Replacing the Irreplaceable

 

It has finally been announced that Ken Jennings, author of several books, Grammy nominated audio book narrator and co-host of the Omnibus! podcast, is going to be succeeding Alex Trebek as host of Jeopardy!, at least in the short term.  Such an announcement was inevitable, considering that the show has to go on in some manner, even if the circumstances are unusual and fairly unprecedented.  A month earlier, the host of Name That Tune, Tom Kennedy, also passed away, but the difference with him was that he stopped hosting the show in 1981 and retired from hosting game shows in 1989.  Alex Trebek had always maintained that he would continue to host Jeopardy! until he felt that he was incapable of doing so any more.  He had finished taping what turned out to be his last episodes in late October and probably intended to keep on going.

As far as I can tell, these circumstances are unprecedented because most game show hosts either retire or are replaced long before they pass away, and they give their producers enough time to find a replacement host since they usually leave the show at the end of a season.  The Price Is Right, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Family Feud all had time to find replacement hosts between seasons.

This makes Jeopardy!‘s case a strange kind of unique.  Keep in mind that the show is divided into two eras which define the two versions that exist.  The Art Fleming era lasted the entire run of the original version of the show, having never replaced him during a fifteen year span.  It wasn’t until the show was revived in 1984 that a new host was hired, one who would stay with it for over 35 years.  The Alex Trebek era has sadly come to an end, although it’s not known what shape the new era is going to take yet.

It seems like what Jeopardy! is going to be doing is giving several different hosts a shot at standing where Alex once did, starting with Ken.  Ken had been made a Consulting Producer at the start of the current season, and it’s been announced that the show’s interim hosts are going to come from “within the Jeopardy! family” so it should be safe to say that there probably won’t be any celebrity stunt casting ruining some of the episodes.

The question then becomes, who is going to be the new, permanent host at the start of the 38th season?  Many suggestions are being thrown around, of course, and I’d like to discuss a few of them.

 

KEN JENNINGS

This, of course, is the big one on everyone’s lips, for one main reason: aside from the books he’s written and the podcast he hosts, Ken’s biggest claim to fame is that he won the most episodes of Jeopardy! out of anyone who has appeared on the show, and up until the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament earlier this year, was considered the second best contestant of all time behind Brad Rutter, who seemed to be the only player capable of consistently defeating Ken.

Up until this year, the conventional wisdom had been that Ken would never host the show because who in their right mind would give up being a contestant on the show’s occasional invitational tournaments, especially when you knew you were expected to do well in them?  It was perhaps a comment that Alex made during the last such tournament, when he suggested this would likely be the last time any of them would appear together, that might have pushed Ken into accepting the position of Consulting Producer for season 37, one which also has him presenting the occasional category in the style of the Clue Crew.

Now, fan wishes may be coming true, for Ken’s the first of what is intended to be several interim hosts, but it’s yet to be revealed who else may be taking on the job and it’s also possible they may just ask Ken to remain on as host for the rest of the season and then make him the permanent host in season 38.  This is the path that I suspect the show may take, especially if fan reaction to his first episodes in January is favourable.

 

JAMES HOLZHAUER

I have seen this name pop up a few times as well.  I get it, people want a younger host who will stay with the show for many years to come.  That said, James is likely not the right fit for Jeopardy! host.  The biggest reason to me is that James likes to play up his poker brat persona when playing the game, and it really came out during Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time.

I’m not saying that contestants shouldn’t have fun with the show.  I admit, I got a kick out of the moment when he made fun of Brad Rutter’s low scores, but while that’s (sometimes) okay for contestants to do, especially if they already have a rapport and know there’s no hard feelings involved, it doesn’t exactly give me much confidence in James’s ability to host the show.  I mean sure, when it comes to poker brats, he’s no Phil Hellmuth, but Jeopardy! should not have a poker brat as a host.

 

JOE EXOTIC

No, this is not a joke, but the only reason he’s even being mentioned here is because of a recent segment on Last Week Tonight which I suspect only came about because someone on the show realized that you could make “Joepardy” just by rearranging a couple letters.

Plus, I love how that screen shot makes it seem like John Oliver is doing a segment on who should be the next Jeopardy! host and reacting very negatively to the mere suggestion that Joe Exotic might get involved.  He’s very clearly shouting “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” there!

Joe Exotic is probably more bonkers a choice of host than even Joe Rogan, and I’ve actually seen Rogan being suggested.  Rogan is considered too controversial a figure to host a respected show like Jeopardy!, even though he has experience hosting Fear Factor.  (Fun fact, the host of Survivor also hosted Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, so it is possible for the worlds of trivia and reality TV to collide.)  I get it, no one named Joe should be the host of Jeopardy! so I guess that means my chances of hosting it are also exceedingly low.  Joe Exotic, meanwhile, is a piece of shit human being who’s trying to spread lies about, and also tried to hire a hitman to kill, actual big cat conservationist Carole Baskin.  I dislike him so much that I refuse to watch Tiger King, which as far as I can tell is the only show on Netflix with the word “tiger” in its title which actually features tigers, so the fact that I don’t want to watch the show is especially annoying to me.

Joe Exotic would be a disaster Jeopardy! wouldn’t recover from.

 

BRAD RUTTER

Here’s my own suggestion.  It’s interesting to me that there is a lot of support for Ken and some support for James, but I found little support for the third of the greatest contestants of all time.  He’s the first person to be made a millionaire on Jeopardy! and up until the most recent tournament, was the only human player to regularly defeat Ken Jennings.

What few people know about Brad is that, of the three greatest Jeopardy! players of all time, he’s the only one who already has experience hosting a game show.  Very little footage of InQuizitive exists on-line, but what little there is shows off that Brad seems comfortable in the position of game show host.  Although the show billed itself as quirky, Brad is not over the top, even if he asked some of the questions while doing a Sean Connery impression.  We should be eternally grateful that he was not as quirky as You Don’t Know Jack host Paul Reubens.  Yes, Pee-wee Herman hosted a game show and managed to completely destroy it in just six episodes.

Brad has shown a lot of class while a contestant on Jeopardy!, and between him, Ken and James, I feel like he’d be the best choice for the show’s new host.  He fits my criteria nicely: he’s not a major celebrity being stunt cast onto the show or a comedic actor.  I believe that he would uphold the same love of knowledge and trivia that Alex Trebek had, and would not quirk up the show any, nor crack jokes after every question.  The major reason that I hate Celebrity Jeopardy! weeks is because the celebrities don’t always take the show very seriously and would often not make it through all the material on the board.  Even though celebrities are playing for charity and there are minimum donation amounts being offered, the least the celebrities could do is try to earn more than the minimum and not just show up to earn some cheap laughs from the audience.  My fear would be that a celebrity host would mug to the audience and not respect the contestants or the viewers, which is why I would support Brad Rutter being the new host of the show.

A recent post to this blog offered me a second choice which I also support for the host of Jeopardy! and which fits my criteria as well.  It may sound surprising at first glance, but I promise you that he is 100% a good choice.  He is…

 

LEVAR BURTON

The long time host of Reading Rainbow and equally long time advocate of education is probably an even more perfect fit as the host of Jeopardy! than Brad Rutter.  LeVar is not typically a comedic actor even if he appears on the occasional sitcom in order to make fun of himself, and despite how big a celebrity most Star Trek actors become after having a starring role in the franchise, most of the same actors don’t seem able to turn being on the show into more than a career showing up to the conventions.  LeVar is no exception.  Most of what he’s best known for either happened before or during Star Trek: The Next Generation, including Roots and Captain Planet and the Planeteers.  Since then, he’s continued his work on Reading Rainbow, but nothing he’s done has catapulted him to the same level of fame as Geordi La Forge and Kunta Kinte did.

WIth a lifetime of education work already under his belt, Jeopardy! would be the perfect way for LeVar to finish his career for however long he would want to host it.  That said, Alex was 80 when he died and LeVar is already 63, so if he is going to host the show, he’d better do it soon.

 

I imagine the new, permanent host of Jeopardy! won’t be announced until Spring of 2021 at the earliest, after the show has tried out a few hosts.  Until then, the remainder of season 37 is going to be strange and different and will be a reminder that whoever they do bring in as the new permanent host is going to have huge shoes to fill if they want to replace the irreplaceable Alex Trebek.