This is old news. I first wrote a thread about this called "Wheel of Cocktails" several years ago. Pat and Vanna discussed it when she was a guest on Pat's short-lived FOX News talk show.
This is old news. I first wrote a thread about this called "Wheel of Cocktails" several years ago. Pat and Vanna discussed it when she was a guest on Pat's short-lived FOX News talk show.
Does anyone think the producers might have drank something when they thought of MEGAWORD?
No surprise. It was a long time ago. Not a big deal
Posted a few things on the blog about it. I'll crosspost the two main entries...
The category is Food & Drink(s)
It's the biggest news in game shows since Watson! Well, sort of. Pat Sajak's half-serious "admission" that he might have imbibed between long ago Wheel of Fortune tapings has set off a fast and furious Net reaction.
Some generally respectable news outlets have joined in the liquid fun. The New York Daily News is running a poll (I swear) on this enormously significant issue. Right now the don't-care options are winning huge. Wish the News offered another choice in the poll: "I take a drink every time somebody buys a vowel."
Some Net posters have commented about the rumors of rampant boozing on the ancient Match Game. If I had been a contestant, I would have gotten good and sloshed, too. Hey, Richard, match this!
Halfway seriously, Sajak's image is hardly likely to get drubbed as a result of this silliness. Even if he batted back a few during some of the tapings, it was a long time ago. Nowadays, Wheel is so straight and sober, it makes Jeopardy look risqué. But game show bloggers everywhere are grateful for the story. I'd drink to it, in fact, except I hardly ever drink any more.
UPDATE: As you might expect, Pat Sajak now admits he was exaggerating a bit. "To be honest, and I hate to put an end to this drinking thing because we've gotten a lot of mileage out of it, but it was probably a half a dozen times we went across the street and had a margarita." Aw gee, Pat, just when the party was getting good, you take the punch bowl away.
Drunk or no drunk
Pat Sajak's adventures in drinking, exaggerated or not, have spawned a lot of Net chatter. On Matt Ottinger's board, a poster took the chance to debunk a (supposed) myth:
"Alex Trebek was not intoxicated on the 1980 High Rollers finale. This rumor likely stemmed from the fact that the finale was the only circulating episode of the '78-80 run of HR among tape traders for many years, and many people thought that the odd jokes and non-sequiturs uttered by Trebek indicated he'd been drinking. However, other episodes that have since surfaced show him making similar jokes and comments; it was just his style of humor at the time."
Don't ask me, I wasn't there. But the Trebek story has even shown up in a comment on this blog. You can judge for yourself because the final High Rollers episode is now on YouTube.
Nowadays Trebek looks like the planet's soberest guy on Jeopardy. Gotta admit, an episode of the august quizzer would be pretty funny with an inebriated Alex. Love to hear him try to pronounce some of those polysyllabic foreign names under the influence. Hammurabi might come out Hammmmmurrrrraabbbbbaaabbbaabbbaaaaa.
I do concur with the poster who said that Alex T. likely wasn't drunk during the High Rollers finale, especially in light of the two dozen or so episodes that've surfaced since then. His style was very different back in those days, more of a Tomarken-esque wise guy than what we see every night on Jeopardy! these days. Just one of those urban myths that likely grew out of somebody seeing a tape of the Rollers finale and, with very little else to compare it to, made an offhanded comment about it that "went viral" as they like to say these days.
"Potent Potables" for a fifth!
I swear watching some episodes of Wheel of Fortune here in 2012, Pat still seems drunk or a little too "goofy" now. Anyone else notice this?
Yes, ever since Pat and Vanna first told this story several years ago on Pat's Fox News show, I've watched for this. Indeed, in my opinion, Pat often seems a little "sillier" on the Thursday and Friday episodes (the ones taped after the lunch break). It could be my imagination, but I'm just saying!Originally Posted by Lingofan97
By the way, when they discussed it on the Fox show Pat did explain that back in the days of shopping it was necessary to reconfigure the studio in between individual shows, and therefore the Host and Hostess had much longer breaks. I haven't watched that tape in a while, but I recall it being very amusing. Vanna seemed shocked that Pat brought up the topic but when he said "Vanna tell everybody what we used to do between shows" she blurted it right out... "drink!". Then Pat in his sly tone said "I'm surprised you could find the puzzle board".
I think you're right, but I'll have to watch all week and see. How do you know for a fact that they record three before lunch and two after? Could be the opposite.
They tape 6 actually. The first 5 of them are named after the silly themes and the other is a "America's Game" show.
If you're talking about episodes that air on Saturdays, those are from 2010-early 2011 now. I'm just talking about Monday-Friday.
Then you don't know that they DO tape six most weeks. Feud88 explained it perfectly. The sixth has nothing to do with Saturday.
The sixth episode taped each day is later assembled into one complete week of shows, usually with the generic theme "America's Game". These are the weeks when you will see a different set on each of the five days of the week. If you really want to watch out for "Tipsy Pat" episodes, these would be the weeks to watch carefully. Each episode of an "America's Game" week was the sixth show of the day taped.
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