Best and Worst of Season 32

The best things have been mentioned by mechamind. For me the increment of the minimum to $500 has been a good thing. However, one of the worst things has been that they haven't adapted the show to this minimum: the price of vowels is still $250. I don't care much about variety of cash numbers, as I've said in La Ruleta there are only six different cash wedges (aside from 0 and 1,000).

More bad things? Those $32,000 appearing in almost every show. In the BR I appreciate more variety, since they have retired the $35,000 and almost surely they have been replaced for more $32,000 envelopes: only six different prizes ($32K, $40K, $45K, $50K, Cars, which haven't appeared so much in this season, and $100K/$1M). Another bad thing: there haven't been as much Express rides as I had expected.

In general I've enjoyed this season, keep in mind that I'm a new Wheel watcher. I follow the show since S30, and I haven't seen the show evolve like all of you.

Wheel actually did a very good job of pulling off variety in the Bonus Round with only five different prizes when they used the WHEEL letters from 1989-2001. One of the five prizes was always $25,000 cash, but the others changed between various types of cars, fancy trips, high-end jewelry, savings bonds, and other nice prizes - each of which had an equal chance of being picked (at least until won, in which case it was removed). Compare that to today's Bonus Wheel, which is almost all cash and extremely biased towards the $32,000 minimum.

So it can be seen that Wheel was more than capable of offering a nice variety of prizes in the past. Perhaps they should look into returning to that in the future... after all, if they could get more sponsored bonus prizes, that means less cash coming out of the prize budget.

We shouldn't remind the people of Philadelphia about that from '99. Also there needs to be some bonus puzzles that don't use the RSTLNE package. Maybe "A GOOD DAY" will do. That's a good one.

...Although for the start of Season 19 (September-October 2001), it really only was limited to three cars and two $25,000 envelopes.

Other nice prizes included trailers, RVs, boats, motorhomes, shopping sprees, gold-and-silver packages, annuities, swimming pools, and the occasional high-end furniture packages. It also had some offbeat stuff like a verified authentic document signed by Abraham Lincoln and a "build your own log cabin" kit.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but per Adam Nedeff on Reddit "cars and trips all the time" is Harry's personal preference, although I gotta wonder if it's also a lack of sponsors. After all, Wheel's got a bit of an "it's for old people" reputation, and the reason NBC canned daytime Wheel and Classic Concentration was because the demographics they were getting were keeping sponsors away.


Well...the Bare F-ing Minimum, in any case, since it'll be $33,000 next season.

The worst:

$32,000 all the time
Before and After, Before and After, Before and After
Not much variety in categories
The $1M loss


Brian

Welp, here are my candidates for the best and worst moments of season 32.

BEST
-Sarah Manchester's $1,000,000 win!
-Rick Galten's $100,000 win!
-28 winners being a part of this season's "winner's circle" - they won at least  $60,000; Chad Ruter and Shannon Bugaski in particular
-2 maingame sweeps (Matt DeSanto and Melanie Barash), with Matt breaking the maingame record big time and Melanie making a total clean sweep
-26 1/2-CAR wins - a record; one winner, Victoria Silcox, ended up winning another car in the Bonus Round
-The PERFECT BONUS ROUND WEEK on the week of 6/1/2015 (America's Game 5)
-California Coast Week - a HUGE week
-WalMart Family Week - an unusually good week for Family Week
-The SAME LETTER bonus (but would it have worked for vowels?)
-A little more theming in the puzzles (like on Shopping Spree, Pacific Northwest, Great Outdoors, Trip of a Lifetime 2, etc.)
-A little less theming in the puzzles (such as Wish You Were Here!, Spin Into Summer, the 2 spring weeks, the 2 Disney weeks, Mother's/Father's Day, etc.)
-Four 10-puzzle episodes (I really liked the one on 3/11/2015)
-The Secret Santa weeks, especially the donations to Children's Miracle Network - that was just plain awesome.
-The staff bringing their kids on the Halloween Week episode of 10/27/2014
-People finally breaking through after some AWFUL luck (such as Lilly Hill, Lawrence Albury, and Roland Popken)
-The 2 AMAZING solves on the Hawaii road trip (2/16-17/2015)
-Lady Gaga being used in a puzzle on 6/2/2015

WORST
-The $1,000,000 loss (I watch that one more than the $1,000,000 win)
-The 4 $100,000 losses
-That annoying $32,000 envelope (and I guess $33,000 will be just as bad)!
-That "Wish You Were Here!" week - I mean, really? With a name like that, expect average.
-2 pretty bad Bonus Round losses, on 4/16/2015 and 5/27/2015.
-The 3 shutout weeks (Spin Into Summer was completely avoidable! No wonder I keep calling it "Here Comes Summer!")
-2 weeks saluting certain cities on the dark generic stage (Viva Las Vegas and Wheel Loves New York)
-NO holiday-themed puzzles on the Christmas Day episode of "Southern Hospitality" - like what?!?!
-Only 6 Bonus Round wins during the Hawaii road trip - we just couldn't live up to the momentum of the road trip in season 26, sadly

How about IN BETWEEN?
-Wheel Around the World having less puzzle theming; rather it was spread out between itself and the 2 Trip of a Lifetime weeks.
-The Hawaii puzzle theming starting off excessive and then winding down almost a day or 2 afterwards. Same goes for Fabulous Food.
-One of my favorite weeks, Fabulous Food (also my birthday week), ending up being way too quiet. So did Fun & Fit.
-Using two generic stages (but I liked the lighted one better) - but we used them A LOT (12 times total, 8 for the dark stage - and I'm counting Trip of a Lifetime 1)
-The roller-coaster episode on 2/17/2015
-A lot of people solving early just to get a puzzle under their belt or get on the board (4/20/2015 in Round 1...was OK)

Well, that wraps up my good, bad, ugly, mediocre, whatever. Any more?

^ So the $1,000,000 win was that bad, huh?