Season 39 Entire Season Recap/Review
Jun 10, 2022 23:07:12 GMT -5
kev347, MarioGS, and 7 more like this
Post by woffan9821 on Jun 10, 2022 23:07:12 GMT -5
Hello once again from your CWOF recapper! Where has the time gone? It feels like just yesterday we were hyped for the return of Changing Keys, and now we've finished episode 195. It’s definitely been a season to remember, both for its highs and lows. Let’s talk about it.
First off, so many things were overhauled that I know I’m going to miss something, but here are all of the major changes to the everyday show that come to mind.
-The set received a major glow-up. Gone is the video wall, replaced with a giant logo, and the arches above the puzzleboard were changed to match.
-The entire intro was reworked. After the intro title sequence, the camera cuts to Jim saying his opening spiel, panning to Pat and Vanna walking out. As the set lights up, the duo walk in front of the center stage screen, and banter a bit before Pat and Vanna part ways.
-Speaking of the intro, the soundtrack got a revamp. Gone is the 2017 soundtrack in favor of one revolving around Changing Keys, giving us the first new Changing Keys since 1997.
-There was also a major graphical update to the category strip and popup score displays. Instead of looking flat for 38 seasons, they now are 3D rectangular prisms at an angle. The Mystery round also got its own overhead shot, showing the two wedges, and received a new bumper on the contestants’ scorecards, inspired by the new intro.
-Free Play is gone, and replaced with an $850 wedge, the first time that value has been on the wheel since 1979.
-Sweeping the Triple Toss-up gives a contestant $10,000 instead of $6,000.
-Pat no longer does the Final Spin. Instead, the player in control when the bells chime performs it. Officially, Pat says he felt the Final Spin had too much influence over the outcome of the game, however, it's also been noted that it's been harder for him to spin the wheel, and for the first time in 3 seasons, we hit more than 10 $6k final spins.
-$39k cash BR minimum, when some weeks they offer a car worth barely over $30k.
-Notable staff changes, including Maggie Sajak becoming the social media correspondent, and Karen Griffith's retirement.
-Mike “Confetti” Richards trying to advocate for a tournament, and ironically, dropping the confetti less, but after his firing due to conduct on Jeopardy, having those changes reverted back.
There are a couple more very minor changes I didn’t talk about, but I feel like this covers most of everything.
Here are some stats covering the entire season, thanks to the guys at Andy’s blog (andynwof.wordpress.com/author/andynwof/)
We once again gave away over eight figures in cash and prizes - $10,581,849 was dished out. Although that is a bit less than last season ($11,099,583), we didn’t give away a house and had a couple fewer bonus round wins than last season (73 to S38’s 76). Had Season 38 not have happened, this season would have the most stuff given out since Season 32 and the best BR record since Season 34.
I will talk about both of these weeks to a greater extent in a bit, but the highest week total we reached was on the week of Bed & Breakfast. During the week of February 7th, $488,275 was given out. However, big wins tend to ebb and flow. Just two weeks later, during Hawaii Week on February 21st, we hit a season low of $148,992.
Just like last season, we only had 5 million dollar bonus rounds.
Yellow ended up winning the most this season, with 79 wins for the banana section. Blue ended with 61 wins, and Red was close behind with 55 wins.
Let’s make like Clint Eastwood and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Because there is now a bonus for sweeping the Triple Toss-Up, for completeness sake, we had 27 $4k bonuses. That's $108,000 more money guaranteed over last year.
Let's start with the good first though.
First off, to start out on a lighter note, for the 49th Annual Daytime Awards, Pat Sajak got nominated for Outstanding Game Show Host… twice! Due to changes in the 2020 Emmy season criteria, a primetime series of a show normally run in daytime can only be nominated for the daytime categories, and because Jeopardy! left a vacant hosting spot, Pat getting nominated for Celebrity Wheel of Fortune season 1 made sense.
Let’s move onto the gameplay. When looking back at this season, pretty much the standout moment will be talking about all of the big wins. We had a record-breaking SEVEN $100,000 winners this season! From a QUILTED BEDSPREAD to PACKING MY GYM BAG, PARTING WAYS to ON THE BANDWAGON, it’s always exciting seeing the confetti drop.
However, defying the odds, Bed & Breakfast week struck gold again. Last season, it had the first $100,000 win in nearly two years. This season, on Monday, we saw VULTURES OVERHEAD. Then, on Tuesday, just a QUICK FLIGHT. JUST YOU WAIT until you hear about what happens on Wednesday, for the third day in a row!
Although there’s still quite a lot of contestants from California, at least recently, we’ve had more contestants fly in from out of state. That’s great: Wheel is America’s Game, not California and maybe Nevada’s.
We had a couple of us boardies get on the show on 9/30, 5/17, and 6/2. Congrats on your winnings!
Remember all the good press that came about from Wheel giving away a home during Home Sweet Home week? Perhaps Wheel wanted to have lightning strike twice, because we had all five bonus round puzzles won. A perfect bonus round week happened once last season (week of 5/10/21), and before that, once in June 2015.
Not related to Season 39 per se, but we also had Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 2 air a 13-episode run in primetime. And talk about the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory. We also got another set of episodes put onto Netflix.
Now, for the bad, and I’ll keep this brief:
We had 5 $100,000 losses this season, on 10/4, 11/1, 12/7, 3/2, and 4/14.
Around here, we colloquially use the term "skunked" whenever all five bonus round puzzles are lost in a week. This happened four times this season: Week 3 (9/27-10/1), National Parks (10/4-10/8, and yes, first month back and already two weeks have zero wins, fun!), Hawaii (2/21-2/25), and America’s Game 3 (3/14-3/18). Out of the four, the least was won on Hawaii week, with a total of $148,992 given away. That is the lowest complete week total since Season 35's America's Game 2 ($145,337), a week from before the Triple Toss-Up was a thing.
Just like last season, Prevagen’s “Wheel of Fortune Memories” and T-Mobile sponsored Tuesdays came back this season. Also just like last season, we had Secret Santa, Colette, and Margaritaville sponsor some weeks with some goodies for the audience, along with Disney as part of their Ultimate Princess Celebration and IGT Slots and Carnival as part of the 25th anniversary of the Wheel of Fortune slot machine. There were an abundance of sponsored weeks again, which I grouped in the bad before, but maybe it’s good if it means more wins.
Now, time for the ugly. I didn’t have an “ugly” section last year, but this season needs it.
Again, the aftermath of Mike Richards getting fired kind of stung both Jeopardy! and Wheel. J! went ahead and temporarily, and then later permanently, brought in Michael Davies from Embassy Row to right the ship. In my opinion, he’s done a great job recentering the show, that no one talks about Mike Richards anymore; it’s either an argument between Ken and Mayim, some talk about the latest superchampion, or speculation for the Second Chance Tournament.
However, no one seemed to take that role up for Wheel. Although some news reports stated that Davies was in charge of both shows, he never appeared in Wheel’s credits. In fact, from the initial transition saying Richards instability left staffers feeling the show was running in the dark to chats in late January with Vanna mentioning that Wheel was “in our own little bubble”, the danger signs were there. That might partially explain why the third and fourth week of the season were a bit rough.
In addition, this was a disclaimer at the end of the season premiere:
Ignoring the typos, typically the “technical difficulties” section only happens once in a while. The first 160 episodes of the season had that disclaimer. Although it could be because they forgot, the first few weeks had some jarring edits, and even times where the shot of the wheel after the spin was just never shown.
It seems like the clickbait articles on Wheel have steadily increased, up to once or twice a year. Although it all seems to be noise whenever Pat says the wrong thing at the wrong time (like Pat calling someone losing a toe and having it miraculously attached the most pointless story ever), most of it is drivel.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few times that it wasn’t. For the wrong reasons, the two most memorable puzzles this season were CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORD, and ANOTHER FEATHER IN YOUR CAP.
To be formal about it, on the episode that aired on December 21st, Charlene Rubish won her way to the bonus round. After great letter picks, she immediately guesses “choosing the right card”, and then “choosing the right”. After about 5 seconds (we’ve counted 4.971), she says “word”, right before the buzzer. She said all four words in the right order without any extra words in between, yet wasn’t given the Audi Q3 because of the pause. Or at least, Sony didn’t give it to her. After the show aired and social media outrage, Audi themselves decided to give her the car.
Do I think the show made the right ruling? Personally, I do based off of precedent, and based on the fact that Wheel of Fortune Live, which heavily borrows rules from the actual show, has a clause saying that it's up to the judges' digression if a contestant pauses, I'd say so. Do I think it’s the right decision? No. I would have just given her the car and spared the headache. The show learned that when it’s just a contestant versus Sony’s wallet, and not against two other contestants, it’s easier to just award the win and make up for it later, even if they don’t say all the words sequentially.
Recently, the show has not been editing out every null cycle from episodes. It’s actually quite refreshing hearing three dud consonant calls in a row during a Speed-Up puzzle instead of cutting to Pat every once in a while. However, sometimes editing out three bad turns can make trio of contestants look like they played better than they actually did.
There’s nothing stopping Wheel from just not editing out things and exposing everything for the world to see. That's what happened on March 1st. Could Wheel have just gone ahead, took one look at this clip, and edited Laura so that after she bought the O, she spun again? They could have. Instead, the show went for a viral moment of an even more infuriating round. 500k views on one video alone reaffirms Pat’s views that “it was fun, in a sort of perverse way.”
Well, there’s another feather in our cap, and another season in the books. We had 7 $100,000 winners in the span of five months, while also having arguments about both the rulings and the contestants playing the game. Personally, I feel the *show* part has been improved quite a lot, while the *game* regressed even more than it had been last season. Put that together, I personally think as a whole, Season 38 was better as a *game show*, and Season 39 was better as a *show*.
As we hit the big 4-0, Pat has already confirmed that $40k will be the season minimum, Bellamie Blackstone has become the new executive producer, and CWOF Season 3 has been ordered by ABC. What do you think about this season? Any hopes for the next season? Best solve this season? Favorite vowel (it's w)? I wanted to make a big retrospective, but I didn't want to ramble on about every slightly good thing or marginally bad ruling, so feel free to reply with more in the comments below.
I'll see you guys around.
-9821
First off, so many things were overhauled that I know I’m going to miss something, but here are all of the major changes to the everyday show that come to mind.
-The set received a major glow-up. Gone is the video wall, replaced with a giant logo, and the arches above the puzzleboard were changed to match.
-The entire intro was reworked. After the intro title sequence, the camera cuts to Jim saying his opening spiel, panning to Pat and Vanna walking out. As the set lights up, the duo walk in front of the center stage screen, and banter a bit before Pat and Vanna part ways.
-Speaking of the intro, the soundtrack got a revamp. Gone is the 2017 soundtrack in favor of one revolving around Changing Keys, giving us the first new Changing Keys since 1997.
-There was also a major graphical update to the category strip and popup score displays. Instead of looking flat for 38 seasons, they now are 3D rectangular prisms at an angle. The Mystery round also got its own overhead shot, showing the two wedges, and received a new bumper on the contestants’ scorecards, inspired by the new intro.
-Free Play is gone, and replaced with an $850 wedge, the first time that value has been on the wheel since 1979.
-Sweeping the Triple Toss-up gives a contestant $10,000 instead of $6,000.
-Pat no longer does the Final Spin. Instead, the player in control when the bells chime performs it. Officially, Pat says he felt the Final Spin had too much influence over the outcome of the game, however, it's also been noted that it's been harder for him to spin the wheel, and for the first time in 3 seasons, we hit more than 10 $6k final spins.
-$39k cash BR minimum, when some weeks they offer a car worth barely over $30k.
-Notable staff changes, including Maggie Sajak becoming the social media correspondent, and Karen Griffith's retirement.
-Mike “Confetti” Richards trying to advocate for a tournament, and ironically, dropping the confetti less, but after his firing due to conduct on Jeopardy, having those changes reverted back.
There are a couple more very minor changes I didn’t talk about, but I feel like this covers most of everything.
Here are some stats covering the entire season, thanks to the guys at Andy’s blog (andynwof.wordpress.com/author/andynwof/)
We once again gave away over eight figures in cash and prizes - $10,581,849 was dished out. Although that is a bit less than last season ($11,099,583), we didn’t give away a house and had a couple fewer bonus round wins than last season (73 to S38’s 76). Had Season 38 not have happened, this season would have the most stuff given out since Season 32 and the best BR record since Season 34.
I will talk about both of these weeks to a greater extent in a bit, but the highest week total we reached was on the week of Bed & Breakfast. During the week of February 7th, $488,275 was given out. However, big wins tend to ebb and flow. Just two weeks later, during Hawaii Week on February 21st, we hit a season low of $148,992.
Just like last season, we only had 5 million dollar bonus rounds.
Yellow ended up winning the most this season, with 79 wins for the banana section. Blue ended with 61 wins, and Red was close behind with 55 wins.
Let’s make like Clint Eastwood and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Because there is now a bonus for sweeping the Triple Toss-Up, for completeness sake, we had 27 $4k bonuses. That's $108,000 more money guaranteed over last year.
Let's start with the good first though.
First off, to start out on a lighter note, for the 49th Annual Daytime Awards, Pat Sajak got nominated for Outstanding Game Show Host… twice! Due to changes in the 2020 Emmy season criteria, a primetime series of a show normally run in daytime can only be nominated for the daytime categories, and because Jeopardy! left a vacant hosting spot, Pat getting nominated for Celebrity Wheel of Fortune season 1 made sense.
Let’s move onto the gameplay. When looking back at this season, pretty much the standout moment will be talking about all of the big wins. We had a record-breaking SEVEN $100,000 winners this season! From a QUILTED BEDSPREAD to PACKING MY GYM BAG, PARTING WAYS to ON THE BANDWAGON, it’s always exciting seeing the confetti drop.
However, defying the odds, Bed & Breakfast week struck gold again. Last season, it had the first $100,000 win in nearly two years. This season, on Monday, we saw VULTURES OVERHEAD. Then, on Tuesday, just a QUICK FLIGHT. JUST YOU WAIT until you hear about what happens on Wednesday, for the third day in a row!
Although there’s still quite a lot of contestants from California, at least recently, we’ve had more contestants fly in from out of state. That’s great: Wheel is America’s Game, not California and maybe Nevada’s.
We had a couple of us boardies get on the show on 9/30, 5/17, and 6/2. Congrats on your winnings!
Remember all the good press that came about from Wheel giving away a home during Home Sweet Home week? Perhaps Wheel wanted to have lightning strike twice, because we had all five bonus round puzzles won. A perfect bonus round week happened once last season (week of 5/10/21), and before that, once in June 2015.
Not related to Season 39 per se, but we also had Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 2 air a 13-episode run in primetime. And talk about the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory. We also got another set of episodes put onto Netflix.
Now, for the bad, and I’ll keep this brief:
We had 5 $100,000 losses this season, on 10/4, 11/1, 12/7, 3/2, and 4/14.
Around here, we colloquially use the term "skunked" whenever all five bonus round puzzles are lost in a week. This happened four times this season: Week 3 (9/27-10/1), National Parks (10/4-10/8, and yes, first month back and already two weeks have zero wins, fun!), Hawaii (2/21-2/25), and America’s Game 3 (3/14-3/18). Out of the four, the least was won on Hawaii week, with a total of $148,992 given away. That is the lowest complete week total since Season 35's America's Game 2 ($145,337), a week from before the Triple Toss-Up was a thing.
Just like last season, Prevagen’s “Wheel of Fortune Memories” and T-Mobile sponsored Tuesdays came back this season. Also just like last season, we had Secret Santa, Colette, and Margaritaville sponsor some weeks with some goodies for the audience, along with Disney as part of their Ultimate Princess Celebration and IGT Slots and Carnival as part of the 25th anniversary of the Wheel of Fortune slot machine. There were an abundance of sponsored weeks again, which I grouped in the bad before, but maybe it’s good if it means more wins.
Now, time for the ugly. I didn’t have an “ugly” section last year, but this season needs it.
Again, the aftermath of Mike Richards getting fired kind of stung both Jeopardy! and Wheel. J! went ahead and temporarily, and then later permanently, brought in Michael Davies from Embassy Row to right the ship. In my opinion, he’s done a great job recentering the show, that no one talks about Mike Richards anymore; it’s either an argument between Ken and Mayim, some talk about the latest superchampion, or speculation for the Second Chance Tournament.
However, no one seemed to take that role up for Wheel. Although some news reports stated that Davies was in charge of both shows, he never appeared in Wheel’s credits. In fact, from the initial transition saying Richards instability left staffers feeling the show was running in the dark to chats in late January with Vanna mentioning that Wheel was “in our own little bubble”, the danger signs were there. That might partially explain why the third and fourth week of the season were a bit rough.
In addition, this was a disclaimer at the end of the season premiere:
Ignoring the typos, typically the “technical difficulties” section only happens once in a while. The first 160 episodes of the season had that disclaimer. Although it could be because they forgot, the first few weeks had some jarring edits, and even times where the shot of the wheel after the spin was just never shown.
It seems like the clickbait articles on Wheel have steadily increased, up to once or twice a year. Although it all seems to be noise whenever Pat says the wrong thing at the wrong time (like Pat calling someone losing a toe and having it miraculously attached the most pointless story ever), most of it is drivel.
Unfortunately, there were quite a few times that it wasn’t. For the wrong reasons, the two most memorable puzzles this season were CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORD, and ANOTHER FEATHER IN YOUR CAP.
To be formal about it, on the episode that aired on December 21st, Charlene Rubish won her way to the bonus round. After great letter picks, she immediately guesses “choosing the right card”, and then “choosing the right”. After about 5 seconds (we’ve counted 4.971), she says “word”, right before the buzzer. She said all four words in the right order without any extra words in between, yet wasn’t given the Audi Q3 because of the pause. Or at least, Sony didn’t give it to her. After the show aired and social media outrage, Audi themselves decided to give her the car.
Do I think the show made the right ruling? Personally, I do based off of precedent, and based on the fact that Wheel of Fortune Live, which heavily borrows rules from the actual show, has a clause saying that it's up to the judges' digression if a contestant pauses, I'd say so. Do I think it’s the right decision? No. I would have just given her the car and spared the headache. The show learned that when it’s just a contestant versus Sony’s wallet, and not against two other contestants, it’s easier to just award the win and make up for it later, even if they don’t say all the words sequentially.
Recently, the show has not been editing out every null cycle from episodes. It’s actually quite refreshing hearing three dud consonant calls in a row during a Speed-Up puzzle instead of cutting to Pat every once in a while. However, sometimes editing out three bad turns can make trio of contestants look like they played better than they actually did.
There’s nothing stopping Wheel from just not editing out things and exposing everything for the world to see. That's what happened on March 1st. Could Wheel have just gone ahead, took one look at this clip, and edited Laura so that after she bought the O, she spun again? They could have. Instead, the show went for a viral moment of an even more infuriating round. 500k views on one video alone reaffirms Pat’s views that “it was fun, in a sort of perverse way.”
Well, there’s another feather in our cap, and another season in the books. We had 7 $100,000 winners in the span of five months, while also having arguments about both the rulings and the contestants playing the game. Personally, I feel the *show* part has been improved quite a lot, while the *game* regressed even more than it had been last season. Put that together, I personally think as a whole, Season 38 was better as a *game show*, and Season 39 was better as a *show*.
As we hit the big 4-0, Pat has already confirmed that $40k will be the season minimum, Bellamie Blackstone has become the new executive producer, and CWOF Season 3 has been ordered by ABC. What do you think about this season? Any hopes for the next season? Best solve this season? Favorite vowel (it's w)? I wanted to make a big retrospective, but I didn't want to ramble on about every slightly good thing or marginally bad ruling, so feel free to reply with more in the comments below.
I'll see you guys around.
-9821
