Too High a Price to Pay?

As my mother used to tell me, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.” Were I able, I might whisper that same statement into Drew Carey’s ear about now. TV Squad reports today that the 49-year-old actor-comedian has been chosen to replace the retiring Bob Barker as host of CBS-TV’s long-running The Price Is Right.

Joel Keller of TV Squad thinks this as a good move for the network. Carey is “a known quantity who’s relatively young,” he writes, “but appeals to both the younger and older demographics TPiR attracts. He will act more like himself than some plastic game show veteran or entertainment show anchor (Todd Newton and Mark Steines), but won’t draw attention to himself by his mere presence (Rosie O’Donnell).”

Yeah, but is it smart for Carey to take the Price Is Right gig? It undoubtedly represents a more secure paycheck than he’s been receiving of late as host of the pretty lame CBS game show The Power of 10. However, it doesn’t exactly seem like a stepping-stone to bigger and better things. I mean, Bob Barker was stuck for 35 years on an overlighted indoor stage with both pretty prize models (six of whom tried to sue him for various alleged misbehaviors, including sexual harassment) and overweight contestants, many of whom couldn’t have priced a deluxe refrigerator if their lives depended on it. In all that time, the only other acting work he got was playing himself on a few sitcoms (and voicing himself on a couple of animated series), appearing in the Adam Sandler flick Happy Gilmore (1996), and portraying Mel Harris’ dad on NBC’s Something So Right.

Is that really what Drew Carey has in mind for his own future?