TV: "The Price is Right" - A Retrospective

How do you sum up the longest-running game show in history? "The Price is Right" is easily my favorite game show, because of the sheer audacity of its premise. In essence, it's an hour-long commercial featuring literally dozens of mini-advertisements per episode for the prizes. The only way to make such an exercise is entertaining is by attaching loads of silly pricing games to the products and getting people psyched about playing for them. When you have a twenty year-old guy jumping up and down because he won a dishwasher, that's when you've struck something very primal in the human condition:



I remember watching this show at various times in my life, whether it was during summer vacation at my Grandma's house, or during days off in middle school, or in the dorms between classes in college. Through it all, there's been a remarkable consistency - same kitschy sets, same corny theme music, same endless cavalcade of "Barker's Beauties." Here's some of the funnier bloopers from the show's run:



TPIR has four key demographics. Housewives and househusbands, kids, college students, and retirees. That's why you always see such a broad spectrum of prizes - from new Ford Mustangs to pinball machines to furniture sets. Of course, the big prizes (read: cars) are given out sparingly, always two per episode nowadays, one in each half of the show. Another great game is "Plinko," where contestants can win up to $50,000. Key words - "up to":



Bob Barker is retiring from the show (35 years of shows at 5 times a week means Barker has given away over 700 million dollars worth of prizes over the years, and that's not even adjusted for inflation) and to celebrate, CBS is running a "Million Dollar Spectacular" and a Bob Barker retrospective, as well they should. I'm not sure how they'll find a new host, but one thing's for sure - they'll never replace Bob Barker.




And of course, no post about TPIR or Bob would be complete without the "Happy Gilmore" fight: