The wheel grippers are the least of the issues. They are a far more reasonable approach than gloves for reasons stated, or editing out someone sanitizing the wheel after each spin.
I understand budgets are real, but if I had a magic endless bank account, I’d begin with updating the wheel’s look. The font is so incredibly stale at this point.
And yeah, within reason sprinkle some more money into the values. Those long stretches where the only suspense is whether the player will land on 5, 6 or 7 hundred are boring as heck.
And the set. Blech. The video wall showing some image of whatever the theme is for the week comes across like a half-a—ed, cheap newscast backdrop. And it ties into the long past the point of being interesting set of the week. This many years in, it’s got all the freshness of spoiled milk. But it points to the bigger issue: it’s a fairly simplistic word game, and throwing random c—p on the set is one of the few ways to cover that weakness.
The puzzles are either wildly outdated, not remotely commonly used or stretching the category to the limit. Maybe all of the above on a bad day.
I have great respect for Mike Richards and how he updated Price and Deal. With Jeopardy, I suspect he is smart enough to continue the path they’ve been on with regard to gradual, periodic tweaks. But Jeopardy at its core remains solid. Wheel doesn’t have that advantage, nor the greater space to work with like Price and Deal. He has his work cut out for him.
