You know, mrbrown, thanks for those tweets, because I was wondering about that. That makes me feel a little better.
Still though, today was - what can I say - a LOT packed in one show. My personal favorite things included the extended ticket plug (although that maybe took a bit TOO much time but was hilarious - something tells me Drew came up with that one himself), Scott having to take over during OB4, and doing SC1 in the dark and having the lights come on at the end (that was really cool!) Duds for me included Balance Game and OB5. It's obvious to anyone watching that Balance Game was a staged edit - there was no way that Manuela could lift George, and that crosses the line a bit for me. There's a bit of a difference between that and something like Rachel driving the car into the door in L7, which is actually plausible because she's done it before - that was much funnier as a result even though it was faked as well. OB5 just dragged out an only marginally funny joke too long (although I do think they were purposely making fun of gr.net there, with Drew just wanting to "make sure the contestant could understand the copy"). In fact, I felt large parts of this show were directed at the general gr.net population, and I'm not sure how to feel about that, haha.
But dang, this show sure felt like what everyone's worst nightmares were of it turning into in Season 37. An almost inexcusably short lineup (and I'm setting my foot down here. You're obviously going to have to edit a bit anyway, so play something that's not a one prize game. Please.) and staged gags and destruction throughout. I hope they realized that a lot of this only worked because it was April Fools' Day, and we don't want to see George popping up everywhere (or ANYWHERE, really) doing staged bits during a normal show. (Like, George in the steam shower. Remember when that was Rich in the dunk tank? Everybody hated it then). Still, it was entertaining, with quite a few laugh-out loud moments, and I'll give them that. It just didn't really feel like TPIR today at all, which is a bit of a problem. It may even just be because of today's all-quickie game lineup, but I feel that previous Halloween and April Fools shows have done a much better job of making it feel like Price while still being crazy and funny.
Oh, and one thing they should take note of: one of the funniest moments on today's show was one they didn't even stage, when the contestant jumped into the steam shower during Freeze Frame. I hope they realize that they can try as hard as they want, but due to the very nature of the show contestants will most of the time be able to spontaneously create better humor than they could ever script.