Roll: 1st
Definitely unusual and a weird slot for this game (I think it's odd to see this game anywhere in the first half, personally). The way Drew was going on with Scott about the ease of the pricing portion almost made me think that this part was recreated due to some flub or edit... Anyway, $5500 was quite a haul to get on the first roll. I sure would have stopped there. On that last roll, it looked like the cube that ended up stopping on $500 had just bumped the edge of the rail; had it not done that, it would have been a car.
Safe Crackers: I've finally figured out what bugs me about the green screen...you can't zoom in on anything when using it. That was really obvious during this playing with a really wide shot of the safe and the trip green screen set far back from the big doors. Secondly, after the trip description, we didn't get a wide shot of the trip prize with the small prize (cameras) being pushed in from the left; instead, there was a cut to a closeup of the cameras. The wide safe shot was not used at the end either (when describing the total value of the trip/camera package), and we just saw a contestant closeup. This was just all sorts of wrong. I sincerely hope that they
never use a trip as a Safe Crackers prize ever again, as long as they continue to use the green screen for trips.
Safe Crackers Reveal: Boy was I upset at seeing Drew botch the reveal. It truly did seem as though Drew didn't mean to mess it up that badly, and he did seem sorry for it when mentioning it during the SCSD. However, that was a pretty glaring error that's hard to excuse. He has been in the habit of always reaching for the envelope and revealing the price, whether the contestant wins or loses...perhaps that should change.
Swap Meet: Staging was off...not a big fan.
TTM: I got worried when I saw the first price at $23k. I got even more worried when the second price jumped up by over $1000. That big jump is often a signal to stop. But it being only the second revealed price, I thought surely that couldn't be the correct stopping point. I stopped at the next natural stopping point, which was where Belinda stopped. We were both wrong. The second revealed price was correct after all. That was the most difficult and cruel setup this game has ever had! I don't use the term "forced loss" often, but this surely applies.
IUFB #5: The IUFB intros are bad enough without the needless scripted banter between Rich and Drew (and for what was quite possibly the ugliest wall clock I've ever seen on the show). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more camera time for Rich and him having Banter with Drew, but there's certain places where it works well--an IUFB is not one of them.
Range: Dang that G6 was loaded! However, there's something weird about seeing TTM and Range Game played for a car in the same half of the same show--a major conflict, I'd think.
SC #1: Another "Models Talk" type showcase. I like the premise behind it, but it could have been a bit better. I thought the line Rachael had was kinda funny, though. An alternate way of doing this could have been to have the models in a classroom setting with Rich as a teacher asking about the models' reports on the various prizes. This would have given a more light-hearted setting for Rachael's "dumb" line that might have gone over a bit better.
SC #2: Pizza for the audience
Not a bad thing, but it did somewhat detract from the showcase. The transition to the dining room & dinnerware was good, but the transition to the spa was awkward.
More on Showcases: The model search recap/plug right before commercial also seemed very odd, with the fade to black to tape and back to Drew... that could've been done better. But hey, Drew had a decent showcase reveal today.
