Why Jeopardy! Matters

This past week, ABC began airing the Jeopardy! "Greatest of All Time" Tournament of Champions. Because I have become an Old Fart (TM), I no longer am able to watch TV as it airs unless it's a weekend night, so I had to wait until yesterday to begin watching.

And promptly fell in love all over again.

I typically don't watch Jeopardy! during the week, and there are good reasons for it. Jeopardy! revs up my brain, and that means I have to work extra hard to calm it down at 7:30 when I take my shower and get into the bed. (See Old Fart, above.) So watching it again, and not just watching it, but watching the most fun version of the game, with three people I love to watch play, is pretty much priceless to me.

Turns out, it's fairly priceless to much of America right now. Granted, 2020 is pretty new, but so far, prime time Jeopardy! is 2020's ratings king.

For those of you who don't know, here are the salient points:

1. Alex Trebek, Jeopardy's intrepid host, has pancreatic cancer and is slowing down; all of us of a certain age are gearing up to lose an icon whose voice really should be called The Voice of Reason.
2. This tournament was devised because a man named James Holzhauer, a professional gambler from Las Vegas, "broke the game" last season. He began playing in a manner that defied how people traditionally play Jeopardy!--he jumped around the board, looked for the daily double, made wise bets, and studied his butt off prior to getting on the show. 
3. The night Holzhauer would have broken Ken Jennings' (see below) record for most money won in regular season play, he lost. (I contend to this day that he never intended to be another Ken Jennings and purposefully threw the game; Holzhauer has said that he achieved what he wanted to by the time he lost and was giving much of his winnings away.) 
4. Jeopardy! producers, seeing a gold mine, devised a new "Greatest of All Time" Tournament of Champions. 
5. Contestants include Holzhauer and the two other most dominant players of the game. One is Brad Rutter, who holds the record for winning the most money by playing Jeopardy!. He won all 5 days he was on in 2000 as a college student (in regular play, not in the college tournament), followed by winning that year's Tournament of Champions, then won two other Ultimate Tournaments before finally losing...to Watson, the IBM AI computer. 
6. The other player is fan favorite and by-all-accounts-genuine-nice-guy Ken Jennings. Ken got on the show in 2004, shortly after the 5-day-limit was repealed, and he won for 74 consecutive games, a feat that won't likely be repeated anytime soon. Ken Jennings has said that one of his claims to fame is being the man most likely to lose to Brad Rutter (he so far has lost twice in tournaments to him, and finished behind him in the tournament with Watson).
7. These guys all appear to like each other. In particular, Holzhauer and Jennings appear to be genuine fans of each other. 
8. The show's format is different than a traditional Jeopardy! tournament: each night, the players play 2 full games, and the scores are tallied from both games. At the end of the night, a winner for that day's play is declared. The first man to win three times is declared the overall winner. 

And so these giants of trivia have taken to the airwaves during prime time and are beating the competition in terms of ratings. In so doing, the point that is being made is not just about watching the staggering combined intellect of these three gentlemen. It's also about what Americans are interested in viewing.

Jeopardy! is not about politics (although a good knowledge of politics is very, very helpful), nor is it about pop culture (same deal). It's not about finding who agrees with your wild opinion online in an echo chamber regarding the division of this nation. It's not about informing the world about said wild opinion.

Jeopardy! is about who we can be at our best. The genuine sportsmanship and support the players are showing each other in this tournament hasn't been seen previously, and much of that can honestly be attributed to Holzhauer, who appears to be the world's biggest Ken Jennings fan. Jennings, in turn, is being wildly supportive of both colleagues, which is making Holzhauer also be very supportive of Brad Rutter. Rutter is struggling, and I have some specific ideas about why: he's blaming how he's not being as fast on the buzzer, but he's missed all but one of the Daily Doubles he's nabbed, and so far he's found the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy nearly every time. An offhand comment was made about Rutter losing weight, and I wonder if he went on a low-fat diet. Low-fat diets are bad for your brain--your brain is made up of fat. (Word to the wise, children: eat more fatty fish). Despite this, you can't count him out...yet.

This really does harken back to 20 years ago, when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (also from ABC) dominated the airwaves. After a while, we Americans do get bored and move onto other forms of entertainment, but do you remember the frenzy? It went on for months.

This tournament differs in that you know you're watching three of the smartest trivia whizzes in the nation, if not the world. And while the stakes are high for Jeopardy! ($1 million, enormous bragging rights), this tournament is not about the money for these men--all three have careers, and two of them have careers that came directly from Jeopardy! (Hearing Ken Jennings talk about how grateful he is that he could give up being an engineer and become a full-time writer, which also meant that he has been able to be there for the growing up of his children and being fully involved in their lives...really, I'm pretty sure all of us got misty-eyed at how unbelievably grateful the man sounded.) I think this tournament is about the competition for them, but it's also about having some fun, and bringing the rest of us right along with them.

They're succeeding.

You remember fun, don't you? That thing that we used to have before we had to worry about money, our nation, and at least for me personally, bereavement? I know I'm not the only person grieving right now, and there are many forms of grief that I see around us every day. Some of us, myself included, are grieving who we could have been, as we are at that age where the die is cast in so many ways. I'm having a blast watching these shows and not worrying about what crisis I'm going to have to handle next.

I am now massively conflicted. The tournament will continue until one man wins three days' worth of games. The man Holzhauer thinks is the Greatest of All Time now has two wins. And I want him to win, too. But Ken Jennings winning it all means stopping this truly lovely experiment in how to have G-rated fun in America.

And honestly, I'm not ready to stop this. I'm pretty sure a lot of us aren't ready to stop this. Hey, ABC, pony up: after this part is over, have each of these men play for a different charity, keep the format, and run this until June. I suspect that's when we lose Trebek as host, and having him go out surrounded by three men who value him as much as the whole of Generation X does would go a very, very long way to putting a balm on the soul of those of us struggling to see eye-to-eye with our neighbors about this country right now. In fact, ABC, I think it's your patriotic duty to unite us, even if it's only for one wonderful, crazy season.

I predict Holzhauer will throw game 5 by losing in the last Final Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings will win it all.

(Go Ken!)