Purists might cry foul at this desecration of the good Jeopardy! name, just as they’ve fretted over the producers’ planned spinoffs focusing on sports and pop culture to go with the standalone tournaments for librarians, educators, and students. It Is Long Past Time to Retire the Oldest, Dumbest Debate in Literary History How Plausible Is Succession’s Election Nightmare? Who’s Really to Blame for Philadelphia’s Latest Faceplant? (Incidentally, the queer and trans representation the two have brought to the hall of fame also has the happy side effect of bolstering the show’s relevance.) They might even get noticed by their faves with an the parasocial equivalent of nailing Final Jeopardy. Tournaments between top scorers are planned more frequently, with the upcoming best-of-the-best prime-time special Jeopardy! Masters inviting Mattea Roach devotees and Amy Schneider–ites to duke it out on social media. Taking another cue from the sporting world, the emphasis on personalities has grown more pronounced: The theme-song title sequence now opens with a snapshot of a past champ that presumes our familiarity with them. In his intros and chat breaks, Jennings geeks out over streaks and personal bests in the same way NBA Twitter obsesses over minutiae. He’s also a die-hard fiend for statistics, and that passion has proved instrumental in helping his employer shed its lingering identification with the retiree demographic. The show works only with a host who can sustain the audience’s belief that he’d know every factoid coming out of his mouth even without an earpiece, and Jennings has earned that trust. Most importantly, he’s a bona fide genius, enriching each match with edifying context and off-the-cuff tidbits. If the host of Jeopardy! is James Bond, and in so many ways he is, then Trebek is the buttoned-up Sean Connery to Jennings’ droll Roger Moore, always ready with a savvy wink and a delightfully corny one-liner. He runs a looser and warmer game, with a well-deployed sense of humor that skews toward the dorkily online in a tone that neither grates nor distracts. A lifetime trivia nerd long before he became the winningest player in the show’s record books, he’s adeptly attuned to the invisible demands of the gig, his every cadence and pronunciation calibrated for maximum comprehension. To put it in Sorkinese, you’re seeing Shakespeare the way it was meant to be done. Seeing Jennings on duty, it’s hard to believe anyone else was ever up for the job. Send me updates about Slate special offers. Things hit rock bottom when producer Mike Richards, destined to go down in history as the Liz Truss of Jeopardy!, stepped in and stepped down over the course of a single week after news of past sexual harassment lawsuits and offensive podcast remarks promptly surfaced. Mehmet Oz or Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik, succeeded only in sullying the integrity of an honorable post. Through a turbulent 2021, the series’ decision-makers tried to placate everyone and satisfied no one with a rotation of guest hosts that, in the instances of nootropic hawkers like Dr. Protective fans insisted that the show forge onward, and offered plenty of thoughts about who should be at the helm, in the form of various grassroots campaigns. The death of Alex Trebek in November 2020 threw the quiz-program institution into an existential crisis, its producers suddenly tasked with finding someone to fill the gargantuan void left by a four-decade fixture of the small screen. After all, it’s not as if we’re going to have to spend a televised half hour with the Holy Father five nights a week. To the Jeopardy! faithful, the immortal game show is as sacred as religion, and the appointment of a new host is a higher-stakes proposition than the anointment of the next pope.
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