Now literally can't stand to listen

For me, tuning-in occasionally, in very brief portions, almost exclusively with sound muted, is the only way I can watch the program enymore. It's sort of like someone who picks at a scab over a healing would. You know the result is going to be anything but pleasurable, but sometimes it's almost compusive.

I will check briefly if something else I'm watching is in commercial. There are always the same proceedings to view. There's the contestant, usually unsympathetic, often obnoxious, and almost always annoying. There are the three or so relatives/friends who participate with comments, similar in all traits to the contestant, often "more so."

Watched the tail end of the one show recently, where the grossly overweight male nurse (the percentage of overweight participants has to exceed the national average). This guy was up to several hundred thou in offers, and finally lost all the multiple $1,000,000 cases except one, remaining along with only the $1 one. The poor bastard, partly at the moronic urging of one of his friends/relatives (a truly nerdy type) to continue, kept his case, declining a swap, and he walked with a single buck. His offer wasn't much below 1/2-mil, so it was as if this needful person (aren't they all), had, say, found $400,000++ in cash, then walked into Caesars or the Rio, and plunked it all down for one spin or roll, to win an additional 500K++, and lost it all (except for $1). But hell, it would have been better if he'd been in Vegas, because they would have then comped him to probably their best suite and all the food/entertainment possible for a few days.

Poor Howie, is eternally constricted to saying "change you life," "do you believe?" and commenting that they have a nice family. I'm not sure, but he may have even congratulated the corpulent nurse for having played a bold or good game. Given his sometimes bawdy, usually funny, stand-up persona, I'd rathe he had been truthful, and simply said, "What were you thinking, you dumb s#@*?"