Wheel... of... DEATH!

I was sitting around in the edit truck the other day and Live With Regis and Kelly was on. Well apparently Reeg was out sick or something because they had a very special guest host on: the one and only Pat Sejak. Can I just tell you how incredibly weird it was to see old Pat on this show. First of all, can I just say, man that dude is getting old. Pat Sejak always struck me as a Dick Clark kind of guy. His face remains plastered permanently at whatever age he was circa 1985. Probably because that’s the last time I really watched Wheel of Fortune. But also, and more so, it was just weird to see Pat doing anything but that show He’s been doing it for how many years now? His face is synonymous with that big clicking wheel and the idiots who spin it every weeknight. Same with Vanna White. You cannot hear her name or see her face without immediately picturing her in front of that big green and white board.

There are only a few other game shows and game show hosts that are like that. First of all, that other Merv Griffin hit, Jeopardy. The only time I can remember seeing Alex Trebek on a show other than Jeopardy was when he was on Cheers playing himself as the host of Jeopardy. And then of course there is the long standing The Price is Right with the longer standing Bob Barker.

As I sat there watching Pat Sejak on Live, a couple thoughts occurred to me. The first being, why have I never noticed before just how freakin cute Kelly Ripa is? You could just put her in your little pocket and take her home with you she’s so dang cute.

But back to the whole gameshow thing, I couldn’t help but wonder what is going to happen to the three gameshows I mentioned when their key personalities either retire or die? Like I said, their names and faces have become synonymous with those shows, but more importantly, I don’t think anybody in America could picture those shows without those names and faces. People tune in to watch The Price is Right as much to see Bob Barker as they do to watch an hour-long commercial for TidyBowl. I remember Vanna White was planning on leaving Wheel of Fortune several years ago after nearly two decades and the studio somehow threw enough money at her to get her to stay because they knew people tuned in to watch her more than the silly game.

Actually I find her whole situation funny in and of itself. Those of us who grew up with that show during the 80’s remember that she used to actually spin the letters around when they lit up. It was like that had to give her some semblance of a function to distract people from the fact that she was really only on screen to be eye-candy. These days they don’t even pretend that she has a larger function than that. Now when the letters light up, all she does is touch them while some production assistant backstage presses a button to make them actually flick on.

But back to my point, what are these shows going to do when their personalities move on? Because it certainly doesn’t seem to me that they’re doing any planning for that certainty. At least shows like The Tonight Show will bring on a guest host every now and then so it isn’t such a huge shock when their main guy retires. But have you ever seen anybody other than Bob Barker hosting The Price is Right? How about Wheel or Jeopardy? Of course you haven’t. These producers are certainly putting all those eggs in the proverbial basket full of more fabulous prizes. Bob Barker alone is a ticking time bomb. He’s starting to look like Pope John Paul II did toward the end, like he’s about ready to collapse into himself. Vanna White is eventually going to get old and cease to be pleasant eye-candy anymore. And at some point I’m sure Alex Trebek, who I’ve heard is quite the asshole off screen, is going to draw a line in the sand and demand more money than he’s worth and that will be the end of that. And dear Pat Sejak. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a taste of greener pastures doing these little guest host stints he’s doing and finally have the three-quarter-life crisis that sends him on his merry way.

And then what happens? What happened before? I know Alex Trebek wasn’t always the host of Jeopardy. Can somebody older than myself tell me what happened when he took over for the previous host? Was it a hard transition? Did they not like him at first? Was there some other letter bimb that Vanna muscled out? Was there a catty breaking-in process for her and the rest of America? And what about Pat? I know he’s charming and charismatic now, but did people take to him right away or did they say, “Who’s this yutz with the poofy hair?” I know things obviously worked out in the end because here they all remain. But then again, studios have lot shorter attention spans these days. Will the producers and audiences of these three shows have the patience and loyalty to break in a new personality? Or will the producers simply allow the shows to die along with their hosts?

Does anybody know? Anybody?