Personally, I’m not so sad to see at least “Card Sharks” go. The few shows I did see simply dragged, as if some misguided attempt to “build suspense.”
To me, the show worked best as a fast-paced game. A full 2-of-3 game — questions and such — could be done in 10-15 minutes, and in less than 90 seconds in the Money Cards you might have thousands of dollars won. And then it started all over again.
Here, it seemed MC took 20 minutes to play, a lot of gab and “suspense” building, both totally unneeded.
Build suspense? Watch Jim Perry’s other show, “Sale Of the Century,” wherein if a champion was at a point where (s)he could play for the cash jackpot, they’d have the commercial break to consider the option to leave with their Winner’s Board prizes or risk it on the try at $50,000 (or before that, take the prize package or stay for the final game to add the cash jackpot). That was suspense well-executed.
I’d rather see late 1970s/1980s Card Sharks, if you ask me.
Brian