Make Your Mark is easily my favorite three-prizer. It got an incredibly raw deal.
I had always heard it was retired because "Drew made a mistake explaining the rules", and that's true. But I don't think that tells the whole story. What should be more widely known is that mistake was due to an incredibly rare edge case, during Drew's sixth-ever time hosting the game, during the most volatile month of tapings in Price history.
It wasn't even the biggest screwup or the worst explanation in the game's history (that would be
this one).
Check out what happened. Be sure to watch the clip in its entirety:
There's one huge detail that I've rarely seen mentioned when discussing Make Your Mark's retirement:
Austin hits a perfect bid winning his way up on stage. Austin has won $500 to keep for himself, win or lose, regardless of the outcome of his pricing game. And as we know, Drew only has one $500 wad in his pocket.
This is the first time Drew's ever been in this situation. Drew's supposed to give the player $500 before introducing the game, take it back during the prize description, and hand them the $500 again as if it were a
different set of $500 in addition to what they've already won.
And Drew did just that. Drew hands Austin $500 at the GPT. Austin, not knowing better, puts it in his pocket. (That's what I would do if I were suddenly handed $500.) By 2:28, the $500 has reappeared in Drew's pocket. Roger or Scott or whomever rehearsed the game with him must have gone over what to physically do if this ever happens.
But the fact that the same set of bills represents two different prizes from two different games with two different win conditions seems to throw both Drew and Austin off a bit.
Austin places his markers. Drew gives Austin the $500 again. Austin, again, places it in his pocket, same as he did the first time. Drew clarifies, "I have $500 I just gave you--an extra $500 from the $500 you just won." Austin, again, reaches in his pocket to hand Drew the $500 back, just like he did a few moments ago during the description. He must have interpreted it as, "oops, Drew gave me too much money, and I'm only supposed to have $500." I don't blame Austin for having that instinct, it's a confusing situation if you don't know what's going on! (I know what's going on and
I'm slightly disoriented!) Drew says, "no, no, I don't want it back. I
do want it back if you want to change the mark."
Drew explains the switch option. "If you wanna switch, it'll cost you $500.
If you're wrong, you're gonna lose everything, but you keep the $500."
Outside of this specific context, this line would be a departure from way the game is normally played. But... actually, Austin
would keep the $500, if by "the $500" Drew meant the perfect bid money represented by the first set of bills.
It's a clumsy description, even a little misleading, but it isn't an explicit change from how the game was normally played. Austin would "lose everything" [in the pricing game, including the $500] and "keep the $500" [from the perfect bid, along with his IUFB].
If Drew stops there, I think it passes muster for a game description. It's not particularly precise, but it's not wrong. Yet. Had Drew said “You keep the $1000”, he would have been wrong. If Drew had clarified that the reason Austin would keep $500 was because of the perfect bid, he would have been fine and the playing would have been salvaged.
Where Drew goes wrong is when he consoles Austin at the very end of the game. He counts the money twice. He forgets that even though both $500 prizes are represented by the same set of bills and are presented the same way, and the $500 found its way into Austin's pocket twice, and
there's a set of bills currently in Austin's pocket right now, only one of those sets was "won".
"You have five hundred bucks, you have five hundred bucks for getting it on the nose,
you have a thousand bucks..."
This wasn't a particularly unusual error for Drew at this point. The
previous playing, taped six weeks prior to this, Drew throws to the game with "we have not one, not two, not three, four really nice priz--THREE really nice prizes..." Presumably Roger was off camera holding up three fingers to get Drew back on track. (Also, presumably that's how Roger got ran over by the cameraman and got Drew to crack up during the playing.)
So, to sum up, if any of the following things had happened...
- Drew had had a smidge more experience
- Austin hadn't gotten a perfect bid
- Austin had paid the $500 to switch
- Austin didn't pay the $500 but stuck with $1589 being a wrong price, like he originally seemed to think
- The backstage environment hadn't just gone through the most tumultuous month in Price history
- Somebody was willing to stop tape and tell Drew they had to reshoot the ending
...Make Your Mark might still be here now. And they should absolutely give it another chance now that Drew isn't trying to learn 75 games at once.
