‘Price is Right’ fans call out Drew Carey for being too helpful to a contestant playing for a car

Among popular game show hosts, Drew Carey stands out for his kindness and willingness to help contestants navigate tricky games. But too much generosity can backfire, and that has been seen several times on "The Price is Right." Carey has often been accused of being helpful to the point of handing over a win to contestants. He did that recently in 2024 when a woman named Agnes was playing the Line 'em Up game for a car and three smaller prizes, according to a TV Insider report. In this game, the first and last digits of a car's price are given. Contestants have to guess the other three digits, all of which are also a part of the prices of the smaller items. In Agnes's case, the game started with 2 and 4 as the first and last digits in the price of the car, respectively. She rearranged the digits available to make the price, but her first guess of $23,474 was incorrect. With only one remaining, the crowd sought to help her and chanted “Zero!” for the second digit.

Agnes was confused as she did not know what to do. “What do they mean by zero? I can make this a zero?” she asked. Carey then pointed to the second digit and said, “They want you to make this a zero." That's what the contestant did. Her second and final guess was $20,264. This was the correct answer, and fans on Reddit were convinced that the host helped her throughout the game. A post on the platform reading "Drew helping the contestant" began the whole discussion. "The audience is literally chanting "zero, zero...." at her, but she is not getting it. Drew basically tells her to change it to a zero. I'm sure everyone will disagree, but he basically gave her 2 of the 3 numbers," the post added.

Some fans found this argument to be baseless and expressed their opinions in comments. "The contestant realized the crowd was yelling zero, but she was confused on how to implement a zero. Drew simply pointed out the location of the zero," one user wrote. "Drew often says 'The audience is saying X, but it’s up to you' No biggie," another pointed out.

Winning on “The Price is Right” depends a lot on luck along with the skills that each contestant brings to the table. But an element of luck is involved, so it’s not easy to win, at least the big prizes. Sometimes, however, luck shines a bit too kindly over some contestants. That’s what happened to a woman named Lisa, who was playing the 10 Chances game. You don’t usually see people getting that lucky on game shows.

In the 10 Chances game, contestants are required to guess the prizes of three items. The first is two digits, the second is three digits, and the third (usually a car) is five digits. Contestants must choose the correct combination of three digits for the first prize, four for the second, and five for the third. They have a total of 10 chances to do so.

Lisa got the price of the first item right on her first chance. As she was about to guess the price for the second, host Drew Carey tapped the card with the four digits a bit too hard, revealing the actual price of the item. Now, she had eight chances to guess the price of the car. Lisa guessed incorrectly on the first two of the remaining attempts. She then turned to the audience for help and won the car with her final guess.

“I don’t know what happened,” Carey said after the blooper reel moment. Nobody touched this. I just pulled the card off, and it just fell, so you automatically get that. That was our mistake.” Lisa still wrote the correct price and put a smiley face beside it. “I love that she still wrote in the price, plus a smiley face,” a fan commented under the clip on YouTube.