Writes Arthur Chu in "I was a ‘Jeopardy!’ villain. Now the show faces a bigger threat" (WaPo).
August 27, 2021
"The show’s soothing rhythm is so sacred that when I adopted an unorthodox strategy of frenetic hops about the board rather than a stately march down the selected category..."
"... during my 11-game stint, I went viral as a 'Jeopardy! villain.'... Now, I’m struggling to keep watching. 'Jeopardy!' is changing, and the show threatens to destroy its own appeal by abandoning the unvarying formula we’ve come to depend on and sidelining the people who most make it succeed.
It all started with the loss of Trebek. At my tapings, Trebek told us that if he were ever to retire, his one piece of advice to his successor would be, 'Stay out of the way, and let the contestants be the stars.'... When Trebek died... most fans expected for a replacement already to have been named and, after a bit of welcoming fanfare, for the show to return to normal as soon as possible.
Instead, 'Jeopardy!' trampled over Trebek’s directive. The hunt for the new host became a public circus of 'on-the-job tryouts' featuring a glamorous roster of A-listers, and the star of the show became the week’s celebrity guest host. Each episode, their followers tuned in to root for them, not the actual contestants."
Writes Arthur Chu in "I was a ‘Jeopardy!’ villain. Now the show faces a bigger threat" (WaPo).
Writes Arthur Chu in "I was a ‘Jeopardy!’ villain. Now the show faces a bigger threat" (WaPo).
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39 comments:
From when I first started to watch the show in the 60s with Art Fleming, the format was annoying to me. The whole "Please put your responses in the form of a question" seemed totally unnecessary and distracting. My view hasn't changed since then.
I reckon I'm the only one in the world who sees it that way. Ha, it's not the only thing where I get that feeling either.
Jeopardy should become New Jeopardy just as Coke changed to New Coke. What could go wrong?
How to ruin a franchise 101.
The hunt for the new host became a public circus of 'on-the-job tryouts' featuring a glamorous roster of A-listers
I wouldn't call them A-listers. Partisan progressive hacks I would call them, but not A-listers. And the exclusive focus on celebrities was a major mistake. They need, like Trebek was, a professional host/communicator with a warm presence and quality voice.
"The whole "Please put your responses in the form of a question" seemed totally unnecessary and distracting."
It was like the old game of "Mother, May I?"
It was funny back in those days, in the 1960s, because contestants often made the mistake. You could be right but still hilariously wrong. In recent years, the mistake just isn't made, so it hardly matters. It's much more serious now. But constructing the question out of the answer was a big part of the show. It's just that the contestants are now so good that they don't blunder at at that level.
The whole "Please put your responses in the form of a question" seemed totally unnecessary and distracting.
That was the whole impetus and inspiration for the show from Merv Griffin. After the game show scandals of the 1950s where some players had fraudulently obtained the answers, Griffin's wife came up with a game where the contestants were intentionally given the answers.
"You could be right but still hilariously wrong."
It was hilarious if a contestant buzzed in, proudly knowing the answer and eagerly blurting it out, only to have been undone by his own pride. That amused viewers quite a bit in the old days, as I remember, because they were sure they were right and very excited about it.
Seems to me that a few of those trying out for the role may be envious of the deep and resilient love for Trebek, and are looking to wrap that around themselves.
"Seems to me that a few of those trying out for the role may be envious of the deep and resilient love for Trebek, and are looking to wrap that around themselves."
The thing is, Trebek earned that love through years of being the total professional. We the viewers saw him work hard at staying out of the way and letting the contestants be the stars. For someone in show business, that couldn't have been easy.
After the last year we’ve had — after the past five years we’ve had — is it too much to ask that just one beloved American institution not be sabotaged by shortsightedness and ego?
LOL!
I loved Arthur Chu as a contestant, and I love his take here. I hadn't been able to express why the "guest host" thing annoyed me so much, but Arthur nailed it.
I record Jeopardy and watch most nights, but have fallen behind (I’m on Bill Whitaker now, who’s perfectly serviceable, but too old). I actually like the guest host thing; it would have felt too jarring, IMO, to simply replace Alex, who felt like an old family friend, right off. I’ve enjoyed seeing what different people may bring, and how much love and respect they seem to have for the show. The only person I’ve flat-out disliked was Katie Couric, who seemed too kindergarten-teacher, always proclaiming how the contestants were just so smart. But even her I think I could live with.
I was pretty happy with the Richards choice - he was fairly dull, but obviously knew and respected the show. He seemed perfectly suited to do what Alex wanted, and stay out of the way for the contestants to shine. (I feel like Jennings, for example, would ultimately want to put his own spin on things over time). The fun of Jeopardy is playing along, the host is just support. I’m sad this has devolved into an issue.
What gets me, is people KEEP guessing an price, that is Just One Dollar More than someone else's guess. Of course; the One Time that it worked, it was pretty cool.
Mostly, it just seems like an avertisement for consumer goods... The models are pretty hot though
I have only watched a couple of episodes since Trebek passed away. For me, the game itself is what was and is still interesting, not the host. I think the producers did make a big mistake in auditioning the job off the way they did- it isn't that hard to find someone like Trebek to fill the role, but you probably need to audition hundreds of people, maybe into the thousands. The right successor would have, and probably is, someone we have never heard of before. They will find this person eventually.
Mike Richards was my first choice. Had the right on-screen reserve and deportment. So, too bad. The prims vetting language he used 'years ago' like boobies, etc, is tiresome. He's in show business. Salty language gets slung around at casting sessions, shoots and edit rooms. The world doesn't need to be a Friar's Club roast, but why make it thee and thou? In other news, Jeopardy's not broke.
At this point I'll be happy as long as they don't name LeVar Burton as the new host. During his try-outs he annoyed me with the way he spoke and his distracting habit of bulging his eyes every other sentence. Many of his online supporters have been acting as if he has some sort of right to the job. (Racial entitlement?) I've been mildly rooting for Mayim Bialik, but apparently she's going to be "cancelled" for some online comments she made reflecting her religious beliefs. They're not my beliefs, but as long as she keeps them off the show, who cares?
Yeah, I know where the show came from and how it was developed. Just seems they jumped on a gimmicky horse and then couldn't easily jump off.
Ask yourselves when you're watching at home with others and blurt out the answers: Are you putting those in the form of a question? If you are, I bow to your convictions.
Jeopardy and me are over, I think. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Committed Jeopardy fan here. Didn't really enjoy the guest host parade, none of them were really any good. Still the standards set by Alex Trebek were pretth hard to beat.
I always thought a good replacement would be Mike Greenberg, the ESPN sports reporter. He's witty, intelligent and always very comfortable in front of the camera.
I agree with this villain, only, what is a Jeopardy Villain?
Oh, I see. There’s usually a firewall so I don’t try to read WaPo articles. He’s a villain because he jumped around the board a lot.
What a soothing world, where simply saying something like, “Alex, I’ll take Gallic wars for $200,” is as bad as behavior gets.
If they’re going to bollock up the whole thing, they may as well make Will Ferrell the host. He was a great Jeopardy host on Saturday Night Live skits.
As a longtime "Jeopardy" fan, I absolutely agree that the reason people watch is to test their own knowledge against the quiz (and to enjoy the competition between the contestants). Alex Trebek inserted his own personality into the proceedings just enough to keep things moving without getting in the way of the fast-moving game -- a skill he presumably developed over many years as host. And that's exactly why some of the celeb guest hosts were popular during the tryouts. Mayim Bialik and Buzzy Cohen were able to keep things moving without being distracting; LeVar Burton -- popular as he may be -- was not. (He yelled "that's right!" every time someone answered a question, with the energy level of a show like "Let's Make a Deal.") Ken Jennings was somewhere in between -- making it just a little bit too much about him and not the game -- which is why he went from the natural first choice among fans to the middle of the "maybe" pile.
In the end, I think the powers that be will choose a new host, and we'll hear a lot about how nobody likes that person at first. But then, as we get used to their style, and they get better at the job, they'll gradually become a good fit in the role. And we'll all go back to just watching the game.
I always assumed the "form of a question" rule was designed so that the prefatory "what is..." gave people at home a little time to blurt out the answer before the contestant.
The whole "Please put your responses in the form of a question" seemed totally unnecessary and distracting.
Sometimes right after Jeopardy, I watch Wheel of Fortune.
When I do, I reflexively shout out my answers in the form of questions.
I think they should make a rule that each category must be done in order. You can choose any category, but you must start the category at the top and then go gradually down.
"They need, like Trebek was, a professional host/communicator with a warm presence and quality voice."
Paging Mike Rowe. Paging Mike Rowe.
Of the guest hosts we saw, we liked Mayim Bialik best.
In the mid-1980s, my Michigan Law School friend Donn Rubin invented the strategy of jumping around the Jeopardy categories instead of going through the categories progressively. He and fellow classmate Chuck Forrest practiced in the Lawyers Club by having someone sit in front of them. Not having buzzers for practice, they would each tap the person's shoulder, who would then indicate who tapped first.
At the tryouts, Chuck made the cut and Donn did not, and Chuck went on to become a 5 time champion, using the strategy that became known as the Forrest Bounce.
The idea was that when a contestant picks straight down one category before going to another, the other contestants know what is coming next. But when a contestant jumps around on the Jeopardy board, that contestant knows where he is going next but the other contestants do not, giving him the advantage of knowing the topic of the next question first.
This "problem" that the show is having finding a new host may be similarly ingenious. They are trying out all these different hosts rather than giving the audience the continuity of a new host. But they know who they are going to next. Eventually they may find a new permanent host. In the meantime, look at all the free publicity they are getting.
On the early Trebek shows they replayed last year, he had higher energy than any guest host I've seen. It was distracting and likely unsettling for the contestants. Someone must have realized the audience skewed older and didn't like that.
Stressing the contestants might make an interesting game--combine it with "Wipeout", now being rebroadcast nightly on the TBD channel 7-10 EDT. The UK version (on its own Pluto channel) is surprisingly serious, no silliness or punning by the announcer.
@Left Bank of the Charles: I thought the point of skipping around was to find the Daily Doubles, which are usually located in the mid-to-upper dollar level of a category (and very seldom in the lowest levels). The current champion, Matt Amodio, tends to skip to the highest-paying question in every category first -- presumably because he's so confident in his buzzer skills and knowledge that he's pretty sure he'll be the one to benefit.
Chu acknowledges Forrest in the op Ed.
Merv Griffin was a Republican, I have no idea what Trebek's politics were. Trebek was reasonably intelligent, well spoken, professional, and generally respectful of the contestants and audience. None of the tryouts possessed all of these characteristics and 3/4 of them are clear partisans, most to a poisonous degree. They should just shelve the show for a decade or two.
@Ted,
And conversely the point of not skipping is that some questions are gimmicky or their category is given a coy, jokey name which doesn't make it clear what a player has to contend with: so you'd use the lower-priced (easier) clues to figure that out before confronting a high-value high-risk jepp.
From my own point of view, it seemed the clue crew did more than lay out a bunch of riddles; the whole puzzle-board was wittily constructed. Attacking it in out-of-sequence stabs was like killing the timing of a good story.
I remember Chuck Forrest's run- I think he also won the year end Tourney of Champions that year, too. Time flies by like a rocket.
Coca-Cola was invented in 1885, so named because its recipe contained cocaine — in the form of an extract of the coca leaf and also contained caffeine-laden kola nut as an ingredient. The product was first sold as a patent medicine, a supposed cure for headaches, upset stomach, and fatigue.
But by 1929, with public pressure and Prohibition against alcohol in full force, the company was forced to remove all traces of cocaine and New Coke #1 came into being. Coke soon became popular as a “soft drink,” an alternative to hard alcohol. It seems to me that the soft drink labeling was Coca Colas greatest strategic change. The global soft drink market in 2020 was $995 billion.
Back when you had to audition in person I aced the quiz and played a mock game for the producer but I was never called to do the show. Someone told me that only happens when the candidate would make for poor television- like socially awkward or too nerdy…
I stopped watching after that…
My sister won a car and a trip to Europe on Wheel of Fortune a few years ago. Lucky duck…
Some of the points raised are why I was happy they chose Richards. He had stage presence (unlike Jennings) without eating up too much of the show trying to be cute (unlike almost everyone else).
Late to the party as usual, but I note that, in almost all of the summer reruns (including some with Ken Jennings, whom I can't stand), the contestants mostly followed the top to bottom sequence. I've said this before, but the much more common approach these days of starting at the bottom to me ruins the whole game. Plus, I find it exceedingly boring for one person to dominate for days and weeks on end because they're better at clicking in than the other contestants. Would much prefer that they stuck to the old five-day limit.
--gpm
I fondly remember Don Imus's parodies of the program, particularly the Inner City version:
"I'll take Drive-by Shootin's for $500, Alex."
I fondly remember Don Imus's parodies of the program, particularly the Inner City version:
"I'll take Drive-by Shootin's for $500, Alex."
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