Current Events > Wheel of Fortune really sucks now.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not that it was that great to begin with. But I've seen about 15 episodes in a row now where they didn't even make it to the big money round and Pat Sajak always has to make a final spin when it begins. He used to have a knack of landing on the $5000 spot. Not anymore. Toss up puzzles and lame post game segments eat up the time. Too much talking, not enough spinning.

---

Is that show still airing?

---

This has been the case for like over a decade TC

I could go on for hours about how stale the show is and how much Harry Friedman fucked it up over the 15 years he was Executive Producer

---

The prizes are also really terrible. Like really really terrible.

---

I've always hated it when they force the speed-up round. Like someone wins round 4 or 5 rarely even 6 for Pat to say we have time for another round only for the ting ting chime to pop up. It'sstupid to say you have time to play another round then immediately cut it short. The speed-up round is the worst part of the show.

---

The part I hated the most was the final round where you get like 4 seconds to guess something with maybe only 4/12 letters revealed.

---

Whats with the final speed-up round hate? Logistically you should be burning through all those puzzles as fast as you can to get as deep as you can, and hope the speed up round hits right when you start a monster puzzle. THATS when it gets fun. I hate when a player has 0$ and can solve and spins anyways, just fucking save time and solve it and get a new puzzle on the board. You'll get $1000 anyways. Dumb fuck.

Sorry, I'm passionate about WoF.

EDIT: Also Pat hates that music and its funny to see him get increasingly annoyed as it goes on

EDIT EDIT: ALSO! I have a plan if I ever get on the show. For my intro Pat is gonna be like "so it says here you know how to make the perfect hot dog..." and I'll go "Yeah Pat! It's easy, the secret is you can get these buns that are made with ketchup, and then you can get hot dogs with ketchup injected into them, and you put nothing but 12 different kinds of ketchup on the hot dog and then you dip it in ketchup..." and just keep going until he tells me to shut the fuck up on national TV.

---

Tyranthraxus posted...

The part I hated the most was the final round where you get like 4 seconds to guess something with maybe only 4/12 letters revealed.

And the second she leaves that job will disappear.

---

Tyranthraxus posted...

The prizes are also really terrible. Like really really terrible.

The round 3 prize puzzle is the biggest POS on the show TBH, they refuse to offer anything except trips anymore so the puzzles are always incredibly predictable since they're ostensibly supposed to be related to the prize in some way. Also because the value counts towards the contestant's score it's common to see players solve the instant they know it and it's their turn, even if they have no money in front of them. Like probably 4/5 of the time whoever wins round 3 ends up winning the game even if they stunk up the whole rest of the show.

---

DigitalCamera posted...

Whats with the final speed-up round hate? Logistically you should be burning through all those puzzles as fast as you can to get as deep as you can, and hope the speed up round hits right when you start a monster puzzle. THATS when it gets fun. I hate when a player has 0$ and can solve and spins anyways, just fucking save time and solve it and get a new puzzle on the board. You'll get $1000 anyways. Dumb fuck.

Sorry, I'm passionate about WoF.

Puzzles from round 4 on tend to be tiny for that very reason.

The reason I hate the speed-up round is my pet peeve about the presentation and how full of dead air it is. Pat to his credit tries to make the best of it with his quips but there's only so much he can do.

I agree about the people who spin when they have no chance of exceeding the 1K minimum though.

EDIT- I would love it if a prize puzzle sent someone to a place like Greenland. Even if it's a cruise I'll take it.

---

The values on the wheel aren't diverse enough, over the years they've raised the minimum amount to $500 while refusing to put any 4-digit values on there aside from the top dollar space and the mystery wedges, so like 90% of the wheel is $500 to $900

Their refusal to raise the vowel price for inflation broke the game somewhat, along with their making almost every prize/special space have a $500/letter value on top of the special thing, so literally as soon as you find one consonant you can afford two vowels unless you hit the million dollar wedge or picked up a mystery wedge.

The stupid "minimum bonus round value is $1,000 times the season number" thing has ruined the diversification of values on the bonus wheel, made them offer cars that are worth significantly less than the "minimum" and load like 75% of the wheel with car spaces some weeks, and make the bonus round win rate constantly decrease to save the budget by putting plenty of uncommon letters like J or X in damn near every bonus puzzle.

---

They never film on location anymore, they'll do theme weeks based on cities that they would've traveled to in the past but just film it in LA now (this has been the case for a few years now, it's not just because of Covid)

During said "salute to [city]" weeks they get rid of the fun "Pat and Vanna talk about whatever random thing's on their minds" endings for really crappy pre-recorded segments with them plugging some business or park or museum in the city of the week (usually eating at a restaurant)

Also in general their need to have every week have some kind of theme, which just feels forced a lot of the time. It used to just be the prizes offered and the first toss-up puzzle being related to the week's theme but recently more and more of the puzzles (aside from the bonus round and prize puzzle) seem to deliberately be chosen to invoke the theme. Probably the biggest offender is the annual "big money" week which despite the name offers the exact same amount of money as every other week.

On the same line as the themed puzzles, they frequently make the speed-up round puzzle stupidly meta ("declaring victory", "coming from behind", "winning lots of money", etc.)

---

Sajak is a robot now. I dont know if he was always that way or if I just noticed it later on.

---

how does anyone not see the show sucks? I enjoyed it when I was 4 because of the wheel but that's about the level of thought that goes into it.

---

Just to be clear though, for all its fault and how stale and flawed it's become I still enjoy watching it, if only for Pat and Vanna and to mock the occasional dummy who guesses something like "A Streetcar Naked Desire" or "Bridal & Gold Shower". And also because I get some satisfaction from being good at solving most of the puzzles quickly, although I'm sure that's also due in part to the predictable nature of the current production.

---

The occasional contestant than dominates the show shows how good it can be

I wish they let the winner return on the next show like Jeopardy

---

Damn_Underscore posted...

The occasional contestant than dominates the show shows how good it can be

I wish they let the winner return on the next show like Jeopardy

They experimented with returning champions back in the '90s but the show is too random to take advantage of it like Jeopardy.

---

No, you are wrong TC. You are all wrong. It's the best, you hear me, THE BEST.

Did you all see the Monday episode?!?

Guys with his hands up saying "I'm declaring victory" and then looking like a deer in headlights after he wasn't awarded the speed-up round because he added the "I'm" to the puzzle. He still made it to the final puzzle but didn't win.

---

ForsakenHermit posted...

They experimented with returning champions back in the '90s but the show is too random to take advantage of it like Jeopardy.

The show originally had champions for up to 3 days from its start until 1996, when they changed to a format where three new contestants competed each day Monday-Thursday and the top three winners from those shows competed on a higher-stakes "Friday Finals" game. That lasted for two years and then they got rid of champions altogether.

I agree getting rid of returning champions is sucky but given how ridiculous the dollar and prize values have become you could easily win in one show more than you could've won in three shows back in the day, so... eh. Also they now tape six episodes per taping session, with the first 5 comprising a week of the show and the sixth episodes being put together as one of the "America's Game" theme weeks that they do like five or six times a season. If they went back to returning champions they couldn't just air the episodes in whatever order they feel like anymore.

---