TPiR Recap - 9/27/2013 (Plinko 30th Anniversary Special)

[Briguy]

Admit I haven't seen the episode yet, but just thinking about six Plinkos ... geez.

I think Kyle has it right in that too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

The best way to celebrate Plinko, anyway, is to have a $50,000 win, and that didn't happen, quite obviously.

Brian

[CrossTraffic]

I stopped after the 3rd playing, too boring and the SP types were already repeating.

[Cartboy]

I don't have a problem with Plinko being played 6 times, but I wish the results would've been better.

[Kev347]

Well, this was as pointless as we all thought it would be, and I find it humorous that the bad ideas yielded bad karma. Although really, if the center slot had been hit, why would we have cared since we got so little introduction to the contestants anyway? This created some obvious logistical problems that they tried to work around the best they could, notably staging and timing in addition to the repetition, but these logistical problems still got shoved in our face just because of the nature of the show.

3 things to take away:

1) Drew, I thought you stopped making fun of pricing games back in Season 38. Even if truthful, please stop.
2) I really hope they never try Plinko with any prize but cash again, but I have a sad feeling they will. Just, no. Plinko wasn't broken for 30 years. The appeal is winning $50,000. I agree with those that adding the small prizes in place of $1000 is better than replacing $10k. People don't play Plinko to win a car.
3) If there's anything positive we can take from this, it's that the editing isn't as big a trainwreck as I thought it was going to be with a 33 minute lineup. So what I want to encourage is longer lineups. Not every day, and certainly not 33 minutes, as we see how much contestants get shoved to the side when they do that. But a little 29 or 30 here and there couldn't hurt If we're going to have to live with this editing, we might as well go all out and benefit from it too.

[DYC]

There was no need for the game to have it's big reveal six times when everyone knew that it was Plinko that was about to be played. You could tell the audience's enthusiasm was dwindling by the third or fourth reveal/introduction. Had I been directing this show, I would have done the big reveal for Plinko during the first act and then just keep the game out on stage in full view of the audience for the rest of the show, transitioning to a tight shot on the Plinko logo as the contestants came up stage, Golden Road-style, followed by Drew pitching it to George to reveal the bonus prizes like the cars and so on. Could have saved the show some time rather than do the long-drawn out introduction over and over again.

Kyle, you are exactly right! ..er I mean, you got it right on the nose!

[tvnutboy]

I'm probably going to be one of the few people to defend this show when I say what I'm about to say, but honestly...as a One Time thing (I Hope), it really wasn't That Bad. "SwingBata0" said it best that "Luck was not on the Contestant's side today", but just because that happened doesn't not mean the show itself was executed poorly today--Quite the contrary, especially once the prizes started to be revealed in the game (I thought it blended in rather seamlessly). At best, it was a "Noble Experiment" that I'm sure they will never do again, even if it's the 35th, 40th or 50th anniversary of the game (If the show lasts that long), and I think the biggest problem with today's show was that it was a "Too Much of a Good Thing" situation. Yes, we Love the game, but seeing it happen over and over without much of a change (aside from Prizes) can, in fact, make the situation tiresome in the end......


Having said that (and at the risk of going off-topic); for a long time, I have often fantasized about "What if "'Plinko' was it's own show?" Not to put any ideas into anybody's heads, but the game is certainly popular enough to be successful on its own--give or take a few additions to stretch it out to 30 minutes. Here's how I would like to do "Plinko: The Series" if it were to happen (and feel free to move this part to another part of the board if you wish)...


ROUND 1: Question Round - 2 minutes to answer as many questions correctly as possible. Value of the Question could be a set value per round, or it could change per 30 seconds. Afterwards, the players (3 of them) go to the Plinko Round winning 1 chip for every 1000 points the contestants score

ROUND 2: Plinko Round - Basic Plinko rules apply, including Instant Win Prizes.

Rounds 1 & 2 Repeat 2-3 times (depending on show pacing), whoever scores the most Cash & Prizes after the 3 rounds is the winner of the day.

OPTIONAL END GAME: Bonus Plinko - Winning player gets 5 Gold Plinko Chips (A La "MDS") & plays one last round. Only this time, instead of just playing for Cash, it's for a Car/Featured Prize. And instead of simply landing in a spot that says (*PRIZE*), the player has to Earn enough Money on the Plinko Board to "Buy" the featured Prize at the end. If the player does, they win the prize + the remaining Cash. If not, the player gets nothing extra.


That's all I can come up with for now, and I'm sure the details can be altered a little for it to be palatable.......but it's probably a foolish idea to begin with.

[Roadgeek Adam]

Quick explanation of what happened.

Something's up with the recap, no clue what, so I did the backup image thing.

I am going home for the weekend, so I won't get any errors until Sunday.

[GameShowKid]

I also agree with Kyle's comment about the usual presentation of Plinko being unnecessary after the first time. Yes, keep the game on stage; Drew could have even referred to it and said something like "Folks at home, see the Plinko board? Every contestant who gets on stage today will be playing Plinko with a chance to win cash, maybe a nice prize or two, or even a car!"

Just thought of something though while I was typing the above: When would the alternate setups for the cash/prizes/car be revealed? I think one of the reasons they kept doing the usual reveal was that the setup kept changing and they wanted to get some excited reaction from the studio audience when the car, SUV, or prizes were shown.

 

The best way to celebrate Plinko, anyway, is to have a $50,000 win, and that didn't happen, quite obviously.

That would of course be extremely unlikely to occur with the current and usual dollar values of the slots. Perhaps a better idea would be one playing of the game today, but with the dollar values increased for every slot (except the zeros) and the announcement that this would be permanent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the $1000, $500, and $100 values have ever been raised. I think it's time (or past time).


With 24 small prizes being offered today, I thought this would be a great opportunity to pull out some of the classic small prize cues, such as Spring Waltz, which I remember being the first small prize cue used in Plinko for many years. Alas, even that was not to be.


One more little thing: The line to open SC1 ("Splish splash, you'll be taking a bath in the crystal-blue waters of Turks & Caicos!") was just horrible. Who would travel to an group of tropical islands and then take a bath in the near-pristine waters offshore?

[MannyCav]

Hmm.... I wonder if they've ever had to fetch 24 small prizes for a single show before.......... 

The trip to London struck me as a very odd thing, even above everything else. It was valued at $10,161, a piddling $161 more than the normal $10,000. If I only hit the center slot once during that playing (or if I hit it at all), I'd feel quite gypped out of a lot of cash. The cars suffer less from this issue because they're more valuable, useful (to most people, anyway), and are more 'pawn-able.'

It was also mildly frustrating (from a casual view standpoint, so don't think I was legitimately angry while watching) to watch players avoid the center of the board like it was coated with formaldehyde. Come on, at least try it some.

It was nice to see some variety, like the ATV, computer, and other things, and the cars. It was kind of like watching a non-U.S. version of The Price Is Right. However, this is something I definitely wouldn't want to see with any regularity, and while I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a 'medium prize' sandwiched into Plinko once in a while, I'd honestly be more pleased to see regular Plinko from this point on. You can file this into Mike Richards' heap of many other 'throw-it-and-see-if-it-stick' ideas that didn't quite work out as well on television as it probably did in the drawing room.

[PatrickRox80]

Having just seen this episode, I'd liken it to eating six Bag Macs in one sitting. You can enjoy one but unless you have a high tolerance, you just can't enjoy six. That's essentially the best I can do to describe the feeling I had for this show. No pricing game is meant to be played six consecutive times, just like I'd be sick if I was brazen enough to eat six Big Macs. The old saying is true: Too much of a good thing is never a good thing.

I deem this one of Mike's most colossal failures ever. I don't doubt that he's a competent EP but when you do something like this after your show wins an Emmy, that's not a good way to follow it up. If he wanted to do something with Plinko, why not play it once for $100,000 instead? It's not overkill like it was today and it's a lot easier to come up with setups for four prizes as opposed to 24. Here's hoping this serves as a learning experience for the staff.

[Jordanar18]

Wow... they actually... wow... they actually did it.

But you know what?  It kind of worked.  I can understand that the producers' way of thinking was to please the audience.  Even though they probably went about it the wrong way, I'm sure the atmosphere in the studio was what they were hoping for.

Given that they played it six times, it was nice to see other prizes offered.

[PriceBusterXL]

BTW, I also totally agree with what Kyle said: We already got wind of "You're about to win Plinko!! For a chance to win $50,000 in cash!" on the first playing, but do we really need that to have that again for the next 5 playings?

If Mike was willing to have a all-Plinko show, he probably didn't be all repetitive with the game's introduction. He should just do with that one intro and just leave the game alone, since he wanted a all-Plinko lineup. There was no need to keep doing that throughout the show.

Plus, if anything, I think Mike should upped the ante with the winnings for one of the playings and that contestant can get a chance to win up to $100K:

$500/$1000/$5000/$0[$20,000]$0\$5000\$1000\$500

[sideshowPA]

I'm not as down on this episode as some others might be.  Here is where I give Mike and the gang credit: they stuck to the game, and had 4 SP's for every act.  I really didn't think they would be able to do this, and expected a cheap cop-out to give contestants emtpy chips.  Having 2 podiums, flip flopping between the main prize was quite a novel move actually.  Yeah...it was rushed...you had to expect that, but they stayed true to the game for the most part.  And I really do applaud the effort.

So, why was so much NOT won on this show?  Well, two reasons really:
1.  This game is already quite stingy, as we all know AND....
2.  The contestants, collectively, had weak under-the-lights reasoning skills.  The best place to put a Plinko chip, if you want to actually win money, is down the center.  If you don't believe this, and want to argue...go Google some math literature, brush up on your binomial probabilities, and get ready for a beat-down.  On this show, 22 Plinko chips were won.  And ONLY 4 of these chips were placed down center!  And the win rate was actually aided by the contestant who placed the chip wayyyyy right, got lucky as a snowball in a Arizona cold-front, and hit the middle slot. 

In the end, I was OK with this episode.  Am I a bad person if I think it would not be a bad idea to use this game for the occasional "classic car" stunt?  Would that not be more exciting than than the $1,600 we know they are going to win anyway?

Good job Price!

[MannyCav]

And the win rate was actually aided by the contestant who placed the chip wayyyyy right, got lucky as a snowball in a Arizona cold-front, and hit the middle slot.

I don't ever recall seeing a contestant place a chip a full space outside of the Plinko 'grid', right on top of where the large ring of spaces begins on the left side. The chip must have carried enough momentum off that stunt to make it home. Or maybe it was random fortune with several variables at play. Who knows?

There's something else I just thought of--if they were going to do this anyway, wouldn't have been cooler to do it on, you know, January 3, 2014? The real 30th birthday of Plinko?

[GuyWithFace]

There's something else I just thought of--if they were going to do this anyway, wouldn't have been cooler to do it on, you know, January 3, 2014? The real 30th birthday of Plinko?

The 30th birthday was on January 3, 2013. They were considerably late, not early.