deal or no deal

so i was watching deal or no deal the other day. i really don't like that show. i mean, they just give away money. i keep thinking, how do you become a contestant on this show? you can win thousands of dollars just for calling out numbers on briefcases. why doesn't everyone in america try to be on this show? it's free money. just seems weird.

but on to my point. every time i watch one of these game shows (millionaire, greed, weakest link, etc), i always have the same thought. say you were on deal or no deal, and you didn't take the banker's offer because you wanted more money, and you end up getting the 5 dollar briefcase or something when you could have had like 500,000 dollars. my question is: how could you live with yourself after that? knowing that you blew 500 grand on a hunch you had on a TV game show in front of the whole nation. or gambling on the million dollar question on millionaire and getting it wrong and only getting 32,000? i mean, how can you go home and sleep that night? or go to work the next day? i would be haunted by it forever. any money problems i had after that would just be that much worse. it could potentially ruin your whole life.

i also don't get how, when this happens, the contestant just smiles and takes it in stride. if it were me up there and that happened, i'd be catatonic. i'd start yelling and flipping chairs. i don't get how these people can have so much money on the line and hide their emotions so well when they blow it all. it's probably all fake.

this also happens on jeopardy at the end during final jeopardy. as they reveal everyone's answers and wagers, all the contestants are stone faced. wouldn't they be nervous about their opponents' answers? and when they see them, wouldn't they quickly do the math in their head to see what their new total is and if their wager was enough and all that? they never do that at all. i think trebek tells them they can't have any reaction whatsoever. they probably already know the result.

more random game show thoughts while i'm on the topic. whenever i watch wheel of fortune i start believing pat sajak has seen that wheel turn so many times in his life that he can tell where it's gonna stop before everyone else can. sometimes he'll say what it's on when it's like 4 spots away. it's amazing.