Tuesday TV Touchbase: Jeopardy

 

Jeopardy is buckling under the weight of excess.

Let's talk about the prime time series, Celebrity Jeopardy.

It's designed to fill 13 weeks of prime time real estate on ABC's schedule. 

For three weeks, there are three quarter final games which each produces a winner. In the 4th week, those 3 winners play again for a semi-final round.

Then the cycle repeats itself 2 more times.

Then the 3 winners of the semi-finals will meet for one last match to win $1 million for their charity. 

Each one of these games is an hour long with 4 rounds of play: Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, Triple Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy. 

It feels like slogging through Sheldon Cooper's Campaign For North Africa board game from Big Bang Theory. 

We're 2/3 the way through this.  Ike Barinholtz and Wil Wheaton have won their semi-final rounds.  Both have benefited from taking the game seriously with strong buzzer skills and actually knowing shit. 

Other celebrities have made embarrassing spectacles of themselves leaning too hard in their expected role as "celebrities" to make the games entertaining. Hasan Minhaj was especially bad at trying too hard to be funny and "entertaining".  

Meanwhile, bloated excess has found it's way to the mothership. The syndicated daily Jeopardy is finally wrapping up it's championship games after 5 (yep, count 'em, FIVE!) damn weeks. 

For two weeks, we had the 2nd Chance Tournament featuring players who had the misfortune of being ground up in the gears of playing against Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach and other long term champions.  Those two weeks produced 2 finalists who won berths in the Tournament of Champions.

Which didn't do a damn bit of good.  Those two finalists wound being ground up in the gears of playing against  long term champions in the quarter finals. 

But at least they didn't have to face Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach who were given a bye from the quarter finals.  

The trio did an exhibition game that gave them a chance to practice their skills before the semi-finals. It was a fun game, far more entertaining than any episode of Celebrity Jeopardy.

It also featured a very funny faux pas from Ken Jennings.  He was explaining what the 5 clues in a just completed category had in common when someone shouts to him from off stage. Ken looks up, realizes the category was NOT completed with still 1 clue left and exclaims, "Oh shit!" 

Moving to the semi-finals, only Amy survived to the finals. Matt had a serious shot at advancing except for an explicable bet of $0.00 in Final Jeopardy. Well, Matt's loss was Sam Buttrey's gain, allowing the much beloved winner of the Professor's Tournament to advance to the finals with Amy Schneider and Andrew He.  

Talking about this previous appearance on the show, Sam noted how people online though Sam looked like Steve Martin.  Sam appreciated the comparison because not only is Steve a gifted actor, comedian and writer but he is also known as "one of the most handsome men in the world!"  

The finals is a best of seven competition with the first player to reach 3 wins becoming the winner of the Tournament of Champions. 

Thanks to some really gutsy Daily Double bets, Andrew scored 2 wins. Amy survived for a couple of wins. Any one of them could've brought this to an end on Friday but dang if Sam didn't score his first win. Look, we all love Sam but damn, I'm ready for this to be over. 

After 1 whole week of this, the Tournament staggered into a 6th day yesterday into what everyone was expecting to be a tension fraught affair and with everyone on the edge of their seats. 

If I'm on the edge of my seat, I may fall off from exhaustion. 

Thank God, Amy Schneider got the win bringing this interminable Tournament of Champions to an end.  

Look I like Jeopardy all right but I think recent weeks from the main show and it's prime time cousin have proven one can have too much of a good thing.

And that is that for the Tuesday TV Touchbase this week.

Next week, I will cover the season finale of Interview With the Vampire.  

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.