Seeing that I recently acknowledged my soft spot for game shows, it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that I just had to set my TiVo to check out Drew Carey's first episode of The Price is Right today.
As it turned out, I could almost guarantee you that this was not the first episode he filmed. All six of the contestants playing the "pricing games" won their games -- something that Carey himself said during the episode has happened only 76 other times in the 30+ year history of the show. What's more, contestants hit the $1,000 bonus on "the Big Wheel" in both halves of the show.
I suppose a real cynic could call it rigged. I prefer to think that, having banked a handful of new episodes, the network decided to "start" Carey's run as host by airing the one that turned out best -- that happened to have wall-to-wall winners.
In any case, the show had a decidely different tone than it did with Bob Barker hosting. Bob Barker brought the closest thing to... call it "stateliness," that one could possibly bring to people jumping up around with enthusiasm at winning tens of thousands of dollars. The whole thing was a circus, but the man in charge was a quite distinguished ringmaster.
Drew Carey had an ever so slight edge of snarkiness in his delivery, though a forgiveable one since he simultaneously seemed to genuinely enjoy being there. And let's face it, if some crazy stranger actually did a cartwheel in front of me (as one woman did when she made it up on stage), I'd probably say something a lot more mean spirited than Drew's pithy, "Wow, if you actually win, what are you going to do for an encore?" (She fell over backward and collapsed to the floor. I couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not.)
Throughout the hour, Carey transformed Bob Barker's "gentlemen" in control of the classic One Away car giveaway game into "Oh Master of the Sound Effects," pulled out a reference to the classic comedy line "And slowly I turned....", got a contestant to yodel for him before embarking on the Cliffhanger game, and more. I suppose some might call it a little irreverent. But then, it's a game show, not a church. I think it's the right move for Drew Carey to adopt his own style.
I'm not setting a Season Pass for The Price is Right or anything. But I think the next time I'm home sick from work or some such, the show will be as it has always been -- a fairly breezy and fun way to pass the time.
3 comments:
There was also a million dollar winner on Drew's first episode of that power of ten show he hosts. That one (unless they did some clever editing or Drew was in on it) was actually the first show they taped as Drew continually made reference to the guy actually being the first contestant. I'd call shenanigans... but it's Drew freakin Carey.
Snarky Smurf
Aw, I watched it too, though I watched it at airtime and while playing "catch" with the B. (This is actually her shoving a 3/4 inflated beach ball into my face and yelling "Ba!")
I thought he did fine, but I also wondered about all those winners. I think the real test of a host of a game show is how you handle it when someone, especially someone who is vaguely sympathetic, completely craps out and wins nothing. (Well, on The Price is Right, I suppose you always win the item that got you on the stage in the first place.) Maybe this is sacgameshowious (read this as the game show version of the term "sacreligious") but I thought Bob Barker got sort of snarky with the people who lost their games while they were on stage, at least in the later years of his hosting duties. It was like a dignified version of looking at them and saying, "Ooooh, you don't know much, do you? Sucks to be you!"
So I'll watch again just to see how he handles someone who just watched a few grand in cash or a car slip through their fingers.
Kathy -- Good point about seeing how he is when handling the losers. I might just have to queue up another episode to see.
Post a Comment