Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Deal or No Deal Island’ on NBC, The Cool Ranch Doritos Of Game Shows

Deal Or No Deal Island on NBC takes many of the same elements from the early 2000s game show hosted by Howie Mandel, and sets them on an island where 13 competitors engage in challenges to win briefcases and battle against the omnipotent, ominous Banker for a chance to win an ever-growing pot of money. Though it shares a name with the original, the updates to the reality game show are a welcome, refreshing twist on the high-anxiety betting game, and the new version will no doubt become an addictive season of TV for a new generation.

DEAL OR NO DEAL ISLAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” plays as a group of contestants roll up onto an unnamed island in a group of Jeeps. A massive black luxury yacht sits anchored offshore. That’s the Banker’s yacht, and he has assembled these contestants here to compete for a pot of money that will continue to grow as the season progresses.

The Gist: Deal Or No Deal Island has retained a few key elements of the original Deal Or No Deal series, in that contestants begin an episode with a briefcase that holds a certain dollar amount, and they are faced with challenges from an unnamed Banker who gets them to bet on whether they should keep briefcase they hold or trade it for another one containing a different sum of money. But in this revamp, there are 13 contestants living on a tropical island together in a glamping setup, and have to compete against one another, acquiring (and sometimes stealing) briefcases, forming alliances, and determining which one of them will face the Banker and possible elimination each week.

The new format has this group of contestants competing over the course of the season and it’s hard not to think that the producers wanted to inject some Survivor-style settings and dramatics into the show’s formula (case in point: one of the show’s contestants is “Boston” Rob Mariano, one of the original Survivor villains/winners). And while we’re on the subject of casting, this is not quite an assembly of all-star reality champions, but there are two semi-famous contestants, Boston Rob and Claudia Jordan, the one-time star of Real Housewives of Atlanta who got her start as one of the original briefcase models on Deal or No Deal, and who says that she always wondered what it would be like to be a contestant. (Dreams do come true!) Besides them, the rest of the contestants are normals who are just fans of the original show, including Aron, a sweet 20-something doppelganger for Steve Rogers before he took the Super Solider Serum, Brantzen, a competitive poker player who just likes to help people, and Kim, a 62-year-old reality TV addict who uses her age and lack of physical strength to manipulate her competitors, something she proudly admits.

In the first challenge, every contestant had to pull a briefcase from an unnavigable mud pit. Herein lies one of the new twists to the show, the addition of “physically strenuous briefcase acquisition.” Gone are the days when the Banker would just let you pick a briefcase from the comfort of a studio! Ultimately, Kim couldn’t even do it without requiring an extraction from the mud by three of her fellow competitors. Kim ended up with the lowest-value briefcase, and was given a chance by the Banker to retrieve another one if she had the guts, and since Kim is knows what goes into good reality TV, she accepts the offer. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, nice-guy Brantzen jumped in the mud to help a struggling Kim retrieve a new briefcase, only for that briefcase to hold stealing privileges: Kim was allowed to take another person’s briefcase worth $1 million making her the day’s leader. And since Brantzen helped her do that, he ended up on everyone’s shit list. And to boot, it turns out Kim was just acting weak and helpless, in hopes that someone would jump in and snag her a useful briefcase. The plot, much like this challenge’s mud pit, is thick indeed.

In this game, the person who ends up with the lowest-value briefcase must face the Banker. At this point, the game is played just like the old Deal Or No Deal, with a contestant choosing briefcases and hoping to eliminate the ones with low values in an effort to end up with one with a high value. The twist though, is that if this contestant beats the banker, they’re safe from elimination but the elimination of one of their fellow contestants is at their sole discretion. At least it’s not just the Banker with all the power this time around.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Obviously the show has Deal Or No Deal DNA, but thanks to the tropical challenges, alliances and sabotage, there are definite whiffs of Survivor and The Challenge thrown in.

Our Take: Howie Mandel, who served as the host of the original series, has stepped into a producer role and taking over for him is Joe Manganiello, who serves as the intermediary between the contestants and the Banker. I, as I’m sure many of you, first reacted with a big old, “Why, Joe Manganiello?” because he seems too successful an actor to take a detour as a game show host, but then I remembered that this is a role that actually requires a good actor. All the highly dramatic phone calls to the Banker, all the dramatic pauses… it turns out it’s a role that Manganiello’s well-suited to.

After watching this version of Deal or No Deal, it’s hard to remember why we loved the original so much, because if I’m being honest, it seems boring by comparison. I mean, of course the original was fun to watch, with an almost interactive element as viewers would scream at their TVs about whether or not contestants should take the Banker’s deal. But adding physical challenges and the season-long arc and weekly eliminations feels like the natural way to play this game and they improve the formula. As we learn each contestant’s backstory, you can’t help but want them to beat the Banker and all the capitalist greed he stands for. It’s early yet, but allowing the Banker’s pot to grow and creating higher stakes over time will only raise the stakes, the tension, and the anxiety of every one of the Banker’s phone calls every episode.

Sex and Skin: None, save for some sunburned contestants who spent too much time on the beach a little too long after their mud challenge.

Parting Shot: Boston Rob hugs Aron, his ally, as they walk off the stage. “It’s funny, with Boston Rob I feel like I’m signing like, a deal with the devil,” Aron says, and with that, I look forward to seeing who the real devil this season will be.

Performance Worth Watching: Boston Rob and Kim The 62-Year-Old are the ones who have explicitly told us they have the potential to be this season’s villains. Thus far, they’ve both been calculating in some ways, and supportive in other ways, so it will be interesting to see if this game splits the contestants into hero and villain camps, Survivor-style.

Memorable Dialogue: “Banker’s island, Banker’s rules,” Manganiello says when Aron joins him to start gambling with briefcases.

Our Call: STREAM IT! I was wary of a reboot to a show that was so popular and such a part of the zeitgeist for so long, and with such wild hooks: Acquiring briefcases by way of strenuous challenges! A beautiful unidentified private island! Joe Manganiello! My hesitation and suspicion was unwarranted; Deal Or No Deal Island is the Cool Ranch Doritos of game shows, taking some of the best things about original and subtly improving it.