Every answer must be in the form of “What’s the deal with…?” * I realize this is like Beam Me Up, Scotty as far as being actually said, work with me it’s a joke
I'm assuming you caught my Larry David allusion. (I saw an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The Computers in Music professor at a local junior college ran it on an evening when the lecture ran short. I had no enthusiasm to curb.)
Those products are exactly what they claim to be. Not snake oil. Not fake medicine proven to do nothing. If Levar Burton was claiming his gin cured Alzheimer’s, that’d be a better analogy. He’s not claiming that. He’s claiming it tastes good and gets you intoxicated. Ving Rhames is not claiming Arby’s will lower your blood pressure. He’s claiming, accurately, that it has “The meats”.
So no celebrity ever sold snake oil, or endorsed a product they never used, or even endorsed a product they really didn't like? Welcome to the real world. It's a game show hosting job. They are not vetting presidential candidates or Supreme Court justice apointees or potential sainthood candidates. It's just a damned game show. Get over it.
You are correct. But it is still just a quiz show and IMHO the host need not be Simon-pure. I'll bet Alex had his warts, too. I want the host to be quick and sharp and get along/communicate well with the contestants.
. . . and to have enough personality (and geek-cred) to avoid being dull, but not so much as to overshadow the real stars, the contestants. Bill Cullen could have hosted Jeopardy (provided the set got redesigned so that he didn't need to walk around on camera at all), as indeed, he could have hosted any game show, but unfortunately, he's been dead since 1990. Most of the best game show hosts (forgive me for repeating myself) came out of a background of either disc jockeying, newscasting, or sportscasting. Or more than one of the above. Hmm. DJ with lots of geek cred. KUSC's Brian Lauritzen comes to mind. (Which reminds me: I'd like to see what would happen if you got ST producer Peter Lauritson, composer Morten Lauridsen, and classical jock Brian Lauritzen in the same room at the same time. Would the universe wink out of existence, and be immediately replaced with something even more bizarre? Or would they all simply each order an entirely different drink with a name similar to "jynnan tonnix"?)
"And now, your host Mayim Bialik!" So they're just not acknowledging the ongoing impermanence of their hosts. Okay. Spoiler: Tonight's game. I'm so mad at Tracy for not getting Final Jeopardy right. We could have been free of Matt!
I guess we'll see when Ken's first episodes come up. Maybe because Mayim is an official host for the primetime and spinoff projects they're kicking around, she doesn't get announced as a guest host for the syndicated version.
I thought they abondoned that plan when they fired Richards? I thought I heard them announce that they would alternate until the end of the season.
Since Ken wasn't offered a gig and Mayim's was for the primetime stuff, technically they're both guest hosts, but the fact that Johnny isn't announcing her as such is what Gepard was wondering about. But yeah, probably best for the show to not draw too much attention to it.
I see that Richards is still listed in the credits as Executive Producer and Head Writer. So, does that mean this first week of shows with Mayim were produced by him before he was fired and next week we'll see the interim producer's name; or will his name be credits the entire season?
Richards will likely only be credited on the episodes he was directly involved with. Sony wants to put this behind them as quickly as possible.
Esquire has posted an interview with Claire McNear, the journalist who broke the story about Mike Richards' podcast for The Ringer, and also wrote Answers In the Form of Questions, a book about the show, published last fall. She offers her perspective on what's been happening with the show, and where it goes from there. (From one of her answers, it sounds like the interview was conducted before the announcement that Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings would trade off hosting duties through 12/31.) Where Does Jeopardy! Go From Here? We Asked Journalist Claire McNear
On the whole, a fair and well-rounded assessment, albeit perhaps less optimistic than my own. In 1984, most fans coudn't conceive of Jeopardy without Art Fleming. And yet, it survived, thrived, and flourished under Alex Trebek, who up to then was known mainly for High Rollers. I'm reminded of something Fleming said at the end of the final episode of the original NBC run. I've completely forgotten his exact words, but he said that Jeopardy would be back, in some form. And there are (as I believe I've mentioned before) very few game shows that have lasted as long, under a single host, as the Trebek version of Jeopardy. And of course, Dr. Bialik and Mr. Jennings are being announced as "hosts" rather than "guest-hosts." They're not a parade of contenders and non-contenders, filling in for a week or two each; they're two people under contract to "tag-team host" for a whole season. McNear was spot-on about the staff knowing better than to tinker with the format. They know enough about the history of the show. A true "back-game" in which the winner, alone, went for additional winnings (which is to say that Final Jeopardy is not a "back-game" in the conventional sense) was tried in a syndicated weekly nighttime edition, and with a daily revival, and those versions didn't last; rather, the Trebek version went back to the game's roots, and stayed true to them. (Personally, I wish Wheel of Fortune would go back to the original format, in which [1] you had to buy prizes or gift certificates in order to secure your winnings against bankruptcy, [2] you could not buy vowels at will, and [3] there was no back-game.) ****** I just learned something new: Art Fleming also died of pancreatic cancer! You don't suppose hosting Jeopardy is carcinogenic? ******* Oh, and it looks like they changed the Jeopardy open again: a different clip of the Art Fleming version, less prominently displayed. I wonder if they're going to have multiple versions of the open this year.