Barstool Tribute to Bob Barker…

As if America was prepared for yet another groundbreaking TV show to exit the airwaves, first it was The Sopranos on Sunday, now, as just about everyone knows, the great Bob Barker’s final episode of the “Price Is Right” will sadly, air on CBS this Friday.   I know, devastating words.

Now for me, I used to watch this show as kid when I was home from school sick, then in college when I skipped class, then again when I retired from working in the summer of ’01.  (pause to reflect…)  And while I probably haven’t seen an episode in months, I’m still considering myself a fan of the show.  So much so that I’m dedicating this entire article to my favorite moments of the “Price Is Right”.   Keep in mind now, these aren’t specific examples – just things in general I’ll miss the most about the greatest game show of both ours, and our parent’s, and maybe even our grandparent’s generation.

8. “Big Breasted Woman with ‘Message’ T-Shirt” – now this has been a “Price Is Right” staple since the early 80’s -- the Midwestern housewife with big cans doing a 4.2/40 from her seat in the crowd, down to contestants’ row.  She’s always the happiest person in America too, and doesn’t seem to mind in the least that 25 million people can see she’s not wearing a bra.  Also, 9 times out of 10 the woman has some ridiculous message printed in block letters across her breasts that reads, “I Drove All the Way from Tulsa to ‘Come On Down’!”  Or something.  Bob can never quite read the whole shirt either, but the woman, gladly, will translate for him.  

7. “Old Bag Can’t Spin The Wheel” – I mean talk about comedy.  Nothing was better than seeing a 1000 year old woman spin the friggin wheel like 3 blocks down.  “BOOOO!” was always the predictable crowd response.  I always kind of felt bad for grandma there. But not Bob.  Bob would get legitimately pissed if the old bag couldn’t make the full circle.  He always had the “Hey, let’s go, I got a plane to catch” attitude when this happened.  Why? I don’t know.  True, sometimes he helped her, but it still made for great TV when the old bag couldn’t complete the mandatory full revolution on the wheel.

6.  “The Mountain Climber Yodeling Game” – First of all, do they still have this one?  I loved this f*cking game.  This was the game where the fake plastic mountain climber guy would “hike” up the cliff, ascending higher and higher based on the contestant’s bid - all while yodeling!  “Yo-de-doe-dee-doe” was kind of how it went, until he either stopped, or fell off the cliff; plunging to his untimely death.  Looking back, this was a basically a more fun and exciting version of “The Range Game”.  But instead of the red bar, you had the yodeling fake plastic hiker.

5. “The Bidding of a Dollar” – Other than apple pie, Chevy trucks and sex tapes - is there anything more American than the bidding of a dollar?  There can’t be.  This was another highlight of the show for me, when the contestant, while everyone is bidding 800, 900 dollars on the Lazy Boy, comes in with the lowest of all low-balls and just bids “One dollar Bob.”  I always wondered why nobody ever bid 99 cents but that’s another question for the scholars.  Regardless, I’ll miss the 1 dollar bid.  It was a true test of the contestant’s poise, skill and knowledge that everyone else overbid on the price of the kaopectate.

4. “Plinko” – How people in this country are going to survive without their weekly dose of Plinko is really going to be something to monitor. As everybody knows, Plinko is the most exciting game on television.  I’m getting aroused right now just writing about it.  And who invented it?   I mean this guy’s gotta be set for life, right?   Clearly Plinko was a revolutionary game, for a variety of reasons – namely because, like The Stool, was really only a bi-weekly occurrence.  You literally felt lucky to be watching your TV set as the Plinko board dramatically rotated towards the audience.  To this day, I don’t know of another game show that could match that kind of intensity.

3. “Exact Bid on Contestants’ Row” – DING-DING-DING-DING-DING-DING!  “One of you”, as Bob would say, “Has bid the EXACT amount of the item up for bids.”  And for getting it right on the money, of course he gave you a $100.  If you were a girl, you probably got your ass grabbed as an added bonus.  Now I think one of the problems with the “exact bid” was that you got too cocky, rested on your laurels and bombed on your pricing game.   I always saw the exact bid as more of a blessing in disguise.

2. “Crowd Riots Over Bad Bid” – If you’ve seen “Showtime at The Apollo” you know what I mean here.  It’s when the contestant, who’s on stage in front of 25 million people, fucks up on a bid and causes the crowd to go ape shit.  Bob would ask the person what the first number of the price of the car was, for example, the contestant would look towards the crowd for help and then misinterpret hand signals and make the wrong bid.  “5?  5??”  “NOOOO!!!”  It was absolute chaos in the crowd when the contestant misread the signs.  And I loved it.  Usually they would correct the person in time, and ultimately the proper number was delivered to Bob. But it sure took some pushing, shoving, yelling and screaming to get there...

1. “The Double Showcase” – Back in the day, this was like seeing a perfect game during a lunar eclipse when somebody bid within $100 and won BOTH showcases.  It was that rare of an event.  Confetti started raining down, sirens would go off – it was a once in a lifetime-type thing.  Then they changed to within a $1000 and it started happening more often.  But in the show’s heyday, you needed to be within $100 and pandemonium would spontaneously break out on the set.  Bob would even scratch the “have your pets spaded or neutered line” in favor of the on-stage orgy going on around him.  Well maybe he didn’t go that far, but winning BOTH showcases, to this day, is still the single greatest accomplishment a game show contestant could possibly achieve.