Drew Has the Power
Drew Carey by John P. Filo/CBS
In what qualifies as beyond a last-minute delivery, CBS dropped a screener of tonight's premiere of the new
Power of 10 game show on my desk this morning. (It sneak-peeks tonight at 8 pm/ET, then moves into its regular time period a night later on Wednesday, also at 8.) Now that I've seen it, I want to get the word out to any fellow game-show fans out there: Don't miss it! And in particular, don't miss this first hour.
I like the game well enough - it's all about playing percentages, trying to guess how many people responded a certain way to provocative questions in a nationwide poll - but what I really like is Drew Carey, who's instantly proving his chops as the right choice to assume the Bob Barker role on
The Price Is Right this fall. Carey puts both the contestant (in this case, an instantly likable 19-year-old pre-med student named Jamie) and the viewer at ease with his nimble wit. "You think you know it all at 19. You know nothing," he gently teases.
Carey keeps things moving, though he nicely prolongs the suspense at each round by making sure Jamie and the audience are aware of the psychology behind many of these questions. (A crucial one involves predicting how many women in the poll would say they considered themselves feminists.)
I am duty-bound not to reveal how this episode plays out, but if you've been a fan of the genre since ABC exploded out of the gate eight summers ago (!) with
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
I know I'll be tuned in Wednesday night to the second episode - or at the very least catching it on my DVR after
So You Think You Can Dance is over. Have I mentioned lately how busy this summer is?
(While I'm at it, here's a plug as well for tonight's episode of FX's
Damages, which I got the screener of on Monday and devoured instantly. Someone's threatening Glenn Close's steely lawyer Patty Hewes, just as she's facing a deadline to file a crucial brief in the Frobisher case. As Patty notes: "Taking power away from a man is a dangerous thing. Someone always pays." The suspense throughout is palpable, and we get at least one more enigmatic piece of the puzzle at the bloody crime scene involving her protégé Ellen that the entire season is building towards. Miss this at your peril.)
A final note on Carey's potential as a game-show host: There's no question
Power of 10 is a different animal from
The Price Is Right. This is a lot edgier and requires him to have far more interplay with the contestant than he'll need to do on
Price, which speedily moves the players in and out of the various pricing games. At first look, he may seem an odd fit to fill Bob Barker's shoes. Barker had a casual elegance altogether lacking in Carey, even when he's dressed in a spiffy suit as he is on
Power. But Carey's everyman appeal is as considerable as his wry humor is instantly accessible. Plus, he loves the idea of giving away CBS' money. How can he go wrong? (Not to mention that if you took him out of his suit and put him in a baggy T-shirt and shorts, he'd be indistinguishable from the average
Price Is Right audience member.) Drew, you're the man.
