I've been watching The Price is Right since the 70's and I thought I had seen everything: prizes break, people falling down, April Fool's Day jokes being played on contestants, boobs popping out of shirts. But today I saw something that I'm sure is going to be talked about a lot.During the showcase, the first contestant came very, very close to the actual retail price. I think she was something like $480.00 off (I didn't record the show so I'm going on memory here). It looked like she was going to win, until they got to the other contestant. He bid $23,743, and then host Drew Carey announced the actual retail price as...$23,743. That's right, the contestant got the price exactly right.
How is this possible? As Joel pointed out to me, it's not like this guy was some TPIR geek or taped every show and knew the exact price of every prize. And even if he was he couldn't get it exactly right (and such an odd exact price too). He was genuinely stunned. And Carey's reaction was odd to say the least. He very calmly said the price, then smiled wryly and told the guy he won both showcases. Part of me thinks that Carey accidentally said the price wrong, saying the guy's bid again by mistake, but for some legal reason they had to go through with it. According to the CBS site, it's the second time in the show's history that it has happened.
Golden-road.net, the Price Is Right fan site, has a summary of the episode and some thoughts on the double showcase winner. Some think it was luck, some think a Price is Right expert in the audience knew the prices and the guy listened to him. Fans are more worried about Carey's non-reaction.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-16-2008 @ 6:27PM
borgetas said...
LOL!
(Barney did that once in How I Met Your Mother to impress his 'dad'.)
Reply
12-16-2008 @ 8:23PM
knight said...
It's not the first time I saw this. It was a year or two ago and the contestant got it exactly right as well and I was like "What the...?" but, like today, no one raised an eyebrow, so I guess everything's alright.
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12-16-2008 @ 8:42PM
Mr. Brown said...
No; there's only one other time in the history of the show where somebody got their showcase exactly right, and that wasn't even on the daytime version with Bob - it was on the syndicated version with Dennis James.
12-16-2008 @ 10:26PM
Mr. Brown said...
I've been corrected - the other time was indeed during the daytime show, not the syndicated version, but was back in 1973, not last year.
(there was a tie in the night time version, which is what I confused it with)
12-16-2008 @ 6:41PM
MacGuffin said...
Statistically, over a period of years, there would have to be a contestant who guessed the exact correct price.
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12-17-2008 @ 4:04AM
KenMo said...
Yes, and the odds are exactly 1 out of 10,353,421. So if they had a new show every day (365 a year) it would take over 28,000 YEARS to do it.
12-17-2008 @ 9:52AM
Rocketboy said...
It's not like someone's guessing totally at random, so pure statistics isn't going to give you a clear picture of the odds.
12-16-2008 @ 6:46PM
Tony said...
Something's fishy going on in that showcase showdown. My money's on a screwup somewhere either by Carey or the crew. Nobody is that good. Pulling $23,743 is statistically beyond low.
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12-16-2008 @ 9:27PM
Jimmy said...
Actually, you have a better chance of correctly guessing a number between 20,000 and 30,000 than you do of winning $20,000 in the lottery.
12-17-2008 @ 8:26AM
Doctor Professor said...
There's a level of skill involved in guessing prices of the showcase showdown. This isn't really an apple to apples comparison of picking a number correctly out of 30,000.
12-17-2008 @ 9:17AM
Jimmy said...
> There's a level of skill involved in guessing prices of the showcase showdown. This isn't really an apple to apples comparison of picking a number correctly out of 30,000.
Which increases the odds of it happening!
Where's Charlie Epps when you need him? ;)
12-18-2008 @ 10:19PM
Frank P said...
Almost anyone can guess the showcase within a $10,000 range...and that's a 1 in 10,000 chance of guessing exactly. With about 500 showcases a year, an exact hit should occur about once every 20 years...and this is the second time since 1972...so there is absolutely nothing remarkable about this happening.
12-16-2008 @ 7:17PM
Steven said...
Me and I wife were on vacation in CA the end of Sept and went to see a taping of TPIR. THIS is the show we saw taped. They said it was going to air in Nov, so I don't know why they showed it today. But it was strange to watch tape. First this guy got the price right to get up on stage (and won extra for that) then lost his game. Then at the show case show down they took a REALLY long break after they gave the prices and when they were to come back and tell the winner. Everyone was talking and walking on and off stage. Never seeing the show taped before, I did not think much of it because when the lady gave her bid Drew and her were talking about her bid, like they did not hear her correctly. I thought they checking the tape to see what she said, but then when they told him about the price it was clear why the long pause was. After the show Drew said that this only happened once before in the 70's. I can say he did get help from someone in the studio audience for his bid. As for Drew's reaction, I did not think it was strange, and after the taping he seemed happy for the guy.. Any other questions about the taping let me know and I would be happy to try and remember...
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12-16-2008 @ 7:28PM
MERVE-THE-PERVE said...
I remember back in the 70's or early 80's the 1st person was less than $1,000 off and then the 2nd person was off by less than $10. That was the closest I've ever seen the Showcase Showdown.
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12-16-2008 @ 7:39PM
MERVE-THE-PERVE said...
Oops, I meant Showcase, not the Showdown.
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12-16-2008 @ 7:47PM
Darren said...
Just think if you were $1 over - wouldn't that just - be bad LOL
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12-16-2008 @ 8:02PM
Davin Peterson said...
It's been posted on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKqFctkKMY
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12-16-2008 @ 8:15PM
Mitch said...
This is what happened: a certified Price is Right Nerd in the audience memorized the prices of all the prizes in the showcase, yelled out the price, and the contestant listened.
http://www.golden-road.net/index.php/topic,9640.msg140210.html#msg140210
Brings up an interesting point about audience members shouting out prices and helping the on-stage contestants.
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12-16-2008 @ 8:18PM
rpheckenkamp said...
I think I understand why Drew acted like that. He does, in fact, show emotion when someone wins. This video, he's freaking out because of the guy's luck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpMuiYNa3Xo.
Here's what happened today. He looked and saw it was the exact price. If that was me, I would have looked at it and immediately thought that something fishy was up. I would first figure that someone who works for the show gave him the exact price. I'm not saying I would keep this assumption, but for the first 5 seconds I would.
Drew probably thought something fishy was up, but he realized he was on TV and had to finish the show before he started water boarding the contestant to figure out how he guessed right. He wouldn't act all excited at the amazing luck, because he would have thought he had cheated. That would explain his behavior. I would have probably done the same.
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12-16-2008 @ 10:02PM
Phish said...
how old are you people?
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