There may not have been any money on the line, but these are heavyweights. Winning still meant something.
I’m sure I am in the minority, but I found this episode a bit cringey. Too much of the fun seemed forced, particularly from Mattea.
Not a huge deal, but not really what I want from Jeopardy.
mmm
I wasn’t a huge fan, either. It was billed as a warm up for for the three of them, but they joked through it so much that it didn’t seem like it would be very effective practice. (Amy didn’t seem to be joking quite as much as Matt, Mattea, or even Ken.) These three contestants were all long-term champions, so they’ve all had many more games than the people they’ll be competing against. And there was no reason to give them all a pass into the second round.
The Tournament of Champions wasn’t broken; this did not fix it.
With two weeks of second chance and three weeks (plus two days potentially) of tournament of champions did they compress or otherwise adjust the normal taping schedule?
I think the real reason they did this “exhibition match” was so that if the episode got preempted due to election coverage people would not miss an actual episode of the TOC.
That could be so, but I think they did it as part of a long term strategy to “popularize” and “hip up” Jeopardy!
Next thing, we’re going to have designated cheering sections, and trash talking will not only be allowed, it will be encouraged. Victory dances, maybe even choreographed with fans, will be used at the end of each round or any successful “true daily double”. Furthermore, booing will be encouraged for poor bets. Not just from the audience, but Ken and the other contestants. (Sample from Ken “Do you need your mommy to help with the betting?”)
Later, it will be legal to knock the buzzer out of your opponent’s hand.
NASCAR, look out, there’s a new crazy sheriff in town. And it has an exclamation point!
I wasn’t a huge fan either, but it was entertaining to see Ken screw up and get bleeped when he realized it.
Well, I enjoyed it. Amy: “My favorite song when I was about 27…” 
I couldn’t understand why Matt kept buzzing in when he had no answer. I thought maybe he was just showing he was still the fastest, but then Mattea grabbed all the answers in Potpourri. Another funny line, from Ken: “You’ve found your new best category!”
You got that right! The de-evolution of Jeopardy has begun. It started with the “screaming audience” style popular with the Price Is Right crowd. Kind of a low key “Yaaaay, wooo-wooo!” at this point but the volume is sure to increase soon. And, as you pointed out, the contestants are becoming quirkier by the episode. Andy Warhol was right. smh
I take it that we don’t have many fans of Celebrity Jeopardy here?
We watched one, early on, with three “celebrities” I had never heard of, and found it very annoying. One of the players seemed to have no idea how the game was played, all the clues were about half as hard as in the regular games, and they got most of them wrong or were stumped. And it went on for an hour, with “Triple Jeopardy.” 
It felt like a twist on that old joke. “The food here is terrible!” “Yes, and there’s so much of it!”
Needless to say, we haven’t watched any more.
Sad sack Ben Stein had a Jeopardy-esque game show years ago, which is where they don’t need to go. All the categories were “humorous”. Granted it wasn’t a serious game show, more of a cautionary tale.
In the original joke, the second person says, “Yes, and the portions are so small.”
Your variation applies better to Celebrity Jeopardy.
A year before that she had another good idea. Merv was trying to think of a new game show. She suggested Hangman.
And that’s The Rest of the Story.
If that was “Win Ben Stein’s Money” I thought it wasn’t half bad. But back then, I sort of liked Ben’s personality. (Bueller?)
On the other hand, we could be getting the game more like Sports Jeopardy!, which has real questions, but more audience reaction, plus hot babe action.
OK, they could add hot babes to Jeopardy, as long as they knew their place 
I agree, but am still puzzled: they had to know that the game would be pre-empted in most of the country.
I’d been wondering if this is about promoting some streaming service, a la “did you miss the match-up between Amy, Matt, and Mattea due to election coverage? If so, just $29.99 per month buys you the chance to watch it, and many other shows!!!”
But as someone up-thread said that recent Jeopardy! eps can be seen on YouTube, I suppose that my theory must be incorrect.
By the way, I will probably have to use YouTube to see tonight’s episode too. We have a hurricane coming in tomorrow and the network affiliate that carries Jeopardy! here is highly likely to pre-empt this episode, too.
They love to pre-empt because it’s so profitable–they get to keep all the ad revenue, instead of having to share it with the company that distributes Jeopardy! and other syndicated shows. (And there are essentially no costs to having two hours of local news coverage instead of one, beyond paying a few extra hourly wages and perhaps bonuses to the on-air talent, who are likely to be on salary.)
(Local news would probably run four hours a night everywhere if there were viewers for it–it’s so profitable. But most days of the year they can attract audiences only for an hour or half hour…with the result that we get Jeopardy, Wheel, etc. during the rest of the early evening.)
The funny thing was, the HB in question on SJ! was Kelly from the ClewCrew on J! Mothership. Since they got rid of the CC, I guess she has no place on J!.
I was surprised to learn recently that Jeopardy! gets about nine million viewers (nationally of course). That’s a whole lot better than many traditional prime time broadcast shows,
Very true (but it’s still the case that local stations that carry it don’t get to keep all the money from the ads run during the show–whereas with their own local news, they do).
Yeah, which is why I posted it.