in the above article i learned that mayim never watched the show, and only found out about taking over the host job as a career opportunity. her heart wasn’t into it. it showed. fans like a lifelong true jeopardy fan and certified greatest of all time trivia expert better than the professional actor who exclusively does schlock tv
mayim was probably as good on jeopardy as she was on any of the tv shows she was on, i don’t know, i would never watch one of those terrible tv shows. and neither would she. she despises television and proudly tells people she never watches tv. she has a (possibly subconscious) disdainful detachment from the audience, and while the morons who watch her stupid tv shows are too dumb to pick up on this, jeopardy viewers are smart enough to sniff out her insincerity and hate her back
This is really 97% of the problem with Mayim, she adds absolutely zero extra context. She never even gave any kind of “oh you guys were close” or anything, every incorrect answer just got a “no, the correct response is blah blah”. After a while it sucks all the energy out of the room. I think that’s why she tried to compensate for it by being bubbly and doing things like giggling when she announced that someone uncovered the DD.
I think I mentioned this in the 2p2 Jeopardy thread, but the perfect example of her just adding nothing to the show was in Ben Chan’s losing game back in the spring, where he unfortunately lost by answering “Who are Beatrice and Benedict” (should have been Benedick) for a Shakespeare FJ.
Ken, Alex, or like literally any other host, would have thrown in some kind of explanatory/consoling comment about how close he was and why they can’t accept it, etc. But Mayim just robotically said “No. The correct answer was Beatrice and Benedick, from Much Ado About Nothing. Let’s see what you wagered.” She basically showed zero indication that there was anything unusual about the situation, responding the same as if he had written “Who are Rocky and Bullwinkle” or something.
I think this is a common view of Alex, but I always saw him as a massive poser. It all seemed very fake to me. I think he also knew a lot less trivia than you think and than he claimed. I think that a typical 2 day champ would mop the floor with him. Definitely did not think he was smarter than most contestants.
I don’t know about a “ton”. With producers/researchers helping him I doubt there was more than one hour of prep per episode (excluding the time involved in filming the episode). If you multiply that by the number of episodes per year, it’s not really that much work.
trebek did like an hour long interview on howard stern years ago and he said he studied the clues and practiced specific pronunciations before every taping. he considered that to be his major contribution to be the work of the show. he was really gracious saying there are a million great announcers in the world, but his preparation is how he felt he distinguished himself
i think ken does this kind of prep work too, because he’s great with sprinkling in extra trivia comments between clues. i think he’s doing the trebek preparation and going a level deeper, which i appreciate
I believe he pretended to know more trivia than he did. I remember an interview where, IIRC, he said he could answer about 70% of the questions that come up on a typical episode. I’d bet the farm against that.
I don’t doubt that. But it’s just sixty one questions per episode, most of which don’t have any weird words. How much time is that really going to take?
Someone who probably needs to practice more than Alex/Ken is Haines on the Chase. She needs to read those clues really fast without tripping up or it changes the game.
I find it really funny people here will have hellfire anger toward Boebert, MTG and co, but when its just a lazy, untalented person they are beyond reproach.
I’m imagining a contestant coordinator looking over an application where the anecdotes are “academy award winner, time magazine 100 most influential people, highest paid actress in Hollywood” from emmastone@gmail.com and being like “yeah this is bullshit, delete”
