Hello! I thought I'd make my first post here during the first episode of the new season. It's a lot longer than I thought it would be, but there's a lot to talk about. I doubt my future posts will be anywhere near as long.
I certainly wasn't expecting Most Expensive to kick off the new season! Nice to see it played for three cars again, but despite the three backdrops behind the cars, for some weird reason, it felt naked without some kind of set piece there. It's strange that the instruction "choose the most expensive prize" feels a lot more arbitrary when there aren't large numbers there to demonstrate that it's part of a specific game.
Not as surprising to see Plinko second in the season premiere. With Most Expensive lost and Plinko only giving away $1,000, the season is off to a slow start.
Then, a new pricing game! That was pretty easy, though I guess they wanted it easy for its first playing. The only two possible prices for the car were $25,350 and $29,675. Having up to $9,000 in cash as incentive to walk away is huge, though. If they normally play this for cheap cars like the Chevy Cobalt, I predict we'll see a lot of contestants stopping halfway through the game. I don't think we'll see too many winners, as it's hard to turn down at least $6,000 to keep playing for the car. Although the reward is a car and $10,000, so maybe it is worth the gamble. So far, I'm intrigued by the game.
Does anybody know if they rehearsed Gas Money before Roger was fired? I know he created it, but I'm wondering how much input he had into the final product.
As for the redesigned wheel, the sides and the carpet look nice. I don't know why they felt like they had to change the numbers to something so similar, yet not as good as, the old numbers. I don't mind that the red lights are now white, as it matches the set better, but I wish they hadn't replaced the double light strips by the wheel itself with those large-small lights that are on the doors. I know it's the same theme as that part of the set, but next to the traditional double rows of lights, it looks schizophrenic.
Were they running really short on time already by the first Showcase Showdown? Drew only mentioned the new bonus spin amounts while the wheel was spinning. More than doubling the amount of cash you can win in a bonus spin is the kind of thing that should be given the audience's full attention, not just quickly rattled off underneath the boop-boop-boop of the wheel. Though it did prevent Drew from asking Nathan if there was anybody he wanted to say hello to.
Was Drew peeking behind the 85 in Money Game before lifting it up?
I know this was Roger's game lineup, but do we know if he set up the Money Game board? It's very much in his style to have the car's price end in 37 on the 37th season premiere, but the fact that 85, 40, and 90 were better-looking choices for the back of the car seems crueler than he would be for a season premiere.
I guess it was probably Roger, as last year's 36 has been replaced with 37. I hope that whoever is setting up the games now keeps that tradition going.
They used a picture of Mexico for San Antonio! Unless San Antonio now has ziggurats.
That was cool that we got to see the outside of Television City for the trailer. Not to mention that the trailer was amazingly nice, too. They even cleared all of the cars out of the parking spaces!
That was a bad edit where we didn't even get to hear Nathan's bid on his showcase. After Rich described the trailer, all we heard was Drew talking over Nathan, repeating Nathan's bid.
All in all, a pretty good start to the season. With the exception of one very important name missing from the credits, it felt like the show did last season. In light of all of the things that we've heard, I hope it lasts.
