S41 Taping Report: July 27, 2023

Unlike the last couple of Teacher's Weeks, which used just the generic Bloomin' Onion, this week's set was more vibrant. There were a couple large boxes of crayons, one of which had the red/yellow/blue crayons in that order. Around the car, the Nissan Leaf, there was a STEAM banner and an astronaut model. To the audience's right of the center screen, there were giant ABC blocks, along with a "band" section with different instruments and a chalkboard with the glissando and first couple bars of Changing Keys transcribed. Combined with the striking red and white accents across the lights, and the set really seemed to pop.

Then came Jim. If you've read any other taping report, you know the basic gist of it - he tells bad jokes to loosen the crowd, then makes sure the audience knows when to cheer and not shout out answers. That's when he broke the bad news - although we would be seeing Pat, Vanna had tested positive for coronavirus. Instead, to take her place, the 2023 California Teacher of the Year, Bridgette Donald-Blue, would take to the puzzleboard. I thought it was interesting they would pull that stunt for this type of week, but cancel the planned taping for tomorrow, but it certainly made this set of episodes unique compared to any of the other shows I've seen. A couple in our group thought it was an excuse for Vanna to hold out for more money, but I personally can't imagine her lying like that.

I'm having a hard time remembering if Jim first talked to our group before the first show or the first time he was free after the Monday episode began, but I do remember for sure someone in the front row showcasing a Wheel of Fortune sweater they knitted in 1985 and wanted to wear if she ever got picked to be a contestant - with one season of Pat left, she at least wanted Pat to sign it. Jim took the sweater and eventually returned it to her toward the end of the first taping session.

To be completely honest, I might be mixing up details between different episodes that taped from here on out, so take the day it happens with a grain of salt. I do know that before the first episode started, just like the CWOF taping I went to two weeks prior, they did an audience shot with a moving camera at the back of our heads.

Once the first episode starts, Jim introduces Pat by himself. Pat then goes on a spiel on how Vanna is out with COVID, but it's only a minor case, and hopefully she'll get better afterwards. While Pat explains this, Ms. Blue slinks toward the right corner of the puzzleboard. Pat then introduces her, and the camera points at her. A similar intro was taped across all five days. Of course, when the episode airs, I'm willing to elaborate on anything that might come up as confusing, but the only major hiccup was in the contestant interviews. Pat asked if a contestant was a married man, to which the teacher replied "No". Pat then proceeded to rip his prompter card in half and continue describing his past life serving our country. After the second Toss-Up and Road Scholar plug from Jim, Pat announced they were redoing the interview. The information on the card was correct when he submitted his application, but not at the day of taping.

Other than that, nothing major happened that would have been cut out of broadcast. It felt clear Ms. Blue wasn't as used to the job as Vanna - little things like her waving toward the puzzleboard then touching the first letter in a Toss-Up instead of one continuous motion, her sometimes waiting for all the letters to pop up blue before moving, and her leaving the puzzleboard after Round 1 when she had to stay for a wheeloffortune.com plug that panned across screen slowed the pace down. Not enough to completely grind the game to a halt, but I think it's going to be enough for the casual viewer to notice. (This isn't a dig at her at all; during a break during the fourth taping, her daughters said they didn't know she was even doing this until the night before, kind of reenforcing the idea this was a last-minute change, and I thought she did fine.)

After the first show wrapped (with all three teachers on stage with Ms. Blue and Pat, which they did all week), I know for sure Jim knew about our group, and mentioned that we were all huge fans. He asked us if we had a group name or something, to which Jess noted the great idea of figuring out how many miles each of us traveled and adding them up. Lee did asked with a show of hands how many people got the bonus round puzzle right, and when only people from our row did, he retorted that we were big fans. Then, he went off on the tangent about the shift in glamour between the cash and cars I mentioned in brief. I know I whispered to Prizes and Alex about the $40k, which caused Alex to quickly ask if they heard right about $40k.

Game 2 comes and goes. Really, it's just another game of Wheel, with probably more energy behind it than like 90% of episodes last season. Around this episode, it seemed like the LIDAR was on the fritz; even though Ms. Blue was touching the letters hard, it didn't seem like they would always activate, leading to more slowdown. Combined with the fact that she missed a couple monitors until after the contestant spun the wheel, I wasn't surprised that when after that game, they had to pickup most of one of the rounds. I believe during this game they also ran a Winner's Circle segment, which I think was renamed "WHEEL WINNERS", with a graphic similar to the XL logo from last season. Afterwards, many of us stopped to go to the bathroom during this session; we briefly talked about taking a photo in the hall, but then remembered that a couple more people were joining us for the second taping session. After this game was also when someone (wheellover65?) pointed out to me that there wasn't a Gift Tag on the wheel. That was a surprise.

Game 3 is also just more of the same. I guess one thing you won't see at home is that once the game is over, they display a "scoreboard" on the puzzleboard with each of the contestant's totals, along with any prizes and tokens they have. I noticed they did something similar with Celebrity Wheel earlier (and that might have happened during all of Season 3), but it allowed for some quick calculations if a contestant was only one or two letters in the Speed-Up away from winning. Once again, they had to film a pickup for a puzzle after the game, holding us up from leaving. Somehow even during the pickup, when Ms. Blue tried to touch the letters, the ones on the top one wouldn't take. Bellamie tried touching lightly and it activated; another white staffer waved her hand just fine. I don't know if it was recalibrating the board or Ms. Blue learning to touch the letters that were higher up for her, but it worked. I don't recall it being as bad during the second taping session as the first.

After Game 3, we rushed back to the parking lot to indoctrinate two more members into our cult. The 11 of us that were already there didn't need to check in a second time, and when we got back into the studio, we filled up the entire back row. Jim goes through his comedy routine again (oh he named his phone the Titanic - it's currently synching; Lee lost the entire left of his body - he's all right now; Julie's got an addiction to brake fluid - she says she can stop at any time), explained the situation with Vanna, and off to the show. I think as a group, we were starting to irritate Pat - after the applause died down, he sarcastically commented something like "come on now, don't stop". So, we resumed applauding. He cut us off fairly quickly. There was another time during that episode he outright called us a mob. He also mentioned something about a Fan Friday giveaway, which perked my ears up.

Between Games 4 and 5, we took the customary hot dog photo (you can't see the hot dog) and the group photo near the cardboard cutout of Pat and Vanna in the lobby (which to be funny, I stuck my face in the small hole between Pat, Vanna, and the MDW). They ended up filming quite a few promos, first involving an interview with Ms. Blue, then several with Maggie introducing the new season (with SEASON 41 SEPTEMBER 11TH on the board or something), then use the center screen as a green screen for assorted promos She mostly did 10 or 30 second spots for "Fan Friday" giveaways, something she originally called "Fan Fridays" until Bellamie asked her to say without an "s". They then threw up the Rail Tour graphics on the center screen and contestant scoreboards while the final set of contestants warmed up.

At some point during the day, Lee handed out some Wheel blinky pins to all of us who hadn't gotten one before (maybe as a consolation to all of us pretty much being disqualified from all the trivia questions, lol), and Jim talked to most of us. I even got to explain the meaning of my shirt. Jim looked like he was hiding the fact that I did a bad job telling the story. At this point, I was kind of exhausted toward the end of Game 5 - good thing the Speed-Up was one of those dumb Rhyme Time puzzles that take the entire alphabet to solve. That was some lighthearted fun -  Pat knows how to ramp up with several dud calls. It's just a shame most of it isn't going to survive the cutting room floor. I think as a group though, we still showed enthusiasm for this episode for both highs and lows.