Deep down, at it's core, Wheel has been doing the exact same show, the exact same way, for years. Yes, occasionally a gimmick gets added (and most aren't that great), or they figure out how to add a couple hundred thousand colors to the LED lighting but still default to blue, but even the most seemingly jarring gimmicks fast become sort of the blur of sameness that Wheel has been for years..
I genuinely think you could run shows from 2012 for weeks and if you slapped a 2019/2020 copyright date on there? Pretty much no one save the obsessives and superfans would even notice as long as you avoided episodes with topical puzzles. Scoreboards are a little smaller eight years ago, a few gimmicks shift around, haircuts are a little different - but Wheel has felt interchangeable with itself for like 15 years now. Every episode just feels and sounds and mostly looks the same.
Pat's surgery and Vanna having to host with almost no prep is the first time the Wheel "formula" has felt even remotely "thrown off" since Charlie died - and even then, and I absolutely do not mean this to disrespect anyone who has ever announced - but while the sound changes and the banter shifts, ultimately the show isn't much different whether Charlie O'Donnell or Jim Thornton or Rich Fields or whoever the heck is describing the trip to Tahiti.
A new host, though? Suddenly when your host isn't someone bitter that his late night talk show never took off, it becomes radiantly evident how banal and shallow the contestant interviews are. How Wheel's absolutely endless list of sponsorships and gimmicks just absolutely bring what otherwise is a fairly simple game of hangman with a prize wheel to a halt. Why are they shaking the prize wedge for a trip to Disneyland like a crackhead with a polaroid? Oh boy! Let's stop the game to celebrate half a car! We're doing crosswords hangman style?
The moment in her first show when a contestant asks if he can buy a vowel so Vanna goes all schoolteacher on him to confirm he can was the most I've enjoyed Wheel in 15 years, hand to God. I'm not being mocking or taking a shot here, either. Watching the two decades of nonsense Wheel has piled onto itself be deconstructed is genuinely beautiful.
Honestly, and I know there are some that will get themselves into a dander over this: It reminds me of Drew's early seasons hosting Price - especially Drew's first year and then the first year or two after they fired Roger. A show that's done the same things the same way for years and suddenly you get a chance to look at things through new eyes and you realize that a lot of it just isn't that good or enjoyable - and you've accepted it as what it is because it's television comfort food, but it isn't actually that enjoyable.
And in the little moments where Vanna isn't having to sort through the 500 bits of needless gameplay bullshit and can just be an actual human person and an emcee? Vanna keeps the game on track, lets the contestants be the stars (and not just in the often sarcastic way Pat does), and really genuinely seems to care about their success as players in the game.
With the same person who engineered Price's overhaul taking the reigns at Wheel starting next season, and with everyone getting a free preview of what Wheel ca. 2019 *really is* when you remove the comfort of familiarity? I'm looking forward to the future (both post-Harry Friedman and post-Pat Sajak) tremendously.
