My appearance on the game show. Run, lardass, run!
Not to spoil the "secrets" of the sweep, but just some behind-the-scenes stuff for those that are interested:
As contestants, prior to the taping of your episode, they let you walk through the supermarket for 10 minutes, so you can get an idea of what things cost. That's one of the reasons you never saw people really looking closely at the prices of things while they were shopping. You had to have a game plan (and I did!)
The studio audience isn't nearly as big as they want you to believe. There are mirrors on both sides of the stage. With the exception of the contestants, the audience that is there are paid extras, which is why most of them are only slightly enthusiastic. They tape the inros of several episodes at once, so that once the game play begins, there is no audience. The rest of the game is done in an otherwise silent studio! So all of that extra clapping is added later. The store really was as big as a real grocery store (so to see it put together on a soundstage was pretty amazing). The food was expired, though. And some of them (like the meat) were, as you would expect, props.
The winners go home with a check in the amount of their sweep, but the 2nd and 3rd place contestants only got a sweatshirt! So it really was all or nothing, in terms of winning.
As for my own performance, as you could tell, at 200 pounds, I did not have the best cardio endurance of my life. In fact, prior to the sweep, I couldn't tell you the last time I'd run, let alone having to hustle for over 3 minutes! When the sweep was over, we were ushered backstage where they gave me a pitcher of water (I was clearly about to pass out from dehydration) and before you knew it we were back on the stage for the totals. Frankly, by the time the final dash came up I was still so out of it that I wasn't totally with it, otherwise I'd like to think I would have been quicker about that second clue.
All in all, it was a fun time, and I miss watching the show!
Tags: Supermarket Sweep Steven Craig
