Has any contestant left the show before it was over? For reasons of really poor performance, or categories he knew nothing about, or illness? Death? If it’s happened, would it be known only by members of the audience, or was it leaked?
I’d guess we never know about it - they would just ashcan the sequences that contestant was in and start over. We’d probably hear about it via the trades, but not in the running sequence of the show.
Strictly speaking, if someone goes into Final Jeopardy with a negative balance, they are gone before the end of the show. It happened when I was on, but not to me.
Otherwise they’d reshoot with one of the waiting contestants. They always have more than they need, and tend to use locals last. Still, it would play hell with their shooting schedule for the day.
The books I read on the show before I went on never mentioned this happening, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t.
I believe what happens is they’d go to commercial and when they came back Sarah Chalke would be playing at that podium.
While I doubt anybody’d walk off I can imagine someone just completely overcome by stagefright to an unfilmmable degree.
But if the game had gone very far at all, any kind of start over would likely be horribly unfair to one of the other players.
After you pass the test you are filmed in a sample game, so stage fright might be weeded out there. When I took it I stood up with a guy with a bad stammer, who did well on the test several times yet never made it on the show.
And unless you got your dream board, most people might be happy to get reset and have had the practice, unless you were way ahead.
I thought something was up that time they came back for Final Jeopardy and it was Chalke, Dick Sargent and Ted McGinley.
The one with Drew Carey reading the answers?
I have seen a show where the champion was not on because he or she was ill, but we were assured that the champion would return at the next opportunity. It wasn’t all that long ago, either. Probably within the last year or two. I didn’t monitor the situation to make sure the person came back.
While I don’t have a firm cite for it, I remember seeing an episode of Password Plus (rerun on Game Show Network) where the champion did take leave from the show after completing the bonus round because he was having back pain. Allen Ludden explained the situation and said the contestant would return when he was feeling better. Don’t know whether he did come back.
There was an incident on Jeopardy in the mid-80s where a contestant fainted during the final round:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDxfwM0SfY
I would guess that they stopped tape to ensure that he was OK and then picked up where they left off.
I’ve never seen a contestant leave the set out of embarrassment or throw a hissyfit because of a bad performance. Contestant coordinators are usually savvy enough not to let potential “problem cases” on game shows in the first place.
I don’t think there’s any absolute standard of fairness except that the games be played above board and within the stated rules. This isn’t the Olympics. I suspect the rules allow them to discard any or all of a game interrupted or limited by technical circumstances, including participant “failure” of any kind.
Even *Jeopardy *is a TV show first and a contest second.