VegasChatter

Luckily for Team Jermay, we hung around, and a couple of minutes later, out popped two girls in kilts, ties and thigh-high socks. And sure enough they had the Mental coupons.

The coupon gives you one free ticket with the purchase of two drinks, including “domestic beer, house wine or non-alcoholic drink”. So we’ll hand it to O’Sheas – that’s a good offer.

However, a good offer doth not a free show make. Especially because the girls were only stationed at one of the two entrances, and one of them disappeared as soon as she appeared (she came back five minutes later).

But most especially it’s not a free show when you go, as we did last night, to the Box Office, ask how much the tickets cost, and be told “$53”. It’s not a free show when the O’Sheas website tells you to call the Flamingo Box Office to buy your tickets, who then ask you to pay $53. And it's not a free show when Vegas.com is still shifting tickets for $53. No, it makes it a show that has a wicked deal going (like The Mentalist at Miracle Mile, who's been doing the free-tix-with-two-drinks thing since 2008).

Not only are we still wondering how O’Sheas, Anthony Cools and Luke Jermay have come up with a definition of “free” that’s different from the rest of humankind, but we’re also stumped as to how this is going to work. Anyone that pays for their ticket, and then realizes they could have got it free, will be, rightly, furious. And anybody who knows they can see it free is never going to pay for a ticket. So how is this going to work in the long run?

We don’t want to say bye bye to Mental – however angry we are about this, we still think it’s a great show – but we can’t see this flying for long. Let’s see how it plays out.