September 19, 2022 recap

I miss the XL wedge already.

An early appearance for Headline, and yet again it's a sports puzzle. Some day we'll have one that isn't sports or space travel related.

That was a very generous bonus puzzle with all those letters given to start. Picking the O as her vowel probably sealed being able to solve it.

This was the first episode with an audience in nearly two and a half years. You can't really tell too much, but I think we brought some good energy in and some of that can be felt in the episode.

It felt great to be back at Stage 11 and watching Wheel tape again. Sure these were normal shows, but we didn't know what had happened prior to this batch of shows. Heck, there was a period of time when XL was just a promo wedge that maybe could've been used for something.

So it is fascinating to see how everyone was reacting premiere week knowing what was to come, but this was a pretty good start to the week ahead. Just seeing the set decorated was already a treat and we were amazed by the new board. I can remember being shocked to know that Vanna doesn't even have to touch the letters to make them appear, or being wowed by seeing the board flip to reveal that week's theme.

Besides wearing masks, it felt like a normal taping. Jim cracking jokes, Vanna coming out to say hi, even the music playlist was mostly identical to how it was in the before times. There are some other things that'll pop up throughout the week, but that's the gist of it.

For this show, R5 played out a little weird. The final spin bells when off just as Blue was spinning and Pat treated it like a final spin. So after the fact, they had Pat do the final spin spiel and had Lenny respin the wheel. They edited that pretty well and you could miss it if you didn't know about it. Also, at the end of the round, because Ashlee solved with no money, Pat was a little confused about the money situation. Somehow, an extra $1000 got added to the scoreboard and stayed there as Pat recapped. It wasn't in the final total, but they also never reshot it with the right total. Would love to know how they managed to make that work, since that was a little harder to work around.

Otherwise, happy to get a Headline nice and early and a nice big win to start the week off. Definitely a good way to kick off the first shows with audiences again.

Also, enjoyed that they showed the winner's final total on the puzzleboard. Came off a little clunky on TV, but it was a nice effect in studio and I hope they take more advantage of the fun things they can do with the puzzleboard.