God help us, there’s another Celebrity Jeopardy! tournament in progress. Considering how the answers are dumbed down for the celebs, about the only thing anyone will actually learn from these shows is that Martin Short was apparently born without a cerebellum. And how funny is it when a Broadway performer is beaten to the punch on several B’way questions?
Even successful authors aren’t immune. At the top of the hour, F. Scott Turow goofed up a question by selecting as his question an offering that wasn’t listed in the multiple-choice format of the answer. (In other words, given the choices of A, B, or C, he made up a “D” choice – which is something that happens in those SNL Jeopardy! skits a lot.)
Somebody else must be watching this (or, as in my case, not actually watching it but having it on in the background while sitting at the computer) and also be wondering, why oh why didn’t I try to become a rich and famous entertainer myself, given that 90% of these people come across as complete nincompoops and since they managed it, how hard can it be?
Honestly, there are moments in these shows that give me that give me a feeling of deja vu, with SNL flashbacks. I thought I detected a glimmer of exasperation in Trebek’s demeanor the other day… or was that just my imagination?
Do you have a favorite “Celebrity Jeopardy!” head-smacking moment?
Watched the episode today and Paul Shaffer really came off as being dumber than a bag of hammers.
Alex: Ok, all of the answers to the clues in this category have the letter L in them. Letters that are not lower case are this.
Paul: Upper case!
I remember an old episode where Camryn Manheim was in the negative for the last question in the 2nd round, so Alex made the other two contestants put their buzzers down and then had to tell her the correct answer just so she could make it to Final Jeopardy. :dubious:
Jason Alexander (of Seinfeld) and two other contestants. The Answer is (paraphrased)
Once you parse away the spleen bit, it’s about as simple as the questions they ask on SNL.
But here’s the best part. Alexander is in the middle position, and starts obviously mouthing the letters while counting off on his fingers. The other two contestants didn’t realize what was happening until he had started, and get flustered trying to ring in first. They both get it wrong. One of them guesses ‘K’. Now, granted, it’s close to the 10th letter. But, bringing back the actual question again, does anyone really think that the spleen could be shaped like a ‘K’?
It looked like at one point Turrow was trying to answer wrong (he had enough of a lead) to give Shaffer a chance at the music category. That didn’t work out as Lucci got the question right.
I really feel for Trebeck, but I would like to see Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery, and Adam Sandler compete for real on the show.
On the other hand, is Scott Turow gayer than Liberace? I ask because he tripped my gaydar like an ice review and my wife, who is usually astute in these matters said no. What say the Dopers?
I saw Yale-educated David Duchovny on Celebrity Jeopardy several years back, and of course he owned the game. He looked almost bored, but was a good sport as he aced everything. He could easily hold his own on “real” Jeopardy.
Not exactly Celebrity Jeopardy, but VH1’s short-lived Rock & Roll Jeopardy had some memorably stupid contestants.
My favorite episode featured George Clinton (Parliament/Funkadelic), Moon Unit Zappa (Frank’s daughter) and Dave Mustaine (Megadeth). It was laughably lopsided: while Mustaine is well known as an intelligent, well-read guy, George was just too old and too fried to grasp the gist of the game, and Moon was about as bright as you would expect someone named Moon Unit to be. At the end of single Jeopardy (the first round), the score was something like Dave 3700, George 0 (not having buzzed in a single time) and Moon -1100. It was ghastly.