7665k - 10/28/16 Recap - Big Money Week Day 5

[jaydlewis]

Jay said at the beginning of the week that he wasn't including the bonuses in his totals. So the "Over 4 Million" was actually truthful when you add in all the bonuses.

I said, at the top of this very thread, that $3.96 Million dollars in cash & prizes was up for grabs then broke it down very precisely. $2.34M for ALL regular prizes offered ... then ALL of the bonuses also offered (IUFBs, PGs, Big Wheel) totaling another $1.62M. (I'm editing the top post to reflect how much they gave away.)

I'm not a fan of Plinko (way over-hyped IMO) but $1MP doesn't bother me. The problem is what happens when someone hits the big cherry (or 2 or 3)? Do you go to $2MP? $5MP? $500KP would be ok as the $100K center slot keeps in line with most other inflated-cash games.

Besides, an all-cash show is "an historic moment" ... what's the problem with them doing something different for one show? Absolutely nothing. Life goes on. Monday (well, Tuesday) it'll be back to no flash and the same stable of prizes offered over and over and over and over and...

[TPIRighteous]

The problem I had, and have with Million Dollar Plinko is that you can't earn $200,000. You could literally do nothing, and be the new leader of Daytime Price winners. And make no mistake, I'm fine with games like that (Buck or LER), but not for such an exorbitant amount.

Yeah, I think the $200,000 slot was by far the most grotesque part of this whole week. I don't know why they can't just use the Golden Chip format for something like $250,000 with two center slot hits.

I will say that I thought the Cliff Hangers win felt kind of hollow, though. I think it's primarily because it moved at breakneck pace, but also because it wasn't a full win of the advertised top prize. A $19,000 win in Time is Money feels much less satisfying than a $20,000 win.

I do commend them for fixing the super awkward setup from last time where Hans started on 1. Just having dollar amounts on the scale makes so much more sense.

[Shaymin]

So with that, is Michael Larson officially out of the CBS game show record books? $210k smashes his cash total from Press Your Luck, and I don't think any of the other Big Money Week winners spun a dollar in the SCSD either.

[ShootingDio]

$50k Punch a Bunch and $20k Grand Game? Sounds like how MDS back then gave away for that amount.

Also, it's really awesome how we got the biggest daytime winner since 2013 (The woman who won an Audi R8 on Gas Money)

[Torgo]

You know what confuses me? Why make Vend-O-Price $10,000, Secret "X" $15,000 and Pick-a-Pair $20,000? That seemed more arbitrary than everything else.

[Flerbert419]

Huge congratulations to Christen - there's no way the show wanted to give away that much money and she made them pay for offering up that gigantic prize.

But, I would have rather spread that money around throughout the week. I wonder if they had a backup plan to reduce the prize to $25k if they had gotten some other large winners.

Besides, an all-cash show is "an historic moment" ... what's the problem with them doing something different for one show? Absolutely nothing. Life goes on.

I don't mind the fact that the show was all-cash, I mind that the Price daytime winners list was once again threatened and abused for a stunt week. It's easy enough to separate the primetime winners into another list to preserve the integrity of the daytime one - but as much as I want to I find it very hard to say that this win doesn't belong since stunts are the new normal. That list is our Hall of Fame, and this win is clearly not deserving of the top spot as many of the others demonstrated more skill on the show.

And that won't be reset on Monday.

[Torgo]

That list is our Hall of Fame, and this win is clearly not deserving of the top spot as many of the others demonstrated more skill on the show.

Vicki-Ann had no control over the contents of her showcase. You could just as easily make the argument that the show controlled that situation as well.

This hyperbole about the purity of records needs to stop. These lists exist purely as documentation of what actually happened on the show, not what we wish had happened.

[therealcu2010]

I liked the concept of an all-cash show to close out Big Money Week. Certainly a nice surprise, and certainly not the end of the world.

That being said, the overall execution...wasn't perfect. They could have still played two regular car games (well, car/fee games) for cash, as opposed to Pick-a-Pair and Vend-o-Price...both of those seem way too quick to be played for cash, especially when the small amounts they were both played for seemed like they were tacked on. I don't know if having the usual "big money" game is even necessary on an all-cash show...spread the cash out over all six games and call the whole show "big money".

Finally, there has to be a better way to present the cash prizes. Punch and Grand used their normal reveals, but the other four games just used one of the show's too-many monitors in some capacity...with two of them using the exact same sting back-to-back. Certainly they could come up with something a bit more creative...

Overall, though, this was a fun little experiment. Certainly not something that should be done on a regular basis, but as a one-off (or possibly even a yearly thing), perfectly fine.

[Bluescreen_ODeff]

I didn't get to see the show, but I read Jay's recap.  I thought it was quite exciting (without watching the show, I imagine other sorts of music, like SotC's lot win music ), which made it odd to me that Price's YouTube channel didn't include a clip of that Cliffy playing.  I did see a little bit of it though, in an interview CBS News had with Drew.

So, I'm pretty sure they played up the fact that she's the new daytime Price recordholder, but I think she's also the new daytime network recordholder overall (I've asked this question before, which is why I say daytime NETWORK recordholder.).

[SteveGavazzi]

Well, that was certainly interesting.  I was completely surprised when Drew said they were playing every game for cash -- did they give anything about that away in advance?  Anyway, it's not something I'd want to see every day, but for a one-day thing, or even a once-a-year thing at the end of Big Money Week, it was kind of cool.

I'll agree that seeing the random amounts of cash show up in some of the non-cash games was a little odd, but I think that might be more a product of the game lineup than anything -- I don't think it would have stood out as badly if they hadn't played Secret "X" and Pick-a-Pair back-to-back.

On the other hand, something that really did bother me was the use of the Time I$ Møney intro cue for both of those games.  I realize there aren't all that many cash cues compared to everything else, but between the The Cats sting from Plinko, the intro from The Phone Home Game, and the intro from Fortune Hunter, there had to be something else still in the system that they could have used there.

Overall, I think Big Money Week came off much better this year than usual.  Instead of just shoehorning a crapton of extra money into one game each day (which, granted, they did still do), they added a bunch of temporary bonuses and essentially turned the week into a set of mini $1,000,000 Spectaculars.  I don't have a problem with them doing this once a year.

...oh, and did anyone else notice the new $5,000 slips in Punch a Bunch?  I wish we knew whether they changed all of them or just designed the extra ones for this episode differently.

[Torgo]

...oh, and did anyone else notice the new $5,000 slips in Punch a Bunch?  I wish we knew whether they changed all of them or just designed the extra ones for this episode differently.

I took the font change to mean that they just rushed out some new slips to add to the current bunch and failed to care about whether or not they matched.

[LiteBulb88]

Stupid question: what would have happened had the Cliff Hangers contestant missed the three products by a total of $25? In the regular game, they still would win the prize, but here it seems like the contestant would have won nothing even though Yodely Guy didn't fall off the cliff.

[brosa0]

There were only 24 steps on this playing, so they would've won nothing as Yodely Guy would've gone over.

[JT]

While $250,000 Cliffy doesn't bother me that much, I was surprised they didn't make the small prizes more challenging.  Christen said she watched the show with her grandmother and it paid off more than granny probably could ever imagine!  I think Christen's total came to $213,899 if I did the math right.

What does bother me is that it was not that celebrated a moment.  No confetti, no whoops and clangs.  After the Showcase reveal, Drew should have had Christen come back on stage with her total winnings displayed on the screen.  When they replay that $210,000 winning moment on future anniversary shows, it just won't be as exciting as you would expect.

Congrats Christen!

[ThatDonGuy]

Stupid question: what would have happened had the Cliff Hangers contestant missed the three products by a total of $25? In the regular game, they still would win the prize, but here it seems like the contestant would have won nothing even though Yodely Guy didn't fall off the cliff.

Note that the first time they played Cliff Hangers for $250,000, back in Season 42, they left the 0-25 numbers up, and Drew pointed out that, since 25 steps at $1000/step would result in zero, Yodely Guy started on the 1 (i.e. the 1 was worth $25,000, the 2 worth $24,000, and so on, with the 25 worth $1000).  As already pointed out, this time, they replaced the normal steps with money values, so they simply removed one of the steps.