Pat Sajak, the Cool, Unflappable, Reliable Host, Signs Off

In 41 seasons at the helm of “Wheel of Fortune,” Mr. Sajak, whose final episode as host airs on Friday, has been a durable fixture of the American cultural landscape.( )

If AI were ever prompted to generate an avatar of a game show host, surely the result would be Pat Sajak.

After four decades on the air, Mr. Sajak, 77, presides over his last episode of “Wheel of Fortune” on Friday. And his departure — Mr. Sajak has suggested in a series of televised exit interviews with Maggie Sajak, his daughter, that this will be a welcome retirement — offered a chance to reappraise what it is that made him such a durable fixture of the American cultural landscape.( )

Mr. Sajak, it is probably worth remembering, has been with viewers through seven presidents, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both the AIDS and the Covid pandemics, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 2008 financial crash and, oh, the Kardashians. Not incidentally, he has outlasted the internet’s incursions into broadcast television’s long-held primacy.( )

Through it all he’s been with the American game show audience, unflappably prompting contestants to choose a consonant or buy a vowel. He calmed contestants as they guessed at Hangman-style word puzzles. He bantered inoffensively with the imperturbable Vanna White in her parade of sparkly gowns. He blandly exchanged quips with an ever-changing roster of celebrity guests as they spun a carnival-style wheel, willing it to clatter past “Lose a Turn” and “Bankruptcy” to land on big money.( )

And, for 41 seasons, this avuncular figure in a jacket and tie hovered into millions of households a night, a perma-tanned deity ruling over a placid empyrean.

Against a backdrop of lives filled with workaday stress and debt, “Wheel of Fortune” was a refuge, notably less as game of chance than bulwark against everyday humdrum. How oddly easy is it to forget that overdue electric bill as Mr. Sajak asks, in his peppy tenor, “How do you feel about ampersands?”In voice as in other ways, Mr. Sajak seemed to have been born for the role. For a start, there are his generically agreeable features: a symmetrical face with apple cheeks, a wide brow, deep-set eyes and starkly white teeth displayed in a smile that resembles a quarter moon hung sideways.

( ) 

Throughout his tenure, serving as host of the Emmy Award-winning show for 41 seasons, he and Ms. White stood as two of the longest-serving faces of any television program in game show history (and somehow he kept his modified feathered ’80s hairstyle throughout).

(READ MORE) 

Image