September 17, 2013 recap

Round 1: What the heck was that non-answer that came out of Paul's mouth? And why wasn't that Same Letter?

Round 3: Epic win.

Using a new method of episode reviews for this season. Rather than break everything down by round, I'm using 4 "categories" each with a star rating out of 5, followed by other miscellaneous comments and final rating out of 10.

Gameplay: ★★★★ There's no easy way of saying Round 1 was a fail. However, Luis completely made up for everything after that. I honestly found no faults with his gameplay for the whole episode. He did pretty much everything right. I wouldn't have spun for that B in R1, either, as it really wasn't worth it at that point, and his spin wouldn't have put him near the trip or $2500 anyway. Good play in R4 by only leaving singles, and great R5 solve. As for R3, Express could not have made a better full debut! He could have easily gotten tripped up by a dud T.

Too bad for Melissa, though. She only got to spin twice in the whole game, and only during R1.

Having no penalty hits at all for two shows straight (and no evidence of null cycles) is also an amazing feat!

Puzzles: ★★★ Expected the Vegas theme-ing, and Rock of Ages was plugged a lot through Wheel's social media during the taping days. Nice to see the PP be pretty straightforward. Hopefully because of Express, PP's will be less fluffed this season so that they can hope for more duds and less money on successful Express runs. R1 really should have been Same Letter or even ATH if that hadn't been used elsewhere.

Winnings: ★★★★ Sort of modest early on thanks to shorter puzzles, but that three-way $2,000 tie after R2 was interesting. Luis had a great night in the end.

Excitement: ★★★★ This category concerns enthusiasm from both the audience and contestants and just the overall "on the edge of your seat" factor when applicable for a show. Seeing Express getting used for the first time was great. It's pretty suspenseful when hoping they don't go Bankrupt from it.


Other Comments:

I felt pretty bad for Paul. His nerves got the best of him. Some people in the audience laughed when he asked to solve the R2 puzzle, as if he was going to flub again. I thought that wasn't very nice...

Well, the Express element does carry one remnant of Jackpot: the money graphic under the contestant window is the same one that was used for the Jackpot total in S30.

Hooray for leaving in all the duds in Speed-Up! Thanks, editors!

Hopefully the car still comes with $5K cash despite not being mentioned in the copy.

Thanks, AutoNation, for hinting that someone would win the car tonight on Twitter... :tdown:

A controversy is brewing over R1 (even though Paul clearly said both CORNER and CURIO wrong) because some people think the show just wanted him to lose because he picked up the MDW and most of these people think it works like the old $10K wedge which is ridiculous (and don't get me started on the people who think he got $3,000,000 for calling 3 C's on it...). That awkward silence (and random audience muttering) before and after the buzzer. :lol:


Final Rating: A failure of a first round is easily overtaken by an ideal player. Very well done! 8/10

It was a pretty slow start for tonight's show but it totally picked up quickly.

Vanna's dress was a slight improvement over yesterday. Still waiting for that jaw-dropper to appear this week.

I honestly watched Paul's flub like 4 or 5 times just trying to figure out what he said. Glad he was able to make it up the next round. Love how Pat played into the audience's reaction when he said he wanted to solve.

Express Wedge was played BEAUTIFULLY! Luis' play in general was just exceptional. Early nods for player of the year for sure.

I've decided that I don't like the new look of the bonus wheel. I think they should've made it one solid color instead of the two-wedge, three-color pattern they're using here. The only feature I like is the lighting up of the wedge landed on.

I'm seeing the potential for many MDBRs this season with the MDW in it's new, although tacky, position. 2/2 on landing on it and picking it up. Which just made me think of something. Do you think that this year Pat won't have to spin the bonus wheel to show where the MDE is? Maybe they'll just do an overhead shot and light up the wedge. I think that would be neat. Something to consider for future episodes.

Tonight's show was AWESOME! Aside from Paul's mishap, gameplay was much better tonight. Nice seeing the Express wedge getting debuted so well. That wasn't easy to do for sure and was really risky, but Luis did great. I RSTLNE'd the BR. Good solving again.

Great show! 8/10

And we found our first good player of the season in Luis- at least for him, the Express was a success! The nerves really got to Paul at the end of R1 & he lost his MDW as a result.

I thought the first word of the bonus puzzle would be PRECIOUS, but I definitely knew the puzzle after Luis' choices came up. I think the $5K car bonus got omitted for time constraints due to the AutoNation plug.

Score: 8

I was wondering about that too but I noticed that yesterday that TD was started for R3. Would've changed the game big time for Luis if Express was started at yellow.

Would have hit the Gift Tag if so.

This reminds me of when PREVIOUS PAGE was a bonus puzzle a few years back. They had PRE_I__S on top, and when Pat said "well, it wasn't PRECIOUS", I went "Whaaaaaaaa?!?!"

I just read the recap, and learned this was the second day in a row where no penalty wedges were hit. This is also the second day in a row where the Million Dollar wedge was picked up, the Express wedge landed on, and the Car envelope landed on in the bonus round. So far, not one day has gone by this season without any of these things happening.