What is wrong with me?

I must have problems, I just don't know why exactly. Tonight I sat down while eating dinner and watched a show called "Deal or No Deal" on NBC. For those who don't know, this show is a game show where people go on and open up cases of money (if you do know how the game works, you can skip the rest of this paragraph). The cases can hold amounts of money from 1 cent to 1 million dollars. They start the game owning one of the cases, and the player picks out cases women are holding to see how much money they have in their cases. Then, a banker offers the player money settlements depending on these discoveries for his or her case to keep the player from winning too much money. This is when the player has to decide whether to except the "deal", or refuse it and risk getting a smaller settlement later as he or she eliminates cases.

Long story short, network television has found a way to make a game show that asks even less of players' abilities. All they have to do is pick numbers randomly and say "deal" or "no deal".

I find it difficult to understand the contestants on this show. Multiple times I have seen them get many large settlement offers that they could easily walk home with, but they take more risks anyway because of their family and friends on the side screaming at them to take another stupid risk. For example, this one woman was given a large number that I can't remember, something with 5 digits like $50,000.

"NO DEAL!! NO WAY, KEEP GOING!!!!" said her family and friends. They didn't even want to consider how much they could do with the money that was already available to them at that moment. So, she kept going and going through the cases. Toward the end, it was discovered that her case was worth either 5 bucks or 1 dollar. She accepted the banker's offer of 3 dollars; apparently she didn't find any thrill in blowing off the banker's offer now that the decision has no importance.

I can't stop asking. Why must they be so stubborn and shoot down the large settlements that were once available to them? It's a stupid show to begin with, but if you're going to play, why not attempt to make intelligent decisions with it?

However, there is a more important question here that I should be much more concerned with. Why am I watching these people blow their money away? Why do I care even a little bit whether they go home with a good amount of cash or not? It's probably safe to say that the only thing dumber than deciding to blow off a ton of money on a game show is to be in front of the TV getting mad at the people on the game show as if their money is your problem.

I don't know why I got sucked into the show. What I do know is that whatever the reason is, it is likely the same reason I have bothered to witness an episode of Judge Judy or Dr. Phil. There's just something depressingly appealing about judging decisions and actions of other people, and I'm a prime example of it.