Give Big or Go Home!

Tell me you're watching Oprah's Big Give!!!

If you know anything about me, you know that I LOVE TV! I watch TV to relax after a long day. I laugh out-loud at TV (but my girls say that I laugh at myself out-loud, too). I love telling people about new shows that I think are well written.

So anyway, when I first saw the commercials for Oprah's new show, I was skeptical. I was afraid it was going to be some crappy reality TV show that wanted to be like Extreme Home Makeover! I was wrong. I watched the first episode by chance and now I'm hooked.

I watched this week's episode tonight after dinner and cried like a baby! The Big Givers had $100,000 to give out in just 24 hours. However, there were rules. 1) They couldn't give any cash. 2) They couldn't give more than $500 to a single person. 3) They couldn't spend more than $10,000 in one location. When we saw the previews for this episode, Jenny said it looked like Brewster's Millions. Only one of the 7 people remaining was able to spend all $100,000! I had so much fun watching the amazing things they did for others and wished I could do the same. It was great!

So after every episode, Oprah has a recap on her Monday show and has the person that just got the boot on her talk show to share about their experience. The Maloof brothers were the billionaires that donated the $700,000 for the Givers this week. They came on the Oprah show today, too! At the very end of the show, the Maloofs mentioned that they Gave Big with the money that was left over from the challenge. They did a great thing and started 20 $5,000 college scholarship funds for babies that were born that day in Miami. Great!

This is the part that killed me: With the extra money, they decided to split it up between ... you guessed it ... Oprah's audience! They went CRAZY! They gave out $100 bills to every person there, and they started screaming and jumping and yelling like they do on her show. As the credits were rolling, Oprah is trying to scream over them, "You can spend the $100 on yourself, but of course it would feel much better if you spent it on someone else!" Yeah right! None of those people are going to give it to someone else. They wouldn't have been screaming like that if they had intentions to Give Big! I'd be interested in finding out how many people turned that $100 into something amazing and how many took the $100 to go shopping on Michigan Avenue!

Who else is watching with me???