R.I.P. Alex Trebek

Scott Hardie | November 9, 2020
Reading the many fine tributes to Alex Trebek this week (this one was my favorite), I keep seeing the same idea being repeated:

A key reason why Trebek was a great host was that he knew that the game itself was the star of the show, not him. He was there to move it along quickly (getting through 61 questions in 23 minutes requires discipline), not to gab at length with the players nor to showboat for the audience. He barely spoke outside of asking questions, and this efficiency was key to his authority and thus to his appeal. I keep hearing that he wasn't really a "host" because he didn't do much hosting. Furthermore, Jeopardy! was invented in the wake of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s when producers fed answers to contestants, so the show by law had to adopt script rules for separation between contestants and show staff including Trebek. Players only got to speak to him briefly when the game ended.

So, in light of all of this, and the talk about replacing Trebek (good luck filling those shoes), it occurs to me: Would the show be better off with two replacements, one host and one quizmaster? Hire one serious person to read the questions and referee the game, and keep this person separated from contestants except on stage. And also hire a more genial comedian type to introduce the show, explain the prizes, interview the contestants, and play to the crowd in general. (Announcer Johnny Gilbert may not want to retire but he's getting up there and then some.) Having two replacements would take some pressure off of each one to be the next Trebek.

What do you think? And what do you think of Trebek's passing?

Samir Mehta | November 9, 2020
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Scott Hardie | November 11, 2020
I felt the same way about the show's celebration of intelligence, which is why I'm a bit dismayed to see this clip making the rounds this week. That's not one of the show's (or Trebek's) better moments.

Scott Hardie | August 30, 2021
I think everything that could be said about the Mike Richards blunder has already been said. However, I would like to object to the people saying that Richards's fireable comments are less offensive than those of James Gunn who was un-fired from Guardians of the Galaxy and that this proves a double standard. I'm not going to disagree that there are whopping double standards in Hollywood, but the situations are not precisely the same.

1) Gunn's offensive tweets were jokes, albeit ones deliberately made in bad taste, while Richards's comments seem to represent his actual opinions.

2) Richards had apparently intervened to fire pregnant models from The Price is Right, resulting in successful lawsuits against the show, which isn't comparable to Gunn.

3) Richards also apparently intervened in the host-selection process for Jeopardy! to ensure that he got the job, which also isn't comparable to Gunn.

It's not as simple as "man fired just for gross statements" the way that people say.

What do you think of the Richards situation, or the show's other host candidates?

Samir Mehta | August 31, 2021
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Scott Hardie | August 31, 2021
Agreed. It's a big of a tragicomic paradox that we are said to curate the best version of ourselves on social media -- staged photos on Instagram and ceaselessly positive updates on Facebook -- and yet we also say some of the cruelest, dumbest, most worthless trash on social media too. We try to be better than ourselves and yet it's like we can't help but be awful. This terrible thing I'm saying IS the real me, because I'd remove it from my public presence online if it wasn't, we seem to be saying. I remember the early years of the Internet when people mostly used anonymous usernames and it was commonly thought that if we had to use our real names, we'd all be forced to be nicer, but now we do use our real names and it feels meaner than ever.

I've been thinking a lot about this essay on Ede Warner for the last couple of weeks. Quick summary: Warner taught in African-American studies and coached debate in the 1990s, and he recognized a strategic opening. His mostly Black debate teams would turn any topic, from climate change to economic policy, into how it affects them as African-Americans, and then they would refuse to let anyone who wasn't Black (ie. most of their opponents) pass judgment on what it's like to be African-American. Thus, their opponents would struggle to find any footing in the debate and couldn't really participate, and Warner's teams would win almost by default. That's a brilliant tactic for winning a debate, but it has spread beyond the college campus and gone online; we've all seen some form of it. That tactic is not useful in the real world because it doesn't lead to any meaningful solutions to the real problems; it just allows one side to "win" by disqualifying the other team from being allowed to participate in the conversation. I hear it all the time, and it's getting frustrating because the problems facing us are so enormous and so urgent that we can't waste time on who "wins" and who's allowed to have an opinion. If we put a fraction of the energy that we waste fighting each other into real solutions, we'd have some useful progress by now.

As for Mike Richards, he has now been fired as producer as well, which hopefully frees up the show to select the next host free of controversy and very carefully. I do enjoy the schadenfreude of other Jeopardy! figures dunking on him.