Because we need yet someone else's thoughts about Drew Carey and TPIR, here are mine.
The biggest thing that I can't figure out is how Drew seems to have lost a lot of the hosting skill and comfort he seemed to be coming into back in January and February. He was worrying less about getting all of the rules and procedures right, and as a result seemed to be able to pay more attention to the contestants. But in the few episodes I've caught this season, he's back to stumbling over rules he's been over dozens of times.
And, of course, listening to the host stumble over the rules is AGONY. Barker didn't always say "pick a pair of products that have the same price" because he was a fan of alliteration; he said it because it was a reliable way not to f*ck up the rules. "We have six products here, and each of them is the same price--I mean, each has the same price as another one. There are three pairs of products that have the same price, by which I mean they're paired together, so we have three pairs--" AAAAAAAAGH
I truly don't understand Drew letting his sadness over contestants losing affect his hosting for the rest of the show. While I don't believe that Barker ever actually felt sad about a loss, he certainly knew how to take the downer of a big loss and turn it into a hook for the viewer. "Rod, that was a horrible loss! Horrible! We've got to turn this around! We need a win!"
Oh, and I would enjoy the "new" showcases a lot more if each one of them didn't end with Drew chuckling to himself for 30 seconds about how funny they are.
So, yeah. I don't know what happened to the host I thought was doing a B+ job at the beginning of the year, but it would be nice if he came back.