The funny thing about the video below, which details a record-setting hot streak on The Price Is Right’s signature game Plinko, is that, at first, you would think the star of it is Andrea. Andrea’s number gets called, and we watch as she takes her spot at the show’s famous row of contestants, and as the camera pans to the right, all seems normal. More than a minute passes by. Then we meet Ryan.
Ryan is absolutely fucking lit in the manner that you only see in occasional contestants on The Price Is Right, a show that, by virtue of its incredibly long broadcasting history, has become synonymous with game-show dream fulfillment. Ryan seems functionally incapable of performing any of the basic mechanisms of the game show without also looking at the crowd and screaming, “Yeah!” As his saga continues—getting up on stage, through the announcement of Plinko, and then on as he wins the maximum quantity of turns and nails three of the high-risk, high-reward $10,000 slots—he punctuates everything again with a throaty, “YEAH!” In the end, he walks away with $31,500, which is 75 percent of the way toward a median annual salary in the U.S., all in a couple minutes of skillful puck-dropping.
In an interview with TMZ after the fact, the freshly minted thirty-thousandaire Ryan verified the obvious: that he is a Price Is Right obsessive, scheduling his classes at Penn State around it. He then regales the viewer with his impression of the show’s announcer. It’s not a particularly good impression, but Ryan seems happy about it. Ryan seems like a happy guy in general, to be honest. Enjoy the pile of money, buddy.