TV: TAR9, AI5 and Deal or No Deal

Let’s start with “Deal or No Deal” – I love this show. It’s compelling tv to work the odds of whether the contestant has big money in his/her suitcase. And Howie Mandel is a surprisingly good game show host and seems like a pretty nice guy.

Last night’s contestant was a woman that brought her entire family and church choir to support her as she tried to win $1M. It was fun and painful to watch all at the same time and by the time she got down to three suitcases with her chance to win only $300K remaining, even Howie was saying how tough it was to watch. The dollar amounts left were $1, $5 and $300K. Her suitcase had one of those amounts. She picked one more suitcase to eliminate and sure enough it was the $300K suitcase. But she took it very well and cheered when her suitcase had $5 instead of $1. It was heartening to see her react as though she had won the million and she said she had a blast. I heard Howie whisper in her ear, “You have been my favorite contestant,” which I thought was very sweet.

Good show.

As for American Idol. Where do I begin with the mess that was last night’s women? Boy howdy all but three of those ladies SUCKED. The only good ones were Mandisa, Princess and Melissa. All others were boring or bad. My picks to go home? Amanda Heather (why do I insist on calling her Amanda?) and Brenna, who were the worst of the bad ones.

And YAY for The Amazing Race being back. I have to say this is the first season in a long time where I’ve like the majority of the couples. In last night’s premiere there was only one couple that I absolutely couldn’t stand: The Lazy Boys. You know, the ones obsessed with no working but having money. The ones who put the moves on the Pinkies only to be laughed at when the Pinkies had no interested. The ones who kept asking their helicopter pilot about how many women they get. It was a great premiere episode and I’m VERY excited about this season.