Dressed in costume as a boom box, Dylan Taylor of Pacific Beach recently fulfilled a lifelong dream of competing as a contestant on the “Let’s Make a Deal” game show.
The 25-year-old Taylor originally hails from Gilroy, the southernmost city in the San Francisco Bay Area known as the “garlic capital of the world.” Taylor touted his hometown’s nickname when applying to be a contestant on his segment of the TV show, which was filmed last December and aired on April 4.
“I grew up watching the game show at my grandparent’s house, and I’d always wanted, dreamed of, going on a game show,” said Taylor, who works for Citrix Systems Inc. a multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company. “I was fortunate enough to play a game that was for a $10,000 prize.”
Known for audience members dressing in outrageous costumes to increase their chances of being selected to play, “Let’s Make a Deal” is an American TV game show that originated in 1963 and was hosted by Monty Hall for nearly 30 years. The current edition of the show has aired on CBS since 2009. In the fall of 2020, the show began filming with a hybrid format and virtual contestants playing from home due to COVID.
“Let’s Make a Deal” involves members of the studio audience, called “traders,” making deals with the host. In most cases, a trader will be offered something of value and given a choice of whether to keep it or exchange it for a different item hidden behind a curtain, door, or giant cookie jar. The “other” item is hidden from the trader until that choice is made. The trader thus does not know if they are getting something of equal or greater value, or a prize that is referred to as a “zonk,” an item purposely chosen to be of little or no value to the trader.
Taylor has a friend who’d previously been on the show who schooled him on how to apply. “She told me they were looking for people right now due to COVID, as they wanted people living closer to where the show is filmed in Van Nuys (Los Angeles area) because they were trying not to fly a lot of people in,” he said. Taylor added the show wants to know “fun facts” about each prospective contestant to be discussed on the show. So he opted to tell them about Gilroy and garlic.
Of the game-show experience, Taylor said: “The thing that was cool was they only had 14 people in the live studio audience when they usually have over 100. So they told us, ‘Everyone here is going to be guaranteed at least one play of the game.’ I got offered to play for the big deal of the day, where you have to forfeit your prize and try to win a bigger prize.”
But, as turned out to be fortunate, Taylor opted to keep the $10,000 prize money instead of risking it on an alternative. “I’ve watched the show a lot and the number three comes up a lot, so I was going to pick curtain No. 3,” he said. “But then I thought it would be better to just have the money. That was good because what was behind curtain No. 3 was a kitchen set that I probably never would have used. So I’m glad it worked out.”
Asked if he’d advise others to be contestants on “Let’s Make a Deal” Taylor answered, “Totally. One hundred percent. It was a cool thing to be behind the scenes at a game show. And I couldn’t believe my facial expressions when I was up on the stage, and everyone there, the producers and the camera people jumping up and down. I was just lucky to be chosen to play the game.”
