Contestant #1 comes within $500 on her showcase showdown guess. She is understandably excited.

Contestant #2 comes within $0 on his showcase showdown guess. Yeah, he NAILS it. He is understandably excited.

Host Drew Carey? Not really excited. see for yourself.

UPDATE – Superhero Jason Windsor sheds some light: The story I read said that an audience member had all of the product prices memorized and was feeding the answers to the contestants. After the bidding, they stopped the show for 45 minutes to check tapes to see if anyone was cheating in a way they could actually prosecute. The tapes simply showed that one person had everything memorized and was tell the contestants what to bid. The winner won got his answer right perfectly to get on stage, too. They decided that no matter how much they hated it, they couldn’t say he cheated, so they gave it to him. Some lighting issue made them do the reveal twice, and what we saw was the second take of the reveal. Drew was probably pissed from the “cheating” and having to do the reveal a second time took away any chance he had at pretending he was excited.

UPDATE #2 – According to this Minneapolis Star Tribune story, Terry Kneiss, the man who guessed the showcase on the dot, said he did not get help from the audience, claiming a hearing problem. How did he do it? “Do your homework. Watch the show, watch the show, watch the show,” he said. Also in the story, a Price-Is-Right fanatic named “Ted” claims to have been in the audience shouting out correct prices at contestants throughout the show. Ted is a regular at golden-road.net, a Price-is-Right message board. No matter who the credit goes to, it’s clear that this perfect guess was not an accident. People apparently study prices on the show and come prepared. What’s still unexplained is Drew Carey’s nonchalant reaction. If this was a second or third take, like Jason Windsor suggested in Update #1, then why did the contestants seemed so shocked? Are they just good actors? Who knows? Who cares? (I’m not sure I do.)

UPDATE #3 - Here’s an interview with Terry Kneiss. 4 minutes of fascinating discussion. The item he bid on to get on stage they had used 3 weeks earlier, so he knew that. During his showcase, they used a karaoke machine he had seen on the show before (ding!), a pool table which is something they have on the show alot and is $3000 (ding!), and a 19-foot trailer which he said the rule of thumb is $1000 for every foot (ding!). so that got him to $23000, and he said the $743 he tacked on was just dumb luck. He was also in line to get in at 3am the night before with a guy who had been there 100 times, and they killed time playing pricing games. Apparently some people take this seriously.

LAST UPDATE – Like Jason said earlier, there was a 45-minute delay between when the final showcase bids were made and when they revealed them. The producers were probably trying to figure out if this guy cheated. That’s why Drew had no emotion…because he knew the guy hit it head on and he had spent the better part of an hour talking about it. I guess he could have faked it. Maybe he thought the guy cheated. Or maybe he hates his job. Also, the guy Ted from the message board claims he first yelled “$23,743″ to Terry, but then switched and was telling him to bid an even “$23,500″. Terry still claims the guess was all his own, and that a hearing problem would have prevented him from getting help from the audience. And that’s the last I’ll ever write about the Price is Right unless I appear on it.