Jeopardy! And What Are Things That Are Different Are Not The Same

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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29 Responses

  1. Started off completely disagreeing with your premise, and by the end you completely convinced me.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    I was never really a Jeopardy guy. I had friends who were Jeopardy people… I’d watch the show with them every now and again and they had a “play at home” version of the game:

    1 point for each question they got right (buzzer == yelling it out first)
    -1 point for each question they got wrong

    Final Jeopardy allowed you to bet all or some of your points. (You needed pen and paper for this one.)

    Most points wins.

    They talked about this game like I talk about D&D. (“Two months ago, I was doing awful, I had only 13 points and he had 25, but final jeopardy was on “Big Countries” and I knew that the acronym “BRIC” referred to Brazil, Russia, India, China and he said “Britain, Russia, India, China” and I bet all of my points and he didn’t bet any and I won!”)

    So, with that in mind, I’d just say that there are people out there who would be happy with a “Good Enough Jeopardy”.

    Would we rather have a perfect, optimized Jeopardy? Golly, I sure would! Maybe we could get rid of those dumb video questions where they have Gavin Newsome ask a question about California Vineyards and just have the announcer, whomever it is, read the card the way God intended!

    But if that’s not on the table, there’s enough love out there for Jeopardy to fizzle away leaving the Game Show Network 2 to increase its market share between old episodes of The Price is Right and Joker’s Wild.Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    Ken Jennings has baggage?

    Wait, who’s Ken Jennings?Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Marchmaine says:

      Maybe folks know more about Jennings’ off-screen conduct than I do. What I know is he tried some pretty indefensible jokes on Twitter. Jokes that punched down and tried to use cruelty as the humor device. They weren’t funny and I feel no impulse to defend them, or Jennings for making them.

      I do think there needs to be room for grace in our culture, room for people to make apologies and also room for others to accept them. And I think Jennings has done his part in that, recognizing the nature of his mistakes and the hurt they caused and offering sincere contrition. To my knowledge he hasn’t repeated those mistakes.

      But even that isn’t the point here. Jennings is good at hosting but certainly wouldn’t be the only good choice. Burton could easily grow into the role despite a slow start. Bialik has baggage too but again, there is room for grace or at least ought to be. There ought also be room for people to try out ideas for size and discard them when they find they don’t fit. That could be Bialik and her anti-vaxxing comments.

      What else is out there that’s awful? That’s unforgivable? And just like in politics, if no one is available who is free of sin and fault, AND there is no room for grace, growth, and forgiveness, then we paralyze ourselves as a culture. None of us are free from sin (so the Christians say and I think they’re right on that) so in a graceless world, no one is morally eligible to do anything important.

      Not even host a gameshow.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Burt Likko says:

        “I do think there needs to be room for grace in our culture, room for people to make apologies and also room for others to accept them. ”

        oh look

        here’s a white man, explaining how sometimes punching down is okayReport

  4. Rufus F. says:

    Well, if it’s unclear if it could ever be the old show, they could just change the punctuation, so it’s now “Jeopardy?”

    Seriously, though, I don’t know why they didn’t ask Canada- we could’ve sent down another host.Report

  5. Slade the Leveller says:

    Forget Jeopardy. The shoe wasn’t found when the pond was drained?Report

  6. KenB says:

    I watched a lot of game shows as a kid, and for me the Art Fleming Jeopardy (as of the last few years of its run) was the real Jeopardy. I was pretty skeptical when Trebek was brought in — I knew him from less “sophisticated” game shows like High Rollers, and he didn’t seem to have the intellectual gravitas that I felt was needed for Jeopardy. And honestly that feeling never went away for me in all the times I watched it since — the illusion I had with Fleming just wasn’t ever there with Trebek, though the show was still enjoyable enough.Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    “For the two hundred-odd years our family has inhabited our beloved Up Yonder in West Virginia, some traditions have endured while others only have a season.”

    OT but stuff like this boggles my mind. I suppose it was generally true enough for my ancestors or could have been (when we weren’t getting expelled from places for being Jews) but those records and info are lost to the sands of time.Report

    • It boggles my mind in other places of the world there are families that can track back for unbelievable amounts of time. And saddens me that something like what the Jewish people have had to deal with for most of their existences to be robbed of that.Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to Andrew Donaldson says:

        Bitter herbs in sweet wine, this comment is.Report

      • It’s always just struck me as strange. If we designate Solomon Cain, born 1821 in eastern Kentucky as generation #1, my son is generation #8. Six of the eight generations are in the ground, progressing west — Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska — and none within a hundred miles of the previous graves. At 35 miles, my son and I live closer together than any two previous generations.Report

        • CJColucci in reply to Michael Cain says:

          I would have thought that for our current African-American population, the First Free Ancestor would be a family icon. But I have asked several about it and a surprising — to me — number can’t identify him or her.Report

  8. As a The Price is Right fan as well as a Jeopardy! fan, I’ve been through this sort of thing before, when Bob Barker retired. There were no public auditions for that, they just announced that the new host was Drew Carey. And he was not well received, and he was not very good when he first started. But he kept at it until he figured out what Drew Carey’s version of Price is Right would be. Now he’s quite a good host. I’d even say that I prefer him to Barker (though I only ever saw Barker’s late seasons, not those back in his heyday.) But the host change changed the show into something else. The same will be true of Jeopardy!.

    I think the reason people are so protective of Jeopardy! and so resistant to letting this particular game show go has less to do with fond memories of Trebek and more to do with the fact that Jeopardy! is almost the only decent quiz show out there. It has the well-written questions Burt Likko pointed out, but it also has a fast pace: 61 questions in a half-hour air time. The Chase is the only other show I can think of that goes for such a sheer volume of questions. Other quiz shows (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, The Wall) really focus more on drawing each question out for every agonized second they can to increase drama. Jeopardy!, now more than ever, is vulnerable to a competing show that delivers Quiz Bowl-style fast-paced, literate trivia, but no such competition exists, especially not in a nightly format.Report

  9. Brandon Berg says:

    I don’t watch Jeopardy! much, and I couldn’t find an answer to this question on the Internet: What happens there’s a particularly sharp slate of contestants who clear the board significantly before time runs out? Do they use that time for free discussion, or just squeeze in an extra commercial?Report

    • There are 61 questions in a game of Jeopardy, which airs over the course of 30 minutes. Let’s say there’s 10 minutes of commercials, leaving 20 minutes of actual Jeopardy! for those questions to be answered during. Final Jeopardy is drawn out to around five minutes, leaving about 15 minutes to answer the other 60 questions, or an average of 15 seconds per question. Daily Doubles eat up some time, so the other questions get less time. There’s also a minute or two of contestant interviews, and the opening theme and announcements taking some time. So, for most questions, there’s an average of less than 10 seconds available for the host to read the question in full, then to take answers from the contestants. If there are lots of incorrect answers given in the game before the correct answer is given, or if they have a lot of questions that the timer runs out on without an answer, then you’ll see some questions getting left on the board at the end of the round. If contestants are sharp and answer every question as soon as it’s out of the host’s mouth, then the boards will be cleared. There’s not a huge tolerance of time between a slow game and a fast game, in this respect. There’s no free discussion; the host has some ability to take longer to conduct the interviews if lots of questions were answered by the first commercial break, or to take longer to conduct Final Jeopardy if there’s a lot of time left at the end. They might squeeze in an extra 30-second commercial from time to time, but I think episodes can all reach the same length through editing pretty reliably.Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Derek Edwards says:

        I looked it up, and apparently a round is only 6:30. I guess that really doesn’t leave a lot of time to spare. Thanks!

        Ten minutes is a lot of commercial time; usually half-hour shows run around 24 minutes. But all the episodes I found on YouTube are 20 minutes, so I guess that’s right.Report

      • Lots of little ways to limit the pace as well. Buttons are locked out until lights visible to the players (but not viewers) come on at the end of the answer. Those lights are under offstage control. Players can’t give their choice for next question until called on. Sometimes the host says “Correct” and moves on. Sometimes they say “Correct, he was also known as the mad king of foobar” before proceeding.

        The play-along-at-home aspect does, I think, make it in the producers’ interest to keep a very consistent pace every show.Report

  10. Jaybird says:

    Report