With new episodes airing every weekday through a large majority of weeks throughout the year, Wheel of Fortune is the kind of TV show that isn't necessarily expected to deliver never-seen-before moments in the way that a show like America's Got Talent is. But that obviously doesn't mean fans should leave it out of the running, since the long-running game show is still capable of keeping both fans and host Pat Sajak on their toes. For instance, this week has delivered a highly lucrative string of events that no one could have predicted, with three contestants in a row winning the $100,000 grand prize in the Bonus Round. The rare situation where both the first and second times were just as much of a charm as the third one.
That’s right, it may not seem like very many Wheel of Fortune contestants walk away from the game with that high-dollar prize under their metaphorical belts, but this week definitely skewed the average. Monday night’s Lisa, Tuesday night’s Mark and Wednesday night’s Bree all capped off their respective wins with correct Bonus Round answers, and all three managed to pick the most financially pleasing prize from the letter wheel. As seen in the clip below, the $100K reveal caused Sajak to make a gambling joke before following up on a confetti-related comment from the night before.
While it’s true that the actual odds of the $100,000 grand prize being picked three times in a row isn’t astronomically low — 1 in 13,824 chances — it does also require the contestant to answer the puzzle correctly. It also requires Wheel of Fortune to maintain a pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty healthy confetti budget. We all know how hard the economy has been impacted by confetti shortages.
Check out the video clip from the previous episode, which was a monumental moment in and of itself, as it was the first time the big money prize was won two days a row.
A lot of the time, Wheel of Fortune’s most watchable moments come from instances where the contestants give the most god-awful guesses when trying to solve puzzles. (Sometimes with one single person managing to accumulate multiple bad guesses in a single bound.) Or the far more rare situations where a contestant gets quasi-swindled out of a win due to questionable rule calls. Or, yes, when Pat Sajak himself makes some kind of forehead-smacking blunder for one reason or anunder…er…another. But it’s always nice to have moments like these that inspire celebratory jubilance as opposed to snarky ridicule, as much fun as the snark can be.
One has to wonder how many more “firsts” Pat Sajak will see before he inevitably retires, whenever that may be. The entertainer has been a regular part of TV viewers’ lives for over 40 years now, with his four-decade anniversary being celebrated in December 2021. Maybe someone will invent a brand new letter of the alphabet that they’ll have to incorporate into the show. Or, perhaps slightly more likely, people will keep winning the $100K prize every day for the rest of the current season, and then someone will realize they accidentally copied all the Bonus Round envelopes to be the grand prize.
Wheel of Fortune airs weekdays in syndication, so be sure to check your local listings to see when and where it’s playing in your area. And hit up our 2022 TV premiere schedule to see when and where other big shows are popping up in the near future.
