It is all we can handle right now.Ī puzzle is solved on August 18, 2017! Eric McCandless // Getty ImagesĮveryone is beyond the end of their ropes. It is perfect late-lockdown entertainment. Even the cars and cash amounts are, like, fine. The Wheel will neither challenge nor upset you you do not have time to emotionally invest in the contestants, and you will forget everything you have seen ninety seconds after the credits roll. Pat Sajak and Vanna White-and, briefly, Rolf Benirschke but we do not talk about it-have always been there, a genial uncle we stopped following on Facebook and a charming aunt with a great wardrobe.

It’s always been there, of course, and its candy-colored set and accessible puzzles take us back to our youth, to dinners eaten on a TV tray in the family room as a special treat.

The Wheel has met its moment, and I am not ashamed to say it: I, too, have become a Wheel-Watcher. It is a triumph for the lowbrow, a win on the level of solving the bonus round puzzle, ZOOT SUIT, when just the S and the Ts showing. As cable news ratings tumble, viewers are opting for ease and comfort, and Wheel is the top-rated syndicated show in America. The clearest sign of our national level of post-Trump, pre-hugs, mid-vax, business-sweatpant, thirteenth-month-of-a-mismanaged-pandemic fatigue is this: ratings for Wheel of Fortune in the second half of March are up nearly 25 percent from the first half. We are maybe possibly turning the Covid corner, the lights of a world we remember are shining on the horizon, and my God are we tired.

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