A Pasadena church-goer named Dereck Andrade walked off Drew Carey’s stage on Monday with $40,336 in prizes, capped by a 2025 Kia Seltos LX and an actual five-piece drum kit. Kysha Finch lit up three Now or Then wedges in a row to claim an $8,060 outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven, which she immediately fell in love with on the merits. And a Baltimore assistant principal named Darryl Gonzalez, who proposed to his wife on this same stage back in 1999, came one wrong square away from driving home in a Chevy Trax. A generous hour, with one bruising loss tucked inside it.
(The following is a recap of The Price Is Right’s Monday, May 18, 2026 episode, with full spoilers.)
What happens on The Price Is Right’s May 18 episode?
Three big winners walk away with vehicles or near-equivalents, and one contestant gets the wind knocked out of him at Pathfinder. Drew Carey hosts, George Gray announces, and models Amber Lancaster and Devin Goda handle the parade of prizes (Devin gets ribbed for never modeling the workout equipment; he gives an obliging weak grunt on cue).
The opening Contestants Row foursome of Darryl Gonzalez, Taylor Bellinghausen, Brenden Dawley, and Kysha Finch sets the tone fast. Brenden snags Robosen robots with a 475 bid, and from there the momentum belongs almost entirely to the bigger plays. Kasey Vegsund nails Most Expensive on her first guess. Jenn Shikuma wins a 2025 Volkswagen Taos S in Any Number. Dereck takes both Double Cross and the Showcase. By the closing credits, the studio audience is hoarse and the prop budget has clearly earned its keep.
Why did Brenden Dawley lose Freeze Frame after winning the first one-bid?
Because the cycling price of a five-night Fort Walton Beach vacation refused to land where his trigger finger did. Brenden’s 475 bid on the dancing Robosen robots was a $123 miss, but it was still the closest underbid (Darryl and Kysha overshot at 630 and 631 respectively, with Taylor down at 450). He bounded up the steps, told Drew he was speechless three times in a row, and got handed a Freeze Frame board flashing five-digit numbers at him.
He pulled the lever on 5,216. Sad horns played. Drew consoled him with an arm around the shoulder and a reminder of the 10-acre private beach he’d briefly almost touched, and Brenden took it with grace.
The Freeze Frame board, for the uninitiated, cycles through a randomized handful of prices, and timing the pull is genuinely closer to a reflex test than a pricing one. Brenden was hosed by the game more than by his own instincts.
How did Kasey Vegsund sweep Most Expensive on her first guess?
She just picked the bags. Kasey came up on her second-row bid for a 55-inch 4K smart TV ($2,225 actual), beat Taylor’s defiant $1 bid, and landed in front of three prizes: a Michael Kors leather bag-and-shoes collection, a Centr multi-gym, and a five-burner gas range. She locked in number one, the Michael Kors. Range came up at $1,399. Multi-gym at $2,549. The bags hit $3,467, which sent her into a hug with Drew and a yell back at her best friend Noor in the audience.
No agonizing here. Most Expensive is a one-shot game with no do-overs, and Kasey treated it that way (sometimes the show rewards conviction).
Why did Darryl Gonzalez lose the Chevy Trax in Pathfinder?
He drew the wrong final square after burning all three do-overs earlier in the run. The Baltimore assistant principal (he gently corrected Drew’s “school principal” intro with a self-deprecating laugh) brought the best backstory of the hour: he proposed to his wife Courtney on this same stage back in 1999, and now he was back, playing for a 2025 Chevy Trax 1LT.
Pathfinder is the grid game where Darryl had to step horizontally or vertically through connected squares, with mini-prize pricing puzzles offering do-overs when he stalled. He immediately stepped wrong (picked 3 behind him instead of 5 in front), then correctly priced the water pitcher at $40, kept moving, missed on a baby food maker at $80, nailed the sporks at $25, and arrived at his last decision with no safety net. He picked 6. The buzzer rang. “It was… 84,” Drew said, sad horns kicking in.
Pathfinder is one of the show’s harder car games (the embedded price puzzles can chew through your do-overs fast), and Darryl chewed through his on smaller missteps before the bigger forks arrived. He gets credit for keeping his composure on the way out, and a hug from Drew at the wheel.
How did Kysha Finch win the outdoor kitchen on Now or Then?
She hit three correct grocery price calls in a row, and the lit-up wedges happened to sit next to each other on the wheel. Kysha had been the loud, joyful presence in Contestants Row all morning (she screamed her way up to the stage after winning the paleta cart row), and Now or Then handed her the $8,060 prize: a Sunzout modular outdoor kitchen with a propane pizza oven, four-burner grill with rotisserie, fridge, and black-pearl-granite countertops.
She brought her sister Temica up to consult, and the three correct calls landed cleanly: pizza at $13.99 now, Kikkoman soy sauce at the 2012 then-price, and fully-cooked bacon now. Three adjacent wedges, one outdoor kitchen.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that move before,” Drew said, genuinely impressed. In our viewing, Now or Then plays as one of the better-paced games on the show because the pie-wedge mechanic gives both clear feedback and partial-credit hope. Kysha barely had to dip into either.
How did Jenn Shikuma win the Volkswagen Taos in Any Number?
She picked 6, 4, 3, 5, 8, 0, then 7, and the SUV filled in before the piggy bank or the massagers did. Jenn took the one-bid with a flat $1 (after Binky Kandro opened at $1,500 and others overshot on a $639 Martha Stewart gemstone ring), then walked up to the Any Number board with the choice of a 2025 Volkswagen Taos S, $540 massagers for her aunt Faye and her mom, or three dollars in a piggy bank.
Any Number is pure draw-luck: ten digits, ten slots, car versus secondary versus a three-dollar decoy. Jenn ran the gauntlet calmly. By the time she called 7, the car was complete, the piggy bank still half-empty, the massagers a digit short. Her aunt, who had apparently already declared her love for Drew before the game began, was reportedly delighted.
How did Dereck Andrade sweep $40,336 in prizes?
He bid $1 to win the smart home package, then won Double Cross’s home office plus pool table, then nailed the Showcase by $1,783. Dereck came up after Dean Shepherd’s $1,500, Jenn’s $3,000, and Taylor’s 2,105 all sailed past the smart home package’s $1,349 actual price. The $1 bid on Contestants Row is statistically still the most underrated power move on the show, and Dereck collected the proof.
In Double Cross, he slid one of the linked-pair prices down by three and stayed. The bell rang. Office and pool table, both his. (Double Cross’s linked-pair mechanic is one of the show’s genuinely elegant designs; the show doesn’t always craft pricing games this cleanly.)
At the wheel, Dereck spun a 40 followed by a 35 for a 75 total, which held up after Kysha and Jenn both busted trying to beat him. In the Showcase, he kept his own: the music room (velvet sectional, drum kit, keyboard, electric guitar, turntable with a Vinyl Moon subscription) plus the 2025 Kia Seltos LX. He bid $28,500. Actual: $30,283. A $1,783 miss, well under Brenden’s $3,724 gap on the museum-tour showcase across Atlanta’s Coca-Cola Museum, Munich’s Mercedes-Benz Museum, and the Louvre in Paris.
What did Drew Carey say to close out the episode?
He delivered his classic three-part sign-off, with the small unscripted softening on the mental health line that’s become a quiet fixture lately. “Take care of your mental health. Look out for your other friends’ mental health. Very important to keep that front of mind and know that you can change things if you’re having trouble.”
Then, signature, after the spay-and-neuter reminder Bob Barker left him with thirty years ago: “I personally love you. Take care. Bye-bye.”
Lights down on Dereck shaking his head, muttering “unbelievable” at his own day.
