Short Takes: Monday, July 10
Season 39, Episode 216 / Production No. 8911
I don’t intend to make next-day reactions to Jeopardy! episodes a regular thing. For in-depth daily recaps, The Jeopardy! Fan will have you covered for anything you need. But occasionally, things happen during the game that I think worth commenting on shortly after the fact.
For reference: yesterday’s game at J! Archive.
The final Daily Double
When 2-day champion Alex Gordon found it, he was asked by Ken Jennings: “how confident are you in a medical category, Alex?” Gordon was quite confident; he risked four-fifths of the $15,000 he had accumulated, only to find out that it was more of a sports clue with a medical angle. Unable to come up with “Tommy John,” Gordon dropped to $3,000 and out of contention.
There was some chatter that Jennings’s question to Gordon was improper, and that it unduly influenced him to wager more. I don’t think that flies. For one thing, the Daily Double was the fourth clue revealed of the five in the category. I think it had been firmly established for the contestants that the category pertained to surgery; thus, Ken’s prompt to Alex for the Daily Double wager didn’t provide information that Alex didn’t otherwise have.
Whether Alex was influenced by the question is a matter only he can definitively address. Was it “undue,” though? Not to me. I place it in the same category as other statements at such junctures made by Alex Trebek throughout his long tenure hosting the show. The one that jumps to mind for me is a phrase often deployed by Trebek on a late Daily Double when the player finding it is trailing distantly: “you can see the scores.”
For those who do think the game situation should have been presented more neutrally to Alex, may I suggest a possible wording:
You’re in the lead with $15,000. How much would you like to wager?
Astute readers will recognize that as a page from the Mayim Bialik script. I submit that an argument against Ken’s question to Alex – that is, an argument against tailoring hosting to the specifics of the game situation and the contestants – is an objection to Ken’s hosting style as a whole, and an assertion that Mayim’s would be better suited. I wonder how many complainants about how last night’s last Daily Double was handled have also challenged Mayim’s hosting, and whether they’ve considered how those two takes are at odds with one another.
The wording of Final Jeopardy!
Two of the three contestants were tripped up by the wording of the Final Jeopardy clue last night, particularly the phrase “the elder of these 2 men.” Only Alex Gordon gave both the names “Monet” & “Manet”; challengers Dileri Johnston and James Tyler each gave only one. While I can understand and sympathize with the pressure of trying to come up with the correct response as “Think!” is ticking away on the Alex Trebek Stage, that doesn’t suffice to sustain an objection to how the clue was written. Including this one, how many times this season alone has “these 2” appeared in a Final Jeopardy! clue?
Eleven.1 (And seven times last season, ten times the season before…)
The text of this Final Jeopardy! clue included garden variety Jeopardy! verbiage, and it is more than reasonable to expect any prospective contestant to be familiar with such a formulation. No harm, no foul on this clue.
For what it’s worth, I also got it quite quickly — recalling a scene in the Bellagio during which Tess Ocean (played by Julia Roberts) quipped, “they also painted occasionally.”
September 27; September 28; October 25 (Second Chance 2, SF2); November 8 (ToC exhibition); November 10 (ToC SF2); January 17; January 31; April 24; May 23; June 21; July 10.