Faisons un marché

Hi Wayne. You are a very good host for Let Make A Deal. I watched your show many times and have felt you focus on African-American audiences a lot. Example of your show in Sept 2018: you called up 4 African-Americans and only 1 white and 1 (possibly) Mexican-American. I do not know why your show does not have the way as same as Price Is Right, by drawing names from audiences instead of calling up by yourself. Hope you have more objective thoughts for your show to audiences. Thanks. Nhon Doan

I have enjoyed this revival hosted by Wayne Brady for quite a long time. This show has had a lot of good qualities over the years, and it was a show I would look forward to every day. It had laughs, fun, and a whole bunch of prizes and funny zonks. But after 12 years, does this revival still stand strong?

To be honest, it's a little hard to say. Season 12 of LMAD has recently ended, and I was unfortunately a bit underwhelmed with this last season. Don't get me wrong, many of the same great games of the show were still there, but that's part of the problem: it creates a feeling of deja vu. Only 2 games were added to the show this season, and while that's better than nothing, it isn't enough to make the show feel brand new. As a result, I felt as if they played it safe this season, but at least they didn't try to fix what isn't broken.

Actually, it's probably a good thing they played it safe. After all, we are still in the middle of the pandemic right now, and I think the team did a great job to protect their contestants from Covid. The new format is designed quite well, with 12 contestants onstage socially distanced from each other, and 18 more contestants playing from the comfort of their homes.

Unfortunately, I noticed that when Wayne picks contestants, he mostly picks contestants onstage rather than the ones at home, and it feels a bit unbalanced as a result.

The flaws don't quite end there, however. One of the problems with this show is that when Wayne offers money to stop playing certain games, he can go a bit too far so that the contestant takes the money but misses out on a truly amazing prize, usually a car or a vacation. A good example of this is when a woman played 0 to 80, a game where you must pick up tokens and reach 80 miles per hour in 4 picks or less. After her second pick, she was already at 60 miles per hour, but Wayne offered $1,000 not to continue. Then $2,000. Then $3,000. She agreed to take the $3,000 before her third pick, which would have won her the car. It sometimes feels like Wayne doesn't want to give out these prizes at all, and while this has always been a problem with the show, it only feels more frustrating now.

Still, as previously mentioned, this show has a lot of great qualities. Oftentimes, Wayne will reward a person $100 or so if they get zonked but show an impressive talent or if it's a friends birthday. Speaking of zonks, the show boasts a great variety of zonks, which are funny but worthless prizes. A lot of these zonks are very clever, such as a pot of mold(as opposed to a pot of gold) or a jelly bean purse.

Meanwhile, many of the games are good fun to watch, though it can be a bit tiring to watch the same game 100 times or so. Though most of them are luck based, some involve a bit of trivia or even drawing something as accurately as possible within 15 seconds.

All in all, Let's Make a Deal has had an impressive run over the years, and this revival has been quite enjoyable for some time. However, it could definitely use some improvements, such as adding a few new games. I also agree with the discrimination comments somewhat, as Wayne can sometimes be a bit picky with the contestants. In the end though, this is still a rock solid show, even if I did find season 12 to be a bit underwhelming, though it certainly isn't worse than previous seasons.

I wonder if Lets Make A Deal is in a money crunch since there are less prizes given away, more zonks, and silly skits. Time for a new host and reboot

If you like the show then don't start paying attention to just how little they tend to give away in each episode. And definitely don't read about how Wayne Brady doesn't interact with the audience at all while they setup the next prize. He apparently disappears into the back each time. I've watched more episodes than I can count of Who's Line but he just doesn't seem to be genuinely happy to be there.

They also seem to kill a lot of time with skits. The only time they are entertaining is when something goes wrong and Johnathan improvises. When things go a bit sideways and they get goofy it is fun but the rest of the time I get the feeling that some of them would rather be elsewhere.

Otherwise the skits tend to be long and just seem to kill time so that they can give away fewer prizes. You end up with a 5 minute chunk where they do a play about what is behind the curtain and most times they basically tell you exactly what it is but then throw in "or it could be a zonk version of that"

I'd like to see more normal reactions out of the contestants. Every single one of them just repeats "that's okay, that's okay" with a huge smile when it turns out they made the wrong choice.

Hand picking just the people that will pretend to be the most excited takes the variety and fun out of it. "Yay! I traded in my $8,000 prize and ended up with wake boards. Yay!"

After two attempts to revive Let's Make a Deal without Monty Hall, the third time turned out to be a charm as CBS revived the show to replace the long running soap opera Guiding Light with Wayne Brady as host. I have seen numerous episodes and to me it's a successful revival of a classic game show since the producers and Hall, who serves as a consultant made the right choice in hiring Brady.

Coming off a stint on Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics, Brady shows that he is a very competent host, injecting humor, not overpowering the game and having excellent rapport with contestants, which is a good asset for a game show host. He's also one of the few African- American game show hosts who is destined to have a long run. Let's Make a Deal has always been one of the most difficult shows to host and Brady has the ability to do what Bob Hilton and Billy Bush failed to do, build drama and suspense and have a quick wit.

Also added to the show's success is announcer/sidekick Jonathan Mangum. He has outstanding chemistry with Brady the way hall had with Jay Stewart and he also should have an outstanding future ahead of him as a game show announcer. Let's not overlook the show's model Tiffany Coyne.

CBS made the right choice in adding Let's Make a Deal to its daytime lineup, the first new network daytime game show in 15 years and by allowing stations to run it in either the morning or afternoon, it could have the potential to have a long run. And that's no zonk.