I wouldn’t say he was a doofus. He just choked.
Big time.
His “performance” on Final Jeopardy shows the game is MUCH easier when you’re not on stage.
Everybody’s different, so my experience may not be the same as everyone else’s.
In my case, I was never nervous. That surprises me, because I’m very introverted by nature, and being on camera in front of an audience SHOULD have terrified me. But it didn’t.
That doesn’t mean the game isn’t nerve-wracking or pressure filled. In my case, I grasped early on that my reflexes just weren’t as precise as those of the other two contestants. I got the feeling during the game (and re-watching the show later confirmed by impression) that I was getting the questions nobody else knew, but that I was always a hair too fast or too slow* whenever more than one of us knew the answer.
I was in the lead at halftime, but I wasn’t feeling good, because I knew my reflexes could be my downfall (and they were). It’s VERY disheartening to find yourself thinking after almost EVERY question, “Damn it, I KNOW all of these, why can’t I get through?” It’s like being the quarterback of the losing team, watching the other side execute a long drive that’s keeping you on the sidelines.
All kinds of things can go wrong for different contestants. Like…
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SOMETIMES (and female contestants are especially given to this problem), a very smart contestant who’s been on a roll loses a lot of money on a Daily Double or gets a $2000 answer wrong… and then freezes. Just shuts down. She gets scared to ring in even when she’s pretty sure she knows the answers.
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SOMETIMES a contestant who’s fallen behind starts to panic. He thinks, “I’m losing and I have to catch up!” Hence, he starts ringing in and taking guesses when he’s really not sure. That can turn a small hole into a very BIG Hole in a hurry.
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SOMETIMES, the breaks even out (in my show, all three of us got a Daily Double and all three of us got ours correct), but sometimes one guy gets all his favorite categories AND all the Daily Doubles besides. That guy runs away with the show, while two equally smart contestants who just couldn’t catch a break got left in the dust.
I repeat, DUMB people can’t and don’t pass the written test. And people who CAN’T think on their feet don’t get past the contestant coordinators. I didn’t see the episode people are talking about, and can’t know what Damien’s problem was. But I have no doubt at all he’s a very smart guy who’d have his own plausible explanation for what went wrong that day.
- Even now, I’m not sure if I was always too fast or always too slow, or a bit of both.
All very true. I sort of criticized Damien above, but I hope it was clear that I wasn’t really calling him stupid. As I said, it’s pretty much the nightmare scenario for a Jeopardy! player, to be in negative numbers for almost the entire game, finally manage to crawl out of that hole, only to get a response wrong and go back into negative numbers just as the game is ending.
I haven’t been on the actual show, but I’ve auditioned twice. Even in the little practice game you play with the contestant coordinators, I had a couple of nightmarish moments, where I just blanked out. One I particularly remember was the author of Don Quixote. Now, I know very well that it’s Cervantes. I know that now, I knew it then. But in that moment, I absolutely could not call his name to mind. I knew perfectly well who it was, but I couldn’t retrieve the name from my memory. That happens to everyone at times.
But I’m sure that if it had been a real game experience, and that had happened to me once or twice, it might have well have rattled me enough to throw me completely off my game. And then all the TV watchers would be talking about how stupid I was. Finally getting on Jeopardy!, only to have an embarrassing experience like Damien’s, really is high on my list of game show-related fears.
Final Jeopardy answer: This Judeo Christian hymn is also the title of a 2006 Broadway musical.
Contestant’s question: What is Kinky Boots?