with something they called "treasury sized" comics, which were comic books about 10" by 13" in size. I remember when Jack Kirby heard about plans to publish these, he was initially excited because he loved the idea of big comics. He was a little disappointed that they were only 10-by-13 and even more disappointed when the publishers mainly used them as a means of reprinting old comics drawn for the smaller format. But when they began commissioning original material for the bigger comics...that's when he was the most disappointed. They insisted the books be drawn not on huge sheets like he suggested, but at pretty much the same original art size used for the smaller comics. Jack did two original treasury books — an adaptation of the movie 2001 and a Captain America special — and they were pretty good. But what he really wished was that since they were printing the books at twice the size and selling them for more than twice the price, they'd paid him twice as much, let him draw twice as large and let him put in twice as much.

The format did not last long. A marketing person once told me — I have no idea how true this is — that what did treasury books in was when the industry changed distribution deals in the late seventies. Most comics went from being sent out on a returnable basis, where retailers could ship it back and not pay for it if it went unsold, to non-returnable terms where the retailer was stuck with whatever they got. The treasury format books, I was told, were too often damaged just sitting on a shelf and dealers were hesitant to order them on non-returnable terms. As good a theory as any.

A lot of the treasuries contained very poorly-chosen (and in too many cases, poorly-reproduced) reprints...but there were some wonderful original creations in the format. Marvel and DC co-published an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, the contents of which were created by Marvel people — Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga. It was quite entertaining and I am still boggled at the fact that Buscema drew it from memory, having not seen the movie in over twenty years. This is not humanly possible. I also liked the two Kirby did and a couple of DC entries, like the first (and only) of several announced volumes adapting The Bible (written by Sheldon Mayer), a couple of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer specials (also by Mayer) and the Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali book (written by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, drawn by Adams). Never cared much for any of the DC-Marvel crossover books. I thought everyone involved in them did better work doing one character or the other solo.

You can view the covers of almost every treasury edition published in the U.S. — and few other oversized comics that maybe weren't officially called "treasuries" — over at a great new site set up by the gifted illustrator, Rob Kelly. It's www.treasurycomics.com and he has every one I know of up there except for Charles Biro's Tops and one or two other Gold Keys that I'll dig up and send him. He even has three Hanna-Barbera specials that I wrote so I did a little interview with Rob about what I recall of them. You can read it via a link on this page.

• Posted at 12:24 AM · LINK

Heckuva Comeback, Brownie

I haven't been too impressed with the new season of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO. The conversations have seemed rather flabby with people talking a lot but not saying much.

The most interesting parts of the new episode — the one that debuted last night and which repeats throughout the week — were two interviews near the beginning of the show. The second was with Harry Anderson, who was down in New Orleans, reminding us what a disaster area it still is down there. The first was with former FEMA director Michael Brown, who seems to be rehabilitating his image due to one videotape that shows him acting with some amount of competence in sounding a pre-Katrina warning. I think people are so shocked by this that they've forgotten how little actually was done and also about some embarrassing quotes and e-mails from Mr. Brown. Perhaps "Brownie" was not quite the incompetent he was made out to be. Perhaps he was to some extent the scapegoat for the sins of others. I'm still skeptical but in fairness to the man, this article helps make the case for him.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK

March 5, 2006 • Current • March 3, 2006