Was looking forward to the premiere of this version, but overall it felt like a bit of a disappointment. Some thoughts on it:
-I liked the set a lot. I think they found the right balance between familiar and unique.
-When the first IUFB was a $385 set of power tools I was worried that we were going to see an embarrassingly el cheapo budget, but that ended up being an outlier and overall I thought the level of prizes was fine. $25000 is about $18500 in US dollars but being tax free is nice. Two games for cash and two for trips. No car on this show. We know from promos that cars will be offered, but obviously not on every episode. Showcase values with the exchange rate factored in were comparable to a daytime episode.
-Howie was ok. He had a few good lines but overall he felt like someone still learning the ropes. Maybe more experience fixes that. He did do a great job on the climax of Master Key, laying out the stakes, letting the moment simmer, and then going to the reveal.
-The quick cut camera work as the Plinko chip dropped was bizarre. Since there was only one I don’t know if that’s how they plan to always do it or if they were trying to distract us from the fact that the chip was hugging the side all the way down and never had any chance of going to the middle.
-No inspiration putt in Hole In One? Come on, that belongs as part of the package. Kudos to the contestant for a perfect grocery sequence. I was wondering if there would be a bonus since it was never mentioned, but she was in fact awarded $500.
-The four player Showcase Showdown served its purpose. I don’t really have an issue with the format. The biggest problem with it is that they went right into it without ever explaining how it worked. That they spun in the order they played their pricing games instead of being ranked by winnings was never explained. That the top two scores would advance to the Showcase was never outright explained. I assume that the standard $1000/$10000/$25000 potential bonuses were in place but who knows for sure since they were never explained. The last spinner went over leaving us with two contestants who both had 90 cents advancing to the Showcase. But we’re having a spin-off for some reason? Apparently the Showdown score was used to determine top winner/runner up for the Showcase, which is why they had to go to a spin-off, but this was never adequately explained. If they are going to do something that works differently from the way it does on the US version, they need to clearly explain it, especially on the first episode.
-Howie joked at one point that Ben Schulman was announcing from home in his pyjamas. That may have been true since it didn’t seem like he was live in the studio and if he isn’t that’s a huge miss. Having an announcer who is an active participant in the show is an important part of the package.
-I underbid on pretty much everything. I didn’t recalibrate my brain to think in Canadian Dollars.
