I happened to be listening when it was stated that "Wait Wait" would not exist without Tom. I don't hear everything because by that time I'm usually in the other room, but I wanted to pay close attention this week and making lunch would have distracted me. But "Car Talk" changed the way people viewed NPR, or at least the way they could view NPR.
There were a lot of laughs on the show this week. The show was obviously put together form many different shows, because this time I would get interested in something and the show would quickly go to something else. We heard the start of a puzzler, for example, but not the finish. And I was curious what that puzzler was. But of course the most important thing was to hear whatever Tom did. Tom also did all the "And even though ... this is NPR". I guess Ray did all of the new ones of those after the show was "retired".
Ray handled himself well, though a couple of times it sounded like he might start crying. He even joked, saying "I guess he really couldn't remember last week's Puzzler." But he came on just at the start and at the beginning of different categories of highlights. They had the music and "even though" before each break, and there were breaks giving the show three halves. The guys did one of the songs. They can actually sing. I did recognize a few highlights as having aired since their retirement. The electric brake gag came up several times.
There were no credits of any kind, and the line about wasting time didn't come at the end this week. I thought they had to identify the sponsors at least, and I'm sure we would have iked to hear serious credits because someone put together that hilarious tribute.
I'm hoping we'll be back to normal next week (though more highlights would be nice), but they will surely have to identify each episode as a rerun from now on.