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Saturday Night Live sketch
Celebrity Jeopardy!
Written by:	Norm Macdonald
Stars:	Will Ferrell Darrell Hammond Six episodes: Jimmy Fallon Five episodes: Norm Macdonald One episode each: Dean Edwards Ana Gasteyer Tom Hanks Mathew Perry Amy Poehler Horatio Sanz Molly Shannon Ben Stiller Kenan Thompson Kristen Wiig
Total episodes:	14
Timeline:	1996-2009

Celebrity Jeopardy! was a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 2002, the years when Will Ferrell was a cast member. It parodies the Celebrity Jeopardy! edition of the television game show Jeopardy! where celebrities compete and the game's level of difficulty is significantly reduced. Fourteen sketches have been aired between December 1996 and May 2009, two sketches per season from 1996 to 2002, and one each in 2005 and 2009 when Ferrell returned to the show as host.

Ferrell appeared as host Alex Trebek in all fourteen sketches. Darrell Hammond also appeared in each sketch, twelve times as Sean Connery, in an impersonation that "often question[s] Trebek's sexuality and sometimes impl[ies] that he has known Trebek's mother in a carnal sense."^[1] Norm Macdonald appeared in five sketches, all as Burt Reynolds. Jimmy Fallon appeared six times and Dean Edwards twice, each time as a different character.

Origins

During the May 2007 special Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation,^[2] Norm Macdonald revealed that he created the sketch purely as an excuse to do his Burt Reynolds impersonation.^{[citation needed]} Macdonald also stated that Reynolds is a fan of the sketch and that there were talks to do a sketch where the real Reynolds would crash the game and punch out Macdonald. Reynolds would then play the remainder of the game, with his answers being even dumber than Macdonald's. However, Macdonald was fired from Saturday Night Live before that sketch could be written.^{[citation needed]}

The sketch

Under the guise of a celebrity game show wherein celebrity contestants appear and donate their winnings to charity, the sketches usually begin at the start of the second round of Jeopardy!, called Double Jeopardy! The host, Alex Trebek, welcomes the audience and introduces the celebrity contestants, along with their current scores. These are usually deep in the negative, zero, or a very low positive score.

Both the host and contestants are played as caricatures of their real-life personalities. Trebek is the beleaguered straight man, and is generally the only person on-stage interested in playing the game. The contestants, who often appear either unaware of what the game is or uninterested in playing it, either ramble incoherently, deliver irrelevant monologues, or openly antagonize the host. Whenever a contestant takes the game seriously, he/she proves utterly incapable of giving the correct question. In all fourteen sketches, no contestant ever buzzes in and gives a correct response along with a wager. Meanwhile, Trebek makes little to no effort to hide his contempt for the celebrities' stupidity, and in return he is bombarded with sophomoric insults from Sean Connery.

In order for a game of Jeopardy! to progress the contestants select clues, arranged in a grid by category and dollar value, so Trebek can read them. Many times, the celebrities refuse or fail to select a clue, grinding the game to a halt. Often, Trebek violates the rules and makes the selection himself. The show originally used reasonable categories such as "Movies" and "Popular Music", but as the celebrities' ineptitude grew more apparent the categories became more and more childish. Many category names, such as "Colors that end in 'urple'", suggest that the contestants could infer the correct responses before hearing the clues, while categories such as "Don't Do Anything" and "Automatic Points" do not even require responses. Jeopardy! standby "Potent Potables", a category about alcoholic beverages, was always offered but never provided a clue within the game.

Categories that do not fit this profile are often misunderstood by the celebrities and transformed by one of the contestants (almost always Connery) into sexually-suggestive phrases. For example, he misreads "Catch These Men" (a category about people on the FBI's most-wanted list) as "Catch The Semen". Another time, he turns "Japan US Relations" into "Jap anus relations." In another episode, Connery turns "An album cover" into "Anal Bum Cover," while another had him turn Famous Titles into Famous Tities(sic).In addition, Connery occasionally modifies the board; for instance, he uses a marker to change "I'll have a Chardonnay" to "I Have a Hard On" and in another game, changes Richard Nixon also to Hard On. Once, Connery stuck a piece of paper reading "Things Trebek Sucks" over the actual category, "Potpourri".

Even after the real Alex Trebek shaved off his mustache, the sketch always featured Ferrell sporting one as Trebek.

Final Jeopardy!

Trebek eventually grows exasperated with his inability to conduct the show and cuts it short by moving to Final Jeopardy! Often, he discards the scripted category and clue in favor of something much easier, such as asking the contestants to write down their own clue and respond to it, or make any mark whatsoever to earn a correct answer. Sometimes, the show itself delivers a childishly-simple category such as "First Grade Math" or "Horsies." Despite constructing scenarios wherein it appears impossible for the celebrities to fail, they invariably do. On Ferrell's final sketch as a regular cast member, Final Jeopardy! was skipped in favor of a cameo appearance by the real Alex Trebek.

On rare occasions, contestants give the correct response in Final Jeopardy!, but such success is never accompanied by an appropriate wager, rendering the whole effort pointless.

Connery occasionally provides a correct answer, but uses his wager to transform the text into something rude. For instance, when Trebek asks the contestants to write a number to earn a correct response, Connery writes "V" for his response, which Trebek acknowledges as correct since "V" is the Roman Numeral for 5, but Connery reveals "Suc|\ it, Trebek" for the wager, so his screen reads "SucK it, Trebek."

Trebek then ends the show, sometimes by announcing that money will not be given to charity or declaring his intention to resign or commit suicide.

Initially, Burt Reynolds had been the celebrity who appeared on each episode, and there are some indications that he was to develop an antagonistic relationship with the host as well. When Reynolds appears for the last time on the sketch, he misreads categories in the way Connery does and insists that he be addressed as "Turd Ferguson" because "it's a funny name." When he appeared with his own podium on the May 16, 2009 episode, it again read "Turd Ferguson".

Episodes

Cast

SNL cast members

A typical Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch featured three cast members (two as contestants and Ferrell as Trebek) plus that week’s host as a third contestant. The thirteenth edition of the sketch (Cosby, Sharon Osbourne, Connery) featured three members of the SNL cast as the three contestants and Ferrell, now hosting, reprising his role as Trebek. In the fourteenth sketch, Tom Hanks played an incompetent and buffoonish version of himself. The episode with Connery, Ozzy Osbourne, and Martha Stewart featured cast members in all four roles.

SNL hosts

13 of the 14 sketches included the episode's host, usually as a contestant (the tenth sketch was the only one not to feature a host, as it was part of an SNL primetime special that did not feature a guest host). Both Ferrell and Macdonald were previous cast members that reprised their Celebrity Jeopardy! role upon their return.

Other appearances

• Chris Kattan played singer Ricky Martin, who gives a Video Daily Double clue in the Connery/Reeves/Swank sketch.

• In the same sketch, Chris Parnell played Hilary Swank’s then-husband Chad Lowe. He was seen crying in the audience while Swank gave an acceptance speech, a parody of her speech at the 72nd Academy Awards where she famously forgot to mention him.

• In the Connery/Matthews/Bjork sketch, Dean Edwards played Boyd Tinsley, the violinist for Dave Matthews Band. He spontaneously appeared to accompany Matthews when he buzzed in and performed "Ants Marching" as his response to one of the clues.

• Alex Trebek appeared as himself in that same sketch. He came out at the conclusion of the sketch and gave the Trebek character a send-off on Ferrell’s last show as a cast member.

• Tom Hanks had a guest appearance as an inept version of himself in the May 16, 2009 episode. This is the only contestant self-portrayal in the history of the sketch.

Real Jeopardy!

On several occasions, Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches have been referenced during actual episodes of Jeopardy!

• During the September 5, 2001 episode, the Double Jeopardy! categories were "Sean Connery", "Surprise Me, Trebek!", "Therapists" (misread by Connery as "The Rapists"), "Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Mouth", "The Number After 2", and "Rhymes With 'Dog'".^[3]
• The June 27, 2006 episode featured the category "Japan-U.S. Relations", which had been misread by Connery as "Jap Anus Relations".^[4]
• In the 2006 Celebrity Jeopardy! tournament, categories included "Surprise Me, Trebek!" and "Answers That Start With 'Feb'".^[5][6]
• On the September 24, 2008 episode, one of the categories in the Jeopardy! round was "Starts with Feb, Trebek!", of which contestant Brian Levinson did his version of Sean Connery's voice in asking for the category, and Trebek said "And you can keep doing it in that Sean Connery voice, I love it."^[7]
• On September 29, 2008, another SNL-inspired category – "Months That End in 'Ber', Trebek" – was one of the first-round categories.^[8]
• On the November 23, 2009 episode, the categories in the Jeopardy! round were inspired by Celebrity Jeopardy!, including "SNL Celebrity Jeopardy!", "States That End In Hampshire", "What Color Is Green?", "Current Black Presidents", "Sounds That Kitties Make", and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Word That Rhymes with Star".^[9]

References