S40 Taping Report - November 30th 2022

The day started off early with jubjub449  and I arriving at the Sony lot right at 11:15. We were just a smidge late thanks to some traffic but were quickly settled and checked it. Since we were "guests of Production" we were given silver wristbands instead of the yellow wristbands given to general admission audience members. Since we were VIPs we were sent to almost the front of the line, just behind the contestant supporters. As we filed into the studio, the contestants were on one side of the audience, their family on the other side, and the regular audience was in the middle. Since we were in the front of the non-family line, we got seated on the far edge of the row, almost in the front row, near Jim's booth. Jim was wrapping up his warm up with the contestants as we were entering and shortly after we entered came over and began talking with us. Jub showed pictures of their Wheel set they built, I had my Wheel shirt and socks on, and Jim seemed rather impressed at the depths of our knowledge of the show.

After our quick chat with Jim, he began his warmup with some really corny jokes. He gave off this cool suave dad energy that felt right at home on the set of Wheel. After a few jokes he points Jub and I out and asks us to stand up and show off our Wheel swag. He shows off the pictures that Jub brought and talks about how we're super fans of the show. It felt a little odd to be the center of attention at a Wheel of Fortune taping but I can't complain about it.

After Jim's warmup, Jimmy McGuire of the Jeopardy! Clue Crew (who is now the stage manager for both Wheel and J!) told Jim to quick wrap it up and the episode will be starting in 10 seconds or so. Jim reads the slate and away we go! The set for this week was the standard generic set with black background and blooming onion logo behind the contestants. Pat and Vanna walk out to a thunderous applause, I made sure to woo a few times to check if I can hear myself on the playback in two months. No gameplay spoilers from me here, but I will make a few notes about each of the games. There was a stopdown in round one thanks to the puzzleboard not activating properly, the contestants had to turn around and the puzzleboard quick reset to the Wheel logo. The beauty of having the fully digital puzzleboard is they can hide things if they need to. During the stopdown, Vanna came out and talked with the audience briefly while Pat spoke with the producers. They taped a quick pickup with the contestant repeating whatever letter they called and the game continued from there. The rest of the episode seemed to fly right on by, with the show being taped completely live to tape. No other issues happened that I can think of at this exact moment. I'll write more about the specifics of the episode in January in the recap thread after I see the tape to help jog my memory. Seeing six shows, everything starts to blend together!

During the break between games one and two, the audience and supporters were not allowed to go to the restroom or into the hall of fame to take pictures, as that was the time for the contestants to do so. Can't have contestants and outside people mingling! The entire wheel gets sanitized between games with someone wiping down all 72 spokes with some wipes after resetting the wheel for round one. The sanitization team did a fabulous job with the contestants getting moved away from the wheel between rounds and everything and anything that might have been touched getting wiped down. One thing I noticed is that the Wild Card gets swapped out for a different Wild Card after being picked up off the wheel, perhaps for one that doesn't have tape on the back?

Game two starts up and it's the exact same process again. It feels weird to write a summary of an episode of Wheel of Fortune without mentioning any parts of the actual game, and this is the 14th one of those I've written in the last two months. During one of the commercial breaks of this episode I had the chance to privately speak with Jim about having Pat, Vanna, and him to autograph my "white thing" that I brought to the taping as a souvenir from the show. Jim explains that he would gladly sign it right there for me but it's a long and complicated process for anything to get signed by Pat and/or Vanna because it has to go through "the proper channels" before it can get to them and they'll most likely have to either mail it back to me, or not be able to autograph it at all. I'm a little disappointed but I understand, especially with some of the nutcase stalkers that have caused issues with the show before. Jim has me write down my name and address on the back of the rundown sheet for the day and 12/1. There was a brief moment in my head of "should I really have access to these?" and so I didn't look at them after seeing what was on the paper handed to me. The end chat for this episode was fantastic, as was the rest of the week. Honestly the best part of the taping (maybe second best after Jim!) is seeing Pat's humor live and in person. Lots of witty remarks, a smooth charm that oozes professionalism. You can tell that while he's probably a little tired of hosting this rinky dink little game show for 40 years, he still likes to have fun and will do so whenever given the opportunity.

With game two over this was now the audience's chance to go out into the hallway and get pictures with the big hot dog photo or use the restroom. Jub and I stretched our legs but didn't spend too much time in the lobby and got back to our seats to watch the contestant coordinators rehearse with the next game's contestants. For whatever reason, for about 30 seconds, the contestant rundown sheet appeared on the puzzleboard screen, which contained the full names, phone numbers, and addresses of all 20 contestants in the studio that day. Not good. Thankfully it seems that only Jub and I notice this and it's gone before anything malicious can occur. 

Game three went rather well. Once again I'll have more comments about each specific episode in their recaps once they air in January. It was at this point where I noticed that the contestant's total still appears on the puzzleboard screens like it briefly did at the beginning of the season. So even though they don't do that anymore, it is still part of the puzzleboard software. Once the game was over everyone was rather quickly escorted out of the studio and back into the parking structure. There wasn't really any time to go anywhere, not even back to the car, so thankfully I had packed some snacks in my little bag and we were able to eat those between the taping sessions. 

Back in the studio and Jim notices us again, apparently they don't get that many people who see both taping sessions in a day who aren't contestants/supporters so he was surprised to see us. Jim has us stand up and show off how big of Wheel of Fortune fans we are in front of everyone yet again. We were seated one row further up and a few seats closer to the center for the last three games, which in my opinion were slightly better seats to see the show, but any chance of privately talking with Jim was gone. The audience coordinators were amazing people, keeping everyone energized and engaged with the show. One of them seemed to have been with the show from probably close to the beginning. It was a little chilly out so he had on a nice jacket that said "Wheel of Fortune in New York - 2013" and was telling stories about the show from the 90s. Some of his info was just a tad off, for example citing a puzzle missolve from 1998 as a Where Are We? puzzle when it was actually a Fill In The Number puzzle or saying the Million Dollar Wedge premiered in 2002. All forgivable mistakes for someone who's seen thousands of Wheel episodes. I imagine they all blend together at some point. I know the six I saw in person certainly did.

During a commercial break, Jim made it a point to walk over to me and said "See me after the 5th show, we should be able to coordinate something." which piqued the interest of the couple sitting in front of us as to what that was for. After the game was over and we had a little break, we started chatting to them about our shared interest of Wheel, how we hadn't actually met until 24 hours prior, neither of us attended a taping before, and we don't really watch the show daily anymore. It got to the point where the one woman asked us "If you don't watch the show and you've never been to a taping before, how do you know so much about the show?" I didn't have an answer to that. Shortly after game 4 was finished, they taped a promo for WWE Week. I started giggling a bit when they put the WWE graphic up on the middle screen prompting the couple in front of us to ask "What's going on now?" That question I did have an answer to.

Pat and Vanna taped a generic :10 promo in front of the middle screen with the WOF logo in the top left and WWE logo on the bottom right on a black background. The entire promo consisted of Vanna saying “It’s WWE Week on Wheel of Fortune and we’re looking for our own champion!” followed by Pat saying “Do you have what it takes?” which makes me think it might be an intro clip? Could be a generic weekly clip as well. After that they had Pat record an audio pickup for a Celebrity Wheel of Fortune episode. It wasn't much, just a quick "You've won $XX,X00 for Innocence Project." which may or may not have accidentally spoiled something for those of us in the audience. Interesting to see them doing that now instead of at a CWOF taping, especially since those finished taping on October 13th. Apparently they're still editing them. After that they had Pat and Vanna stand at various areas around the set, behind the wheel, next to the puzzleboard, next to the center of the puzzleboard with the logo on it, and then some with just Pat and some with just Vanna. After all that was finished Vanna stood at the center of the puzzleboard and recorded a quick shoutout to "Mary" for "being such a dedicated Wheel Watcher" and how "everyone at the show is so grateful for viewers like her." That "promo" was recorded on an iPhone instead of with any real cameras, so I don't know if that will turn up anywhere publicly. 

Game 5.  I will have a good paragraph or two for this episode's recap thread. Whoever put the wedges on the wheel didn't tape them down hard enough. At least I think that was during the Friday episode. Once I see the tape I'll remember it again. There were some moments that they had to tape pickups for, including one that I suspect will go viral after airing. After this game the audience had the ability to go to the restroom and hall of fame again, and since Jub and I already saw what we wanted to, we just stayed in our seats and watched rehearsal. Jackie Lamatis was "hosting" and having the contestants clap and spin. Since it was basically just Jub and I in our seats since everyone else (except the contestants) went into the hallway, Jim came over and brought us up to his booth. He showed off his booth and then handed me something. He said not to make a big deal out of it at the taping because then suddenly everyone wants something signed by Pat and Vanna, and with it being such a big complicated process the staff doesn't like having them sign things at every single taping.

By Game 6 I was tired, a little sore, and my voice was starting to finally give out (although I suspect the day before's activities were to blame for that.) I'll have some notes for the recap but beyond that there wasn't much to write home about. It's hard to write a summary of a Wheel game without talking about the game. Everyone was ushered out of the building rather quickly, I got shake Jim's hand on the way out, and I wrote a thank you letter which I dropped in the post shortly after getting home from my big trip to LA.