Thoughts on First Season of CWOF

I enjoyed it, most of the celebrities were fun and the puzzle writing was much better than on the syndicated version. The celebrities played off each other well and Pat and Vanna had nice chemistry with them. Overall, it felt like a looser, more fun version of the syndie show.

That said, I do wish they upped the dollar amounts on the wheel instead of adding on the solve bonuses. Would it kill them to add amounts between $1,000 and the top dollar value? Maybe add on a $10,000 space (using the 10k Mystery wedge) and/or $25,000 prize with two tags to pick up to earn it like the 1/2 Car, or even the Multiply space that's on the app game. They could've used this as a chance to do some experimental things like that, but instead took the lazy way out with the solve bonuses and not really adding anything else to give away more. I wasn't crazy about the 4 Million Dollar Wedges either, 1 or 2 would've been sufficient. Still doing the Triple Toss-Up before round 3 when round 3 was the final round was unnecessary also, would've rather they just did one and play a 4th round.


I thought a couple were overly difficult for this version, but most of the misses were just blown. They weren't random adjective and noun combos or obscure phrases like we get on the syndie show. I'm not sure how much more they could've dumbed down the puzzles to guarantee solves without having puzzles like ELM TREE or SNEAKERS where just about every letter is RSTLNE.


Hmm, interesting idea. I think that would be good for this version since they're playing for charity, and the idea is to get everyone a good amount for their charity.

^TIP JAR, although yeah, Holey Moley episode.

Celebrity Wheel worked because they took the already broken game of Wheel and just threw it in the trash, and the celebrities instead treated it like a comedy hour. It made for a terrible "game show" but an awesome show, and I want that type of writing on the show nowadays to an extent.

As for my thoughts, I thought it was an interesting exercise in what Mike Richards is capable of doing with wheel. It definitely gave the show the most positive publicity it’s had in a long time. It was a definitely a valiant effort all around and what I hope is the first step in making wheel more relevant again.

The casting for these shows was *outstanding*. Even the unlikely matchups proved to be a lot of fun together. It’s hard to say that I disliked any of the episodes, but I may like more than others obviously. I feel like gameplay shouldn’t be criticized much considering most of the celebs probably didn’t watch the show much, but I think the genuine humor and camaraderie between the contestants made it so much more of a joy to watch. If you were expecting this to be top-tier gameplay, then you were only ruining the fun for yourself.

I also felt like the energy on these shows was incredible and something wheel has lacked for at least the last 10 years. It felt loose and that people weren’t taking themselves too serious, which is exactly what you want in a show like this. It definitely showed in Pat’s hosting that he was legitimately having fun out there. I also like how they gave Vanna a microphone and made her feel more like part of the show (not that she wasn’t before). I definitely hope they implement this on the regular show.

The writing was also a massive improvement from the regular show and something they also need to implement there. It felt nice not to have some obscure 70’s song lyrics or vacation related puzzle. It was a huge refresher and made wheel fit in more with game shows that stick with more hip and modern material. There were also several puzzles where they basically said “screw it, we’re in Primetime, we can do whatever we want”, and that made it all the more fun.

Like most people, I agree that the solve bonuses were ridiculous. It felt like every round was a prize puzzle that got more and more obnoxious each round. There’s no point in spinning when every space except one is less than $1000. It gave off the vibe that they were going to add higher values but didn’t have time to make them so they resorted to this instead. Clearly they weren’t going to remove every normal game play element and play for normal stakes, that would look too cheap. This feels like they’re overdoing it when the easy way out is to just upgrade the wheel values. I am glad they streamlined the game because odds are most of the celebs probably wouldn’t know how most of the normal gameplay elements work.

Then there’s the whole MDW thing. I don’t have a problem with them increasing the chances to win the million, however, I don’t get the point in so many being on the wheel if they were only allowed one at a time. The whole “MDW being a $1000 space” felt terribly awkward and forced. It seemed as though they wanted to give away the million, but didn’t want celebs to have any advantage over civilians in regular play.

As for the BR, I thought the distribution was alright. Although, I’m not sure why they’re fine with $25k here but not on the regular show. Clearly they weren’t gonna do the whole $3X,000 thing, but this caught me off guard. I thought the puzzle difficulty was appropriate for the most part. Most of the puzzles were very easy to get with RSTLNE, the way it should be.

Anyways, I don’t mean to blab on forever but I really enjoyed the whole season, but some warts really prevented me from saying this was the best thing ever.

For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it. Like bevy said, it feels like an extra helping of WHEEL, and that’s what counts.

The celebrities themselves were a lot of fun to watch, and it seems like Pat himself was livelier than the syndie show - it amounts to a 1-hour escape of comedy and gameplay.

I love how the puzzle writing is more varied - you could literally see that the writing team knew that non-LFATs would be watching the show as well.

Yeah, the solve bonuses made this thing too gimmicky, but I’ll bet that the crew was just too lazy in redressing the wheel for this version (aside from the $950 wedge).

Personally, I found most of the BRs to be pretty easy (obviously, they won’t throw something like BIKING IN UTAH), but Mario’s right in the fact the show needs to scale back to Wheel 2000 difficulty. BEDROOM VANITY was probably a bit too difficult for this version, but I’ll say that most of the misses were blown.

Now, if they’ll do another season, I can’t see them changing the gameplay structure. They can’t take suggestions from MarioGS and give the rules a major overhaul or have the audience cheer after big spins. Most of the audience doesn’t even care about the faulty structure in this version. They’re just glad that the show got the PRIMETIME treatment.