We’re 100 Games Into This Season of Jeopardy
Why Does It Still Feel It Hasn’t Started Yet?
January of 2024 has had some high cotton for Jeopardy among its peers. On January 9th Jeopardy Masters won the Astra Award for Best Game Show. On January 13th, it won the Emmy for Best Game Show — the first time that particular award has been given in the Prime Time rather than daytime category. Even the fact that Keke Palmer took the first prize for Best Game Show host away from Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik could not diminish my pride in this fact.
But it does not change the fact that we are almost halfway through what should be a peak moment for the series — the fortieth anniversary of its new incarnation — and I can’t escape the feeling the producers seem to be doing everything in their power to not merely destroy the momentum the show has gained in the more than three years since Alex Trebek’s passing, but in the nearly four decades its been on the air.
I have been doing everything in my power to make excuses for the show I love during the last six months, particularly considering the effect of the writer’s strike and how much of the problems of this season are a subject of a series of bad decisions on the part of the producers. It does nothing to change the fact that most fans were against almost every single one of these decisions in the first place and that despite all evidence to the contrary, the show has seemed relentlessly determined to keep doubling down on them even if it means violating every rule that the show had in the first thirty-seven years and even if those violations don’t really make any sense to begin with.
That the Second Chance Tournament has at the very least been mitigated to the possibility that it will earn you a spot in the Champions Wild Card Tournament only slightly alleviates the fact that it remains the decision to turn what should be a competition where only the smartest and fastest prevail into the equivalent of giving every single player who appears on the show a participation trophy. The rule of Jeopardy — of any game show, for that matter — has always been win or go home. That’s what game shows are supposed to be. The fact that the show’s producers seem to have decided that no matter how badly you lose it should stop you from coming back anyway, goes against the rules that competition are based on, particularly Jeopardy’s. You almost wonder what the point of having the games at all is if at the end of the day, the losers have as much chance of participating in a Tournament of Champions as the winners do.
This gets to the next problem: the Wild Card Tournament. This isn’t quite as bad a concept, as at least the competitors do have at least one victory under their belt. But the fact remains that it is doing another major problem of the world today, lowering the curve for excellence. There have been standards for getting into the Tournament of Champions for thirty-eight years and they were never questioned, not when the most games you could win was five, not in the era of Ken Jennings.
Now the whole system is being thrown into disarray. One game winners, two game winners, runners up in Tournaments that have happened earlier in the year, participants in earlier tournaments in some cases. And there’s no real reason why. I’ve been watching the show for over thirty years, I don’t remember at any time in the show’s history there was an occasion where fans said: “You know what would make the show better? If players who finished in a deep negative on their original appearance could compete in the Tournament of Champions.” It wasn’t happening even when social media was at its peak, and as we all know social media has always been more about winners and loser anyway.
And the decision to start the season with the ‘postseason’ was a stupid idea even before the strike happened. It argued that Jeopardy could somehow arrange things so that there could be enough qualified players to start the Tournament of Champions before the next season. The show actually did this the first ten seasons of its existence before changing the rules. The timing of the Tournament of Champions may never have been consistent in 21st century but it operated under the assumption it would take place when the bracket was filled out. Here it was clear by the time Season 39 ended that wouldn’t be the case — but the producers seemed determined to proceed as if they could.
In the months between Season 39 and 40, it seems like the producers have been doing everything in their power to alienate themselves from their fans while doubling down on their stubbornness to pretend that everything was business as usual. The decision to keep filming despite the WGA going on strike, the decision to use recycled clues which inflamed both the guild and fans, the decision only to back away from the Tournament of Champions when the participants said they wouldn’t cross the picket line, the decision to film a fortieth season even as the strike continued. It was as the show’s sole goal was to piss off every single constituency in Hollywood and the fans of the show in order to stick to a plan that most fans already hated. They would have been forgiven if they’d been willing to at least begin the season with regular contestants. But they stuck to their guns and kept sticking to them even after the strike ended.
It’s not like anything has actually been wrong or bad about the games that had been played in the last 100 games. There have been superior competition and the Wild Card results which brought Josh Saak, Yungsheng Wang and Emily Sands into the final did at least lead to three champions who would have gotten to the Tournament of Champions in lesser years. But it still makes you wonder if the show has climbed a mountain in order to bring forth a mouse. Did we really need to go the game show equivalent of twice as fast to end up in the same place?
And while I’ll admit that several of the eventual winners of the most recent Second Chance Tournaments played in exciting matches and had engaging personalities, did we need four weeks of it? I’ll admit to being thrilled that Martha Bath and Lloyd Cy are now going to be competing in the semi-finals of the Wild Card Tournament next week — for different reasons I was overjoyed with their one win last year — but it doesn’t change the fact they are in there for one win. The fact that the last nine days have only dealt with one or two days winners from Season 39 has done nothing to make me more reassured that the eventual winner has done anything to be qualified for the Tournament of Champions in the first place.
By the time this all ends — and we’re still nowhere near it — the lion’s share of Season 40 will be over. A friend of mine who is a long-time fan of the show and who has been understandably despairing over the format has wondered what Season 41 will look like. While I have told him to take it one season at a time, I won’t lie and say the same thing hasn’t crossed my mind.
The only thing that gives me any hope is that Jeopardy will have no choice but to learn from its errors of this past season, if for no other reason is that they will not have nearly enough games remaining in this season to try even the truncated version of this for Season 41. I imagine that by this point the producers have begun to repeatedly bang their heads against the podiums and realize that they’re going to have go back to the drawing board and figure out what the next plan is when they have to work on the new season.
I am aware that I have been building a following on this site and I’m also aware that many of my most read columns have to do with my opinions on Jeopardy. I do not believe I have any real influence over the producers. But if you want a nickel (or a $200 clue) worth of advice from someone who is still watching your show loyally and is so devoted he will keep through it no matter what, here it is:
1. Scrap any idea of having the postseason at the start of the year. You can’t arrange things so that enough participants in a tournament anymore than you can arrange the number of women who appear in said tournament. (I remember that complaint from the fans when Season 39 was over.) Try to have the tournament when the bracket is filled out and then schedule it.
2. Cut the formula back to the old one of fifteen participants. It was good enough for your Professors and College Tournament, it should be good enough for everyone else. And get rid of the idea of the match point final in it. You don’t seem to have it anywhere else; you don’t need it. Two day total point affairs are good enough for every other tournament you’ve had in the post-Trebek era and it was fine for every other Tournament of Champions. You fixed something that wasn’t broken.
3. Kill the Second Chance and Wild Card Tournaments. If the opening of this season hasn’t taught you yet how bad an idea it was, then someone needs to purge the people who are running the show. You joked you had broken the show before but it was the truth. Don’t make it worse.
4. Do bring back the College Championship and Professors Tournament. Honestly having them back in the first place would have solved most of your problems going into Season 40; you’d have had two more participants and you could have added the remaining three game winners to fill out your bracket. (And I’d figured you’d jump at the opportunity for the next Sam Buttrey.)
5. Resume the Teen Tournament and let the winner compete in the Tournament of Champions. I’ve never understood why you chose to stop that from happening back in 2000 anyway. Considering how much the Teen Reunion tournament proved that youth has a real verve for this show and the history they have with Jeopardy tournaments in the first place, this seems like a no-brainer.
If you follow these guidelines your show will have a bright future going forward. You know, assuming you haven’t driven away many of your fans by this ‘postseason’ to begin with. It may not be as good an idea as decided to invite Ike Barnholtz to compete in the Tournament of Champions, but I submit it just the same.
I will be back to this when we finally get to the Tournament of Champions. (If it happens, that is. It seems to keep getting further away.)