Deal or No Deal Island

I've never watched Deal or No Deal for more than a couple minutes because the concept just isn't that interesting to me (it's just statistics), especially if I'm not invested in the player. In this case, I was intrigued by the island competition aspect and enticed by Joe Manganiello and Boston Rob.

However, I ended up being pretty disappointed. Joe's charisma was dialed way down by the structure, and his lines seemed overly scripted. I enjoyed seeing Rob compete, but it wasn't enough to make up for many of the the other contestants, who schemed, back-stabbed and lied for no discernible reason, certainly not for gameplay. Without the excuse of starvation and exhaustion, I felt embarrassed for these people displaying such unearned personal vitriol for other players, and it ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

It was interesting seeing the compassionate side of Rob unable to hold back the bloodthirst of first-time players, the personal offers spiced things up sometimes, and I didn't so much mind the final player, but I doubt I'll be watching future seasons.

The Survivor stuff, splashing through mud, etc., I can live without. I've never watched Survivor, so the physical challenges do not appeal to me. When it comes to the actual case-choosing game, they have inverted the object of the game from what it was. Contestant is now building a team total, not playing for himself/herself. And, they have added a rule that the deal the Contestant ultimately takes must be a number higher than the (hidden) case he/she first chose, which means the winning strategy must be to eliminate all the high-amount cases. It turns Howie's studio game around backwards. Makes no sense.

It is not bad. I will say that Rob is the factor keeping this show interesting.

As one reviewer said, the person facing the banker technically needs to eliminate high cases to be personally successful thus is ultimately working against the goal of driving up the grand total. This needs to be addressed.

A change that I think would make the show more interesting is this: If the person facing the banker loses they are eliminated. However, if the person facing the banker wins, they stay in the game, now have immunity, and the remaining contestants who aren't facing the banker have to do a Survivor type of vote to decide who goes home. The winner of that day's challenge would still have immunity thus would not be eligible to be voted off either.

This would drastically up the strategy and the alliance factors of the show which they are trying to make us feel like is important this season but they really are not.

Think about the game play back at camp before the evening's game with this change made. Just a suggestion.

This program is so unbelievably bad, the only thing that has kept me watching it is Boston Rob. They better make him a co-host if, miraculously, it gets picked up for a second season. Some people haven't like the Survivor aspects of it but to me, that's the only interesting part and even they are pretty tame and lame. The actual game of Deal or No Deal is not too bad, it's the 45 minutes of blather inbetween that make me feel like I'm wasting my life. And it's another American program of scheming, unpleasant, dishonest, backstabbing people will ill intent that I'm sure no one needs. If I wanted to watch that, I'd watch the news.

Caught the first episode of season 2025. I never saw any of the previous seasons and I hesitated, but ultimately decided to give it a try on a night there wasn't much on. I would have given it at least 6 stars since the show held my interest quickly, but I began to notice as the episode progressed it was continuously interrupted with an astounding amount of commercials. I will not watch the rest of the season. Not having Peacock it became unwatchable due to the unbelievable amount of commercials. I was quite surprised for a network produced show which became very similar to cable shows where there are 3 minutes of show, then 4 minutes of commercials. Hard to believe. Shameful. Life is too short.