This Is Jeopardy!

Like many of us, I was shook with the news of Alex Trebek’s passing.

I can’t say that the news came out of the blue, as Trebek had publicly acknowledged his battle with pancreatic cancer, including the long odds he was up against. Still, I had had a sense that Trebek would live forever. His thirty-seven season run as the host of Jeopardy! had only reinforced this sensation.

Unlike so many of my peers who felt a connection to Trebek, I never had a stretch of years when I watched him nightly. I recall watching the game show he hosted at home now and again, but the 7:00 or 7:30 time slot it fell in often as not went to reruns of syndicated sitcoms or homework.

Still, it was impossible to miss Jeopardy! completely as it became a staple mechanism for class review games at the end of units at school, and the popularity of the show and Trebek’s longevity as its host knew no bounds.

I remember watching Jeopardy! with my grandmother. It’s an odd thing to remember, because my sister and I typically only visited with her on Sundays, when Jeopardy! didn’t air, and most of the other visits I remember came on summer weekday afternoons. There were enough weekday nights at Grandma’s to know her nightly ritual of watching the show, though, and for it even to become a much-anticipated tradition of our own to watch the show with her those weekday nights we spent in her home. I was young enough then to hardly know any of the answers (sorry, questions) but enjoyed it those few times I was right, and all the more so, I remember marveling at how many clues my smarter sister had mastered, and all of the knowledge of literature and history my grandmother had bundled away across decades.

Those Jeopardy! memories with grandmother start and end at the little house where she lived until around the time I started high school. Past that point, when she moved into a senior citizen apartment building, I don’t recall weekday nights with her outside of major holidays, and I didn’t remember her speaking of Jeopardy! Though she had years to go before dementia would deteriorate her mind to a degree that I could readily observe, I do remember her growing more tired and less committed to ritual completion of crossword puzzles or reading voraciously the way I’d once known her to.

My next memories of Jeopardy! pick up with my best friends family. Again, the timeline is a little shaky. When I was younger, I usually didn’t leave the house after dinner, and by the time I was in middle school, I was more often than not occupied with homework in the evening hours. There are summer nights, though, that I remember spending that family down the street. It happened in high school, and all the more dependably in those weeks of summer after I’d come home from college, but before I left for my camp jobs. The cast of characters in the living room would change, but the steadiest trio was my friend, his father, and I. Though I typically went home for dinner, then came back to their house, his father would grill me a flat iron steak alongside the ones he made for himself and his own son—maybe just being polite, maybe recognizing that a boy my age would inevitable be hungry. In the fading light of day, we’d all eat our steaks with A.1. and call out our responses to Jeopardy! clues. Whereas, my memories of watching the show with Grandma revolve around my own ignorance at marveling at how much more a person might know, in those days, I did know far more of the questions—far from a virtuoso, but I dare say an above average adult when it came to this game. More so than showing off my knowledge, though, or anyone else demonstrating theirs, I remember the sense of fun to those evenings, talking through commercial breaks, and calling out wild guesses. Sometimes my friend and I kept count of how many clues we’d gotten, but more often we played for the fun of the game.

So it was that Jeopardy! was less a part of my home life than a show that bridged two of my most valued legs of my youth from outside the house, and so it was and I expect will always be a show I look back at with warmth and nostalgia. That sense of Jeopardy! being a part of my past carried on just as the show did, just as Trebek’s hosting duties did, over years when I reasonably could have been watching, but rarely thought to, busy with work, busy with my social life, always busy enough with something not to turn on the television in ritualistic fashion in those early evening hours. I vaguely recall watching it with an ex-girlfriend, lamenting the fact that they never had a pro wrestling category in which I really might have dominated. I remember flipping through channels and landing it on the show, out of happenstance, now and again. I was reminded of Jeopardy! when a handful of friends and acquaintances appeared on the show over the years, or when a returning champion got hot. I’d randly tune in now and again, but I doubt I saw more than five episodes live in the decade before I cut the cord on cable.

I discovered some of the seasons of Jeopardy! were streaming on Netflix and thought to tune in. I had it on in the background, but without the good company to watch with—without my sister reminding me to answer in the form of a question, or my grandmother’s quiet confidence, or my friend’s father’s belly laugh, or the smell of A.1., it wasn’t the same.

I did have one more engagement with Jeopardy! Early 2020 saw a three-contestant competition, proclaiming it would crown “The Greatest of All Time.” The competitors were Brad Rutter was the show’s highest earner in dollars; James Hozhauer who’d won a 2019 Tournament of Champions and was right behind his fellow contestants in a number of other all-time Jeopardy! record categories, and Ken Jennings. Jennings was the champion I’d watched in real time. He won a record seventy-four consecutive games, starting over the summer of 2004 when I would have been watching with my friend’s family, and carrying deep into that fall. As far as I’m concerned, he was the champion of Jeopardy! and the main reason why, once I learned this competition would stream on only the briefest of delays via Hulu, I watched.

Jennings won the competition—by the structure imposed, the first to win three “matches.” It felt like a fitting cap to my nostalgic revisiting of the Jeopardy! landscape. Little did I know the Trebek would be gone a year later. It felt fitting Jennings would be his at-least-short-term replacement, and though I may try to see some clips, if not a full episode with Jennings in that role, I know it won’t be the same.

There’s something sad in thinking about a Jeopardy! without Trebek at the helm. It was probably foolish to ever think I’d watch him with my son, given Trebek of course wasn’t going to live, let alone host, forever, besides the fact I’m skeptical I’ll pay for cable or a substitute that would put Jeopardy! on my television in real time again. Nonetheless, a world without Trebek welcoming us back from commercials, correcting pronunciations, reminding a contestant of how much they have to wager a Daily Double—it’s a slightly darker world, indeed.

Until we meet again, Alex, God bless you and goodbye.