… sucked. Wow, wow, wow, I have gone from loving “Deal or No Deal” to hating it. Howie Mandel was funny, and when we were watching the actual game (as opposed to sitting around between takes), it was, for the most part, entertaining. (One contestant was fantastic. Funny, charming — a lot of fun to watch.)

But long (longer than it should be, really — much, much longer)… sorry… long story short, we arrived at the taping at 2:45. What time did we get home, after attending the taping of ONE EPISODE of the show?

We got home at 11:15pm. That’s right. We were at the taping from 2:45 PM until 10:50 PM. That’s when we finally just got up and left; the audience hadn’t even been released yet.

How can a television production crew on a major prime time show be so completely inept?! EIGHT HOURS to tape one episode of a GAME SHOW?! We’ve attended tapings before — Letterman, Conan, The Daily Show — and they take a long time. I get that. But once the cameras start rolling, you might expect to be there two hours for a 1-hour show. Hell, maybe three hours if it’s technically extremely complicated. But EIGHT? WTF?! If they ran The Price is Right this way, Bob Barker would have died half-way through the fourth season.

Please, if you’re considering requesting Deal or No Deal tickets, please, please, please STAY AWAY. I was excited about the whole thing when I got there — and for several hours into the experience. But after 5, 6, 7 hours — without even being offered water (and “snack time” — consisting of a mini-bag of Fritos and nasty-ass fruit punch in a box — that was at 5PM) — well, with no food, minimal fun (I’m sorry, the “let’s have an audience dancing contest during the 75-minute ‘commercial break’ ” crap was asinine), and no drinks (liquor would have helped), the whole experience became miserable.

A large part of the crowd was clearly upset by the end. It would have been quite different had they posted a warning on their ticket site — something to the effect, “taping of a single episode can take up to eight hours.” But no, they never said how long it would take. Scratch that — when we arrived at 3pm, they said we might not be done until 7pm. We thought that was crazy, but we were already there, so we stayed — until, again — not 7pm, but 10:50 PM.

When we get back from Vegas, AEJ is going to write a very nasty letter. (She’s a good writer. The last time she wrote one of these letters, we got free Starbucks coffee for almost a year.)

“Deal or No Deal” — your crew sucks.