Alright folks? Hope everyone is OK and keeping well and safe in the current situation.
I’m writing this partly to see if anyone replies to it (I planned to write this before James’ post earlier today), but also because there are things I feel I need to say. Beginning with a long overdue explanation for my monotonous presence on this forum during the last three years of the show’s run.
In all honesty, I’d just had enough of the show TBH. 2013 had been the show’s weakest year and Paddy’s game had removed the one thing that had kept most of us watching for a long time. And, as much as I tried to be impartial on the matter, I just didn’t like Box 23. My feelings on it can be more or less summed up in this extract from my blog marking the show’s cancellation:
Quote:
The addition of Box 23, at the start of 2014, and the Offer Button, that September, were presumably designed to try and claw back some of the lost viewing figures. But all they really did was alienate the loyal long term viewers, who felt the show had well and truly shark-jumped, and that the idea of a blue win of any kind suddenly being rescued by +£10,000 for no risk whatsoever was completely unfair, especially on the pre-Box 23 blue winners who hadn't had that luxury.
And then Roop’s game happened; that was the penultimate commentary I did, and I probably felt after that that it would never be topped and any other shows I did after that would pale in comparison. I did intend to go back to commentating at some point after having a rest, but I just didn’t feel like it.
Around the same time, I developed acute OCD symptoms (the full story behind which I’d rather not disclose), which is why, once I started writing similar things on some commentaries, I found myself unable to stop. (Same thing happened on my UC blogs; I’m only just starting to move on from structuring every blog the same way) And so, that’s why, from just after when I stopped doing commentaries onwards, I became somewhat monotonous on here.
Then, in the Autumn of 2014, I started doing a work placement course, and thus could no longer watch the show regularly. In all honesty, I didn’t really miss it that much; it was obvious that it had run its course and nothing really excited me about it any more. I did still watch it when I could, but I can’t have seen more than a handful of the shows that followed the 2015 recess (though I did see Noel’s game and most of the Farewell Tour episodes, including the last ever show, LIVE).
After the show ended, I sort of put it to the back of my mind for a while, occasionally revisiting it briefly, such as the numerous times a video of Alice’s game got recommended to me on YouTube, and when Challenge showed the first run of shows in late 2018 (I recorded Andy Kelly and Nick Bain’s games).
But then, these past few weeks, following Weaver’s Week’s recent chronicling of Noel’s life and career, I’ve found myself drawn back towards the show somewhat, especially the just over three years when I wasn’t watching regularly (c. Feb 2007 to May 2010) and the time after I started my course.
It helps that there are a lot more episodes available online than there used to be after ilovedond closed down; the other day, for example, I rewatched one of the 2009 Halloween episodes pretty much all the way through, though I skipped over the first four offers, as they were largely irrelevant in special weeks in those days. I’ll still defend most of the special weeks, though even they became somewhat ‘meh, been there done that’ eventually.
But it was something Weaver said in his Noel chronicles on the subject of Deal. Discussing a sample show he watched for the articles, specifically Kate’s game from October 2009, he pointed out that, even though she missed out on a £35,000-£50,000 final two, she had still won £22,000, which for her was a year's salary.
And that makes me realise something: we really did take the competitive element of the show way too seriously, didn’t we?
I mean, how many times did we dismiss games like this simply because the player undersold one of the Power 5 regardless of what they’d won?
I think KP summed it up best when he remarked of Toni’s game from November 2011 that Deal was the only show where a win of £26,000 could be seen as a ‘miserable failure’, especially when the contestant involved was in severe financial straits.
I’d like to think that, were we to come back and recommentate on those old episodes nowadays, much older and much wiser, we’d be able to take a different attitude to ‘cautious deals’ like those. I know I certainly would probably.
Also, what with the current lockdown situation, and all the TV shows that have had to be recorded behind closed doors/over Skype etc, I wonder whether a revival of Deal could’ve worked over Skype. I mean, it can’t be that hard to dig out an old DoND board game set and get a host to open the boxes in the manner of Jasper Carrot on Golden Balls. You could invite all the players who didn’t get to play at the end of the show’s run and all the leftover pairs from the Double Trouble shows to be the players.
In all honesty, though, unless it’s to give all those who missed out a chance finally, I don’t think Deal needs a revival, not yet anyway. I’d rather it be something to remember for the time being, a case of ‘it was fun while it lasted’ as it were. I hope to catch up on some more old episodes online in the coming weeks.
If you want to, there are plenty of old eps from the late 00s on YouTube, and Amazon Prime has made every 2008 episode available to its subscribers.
Well, that’s all for now folks. If you want to talk to me at greater length, I advise you to contact me on Twitter @jack_jmmcb, as I spend a lot more time on there than I do elsewhere nowadays.
So, until we next meet, sayonara!