Celebrity Jeopardy! (Saturday Night Live) - The Sketch

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 (while sometimes apologizing for any inappropriate acts which the celebrities have performed in the game's first round), and introduces the celebrity contestants, along with their current scores, which are revealed to be either $0, a negative score, or a very low positive score.

The rules of Jeopardy!, similar to the original game show, require that a contestant select a category and a dollar value from the game board in order for the game to proceed. But many times, the celebrity contestants on the SNL sketches will refuse or fail to select a clue, grinding the game to a halt. Often, Trebek violates the rules by making the selection himself. The sketch always used the category "Potent Potables". The sketch originally used such reasonable categories as "Celebrities," "Movies," and "Popular Music," but as the celebrities' ineptitude grew more apparent the categories became more childish, even including categories whose titles suggest that the contestants will be able to infer the correct response without even reading the clues, such as "Colors that End in 'Urple'," "States that Begin with 'Californ'," "Famous 'Kareem Abdul-Jabbars'," "Black Comedians Named 'Whoopi'," and "Drummers Named 'Ringo,'" and categories that do not require any responses whatsoever, such as "Don't Do Anything" (where all three contestants are required to remain motionless in order to receive money), "I Have a Chardonnay" (where the contestant automatically gets the points and Trebek would get to have a glass of wine), and "Automatic Points" (where a contestant is "automatically awarded the points" just for choosing a dollar value from the category).

Categories are often misunderstood by the celebrities and transformed by one of the contestants (almost always Connery) into sexually suggestive phrases (i.e., misreading "Catch These Men," a category about people on the FBI's Most Wanted list, as "Catch the Semen;" "A Petit Dejeuner," a category about French phrases, as "Ape Tit ;" "The Pen Is Mightier," a category about quotes from famous authors, as "The Penis Mightier;", and "An Album Cover" as "Anal Bum Cover" etc.). Connery would also appear to change categories, such as crossing off letters in the category "I Have a Chardonnay" to make it read "I Have a hardon," and occasionally covering up entire categories with a piece of paper with a new one on there (ex. "Potpourri" was covered up by "Things Trebek Sucks").

Trebek eventually grows exasperated with his inability to conduct the show, and cuts it short by moving to the Final Jeopardy! Round. Sometimes, he discards the scripted category; when this happens, the scripted category is usually not revealed (although at times, if conducive to another contestant's character, they will, as in the category "Famous Mothers"). When Trebek discards a category, he moves in favor of a much easier task; for instance, he will ask the celebrity contestants to write their own clue and respond to it, or make any mark whatsoever to earn a correct response. Sometimes, a childishly simple category is announced, such as "First Grade Math" or "Horsies." Despite constructing scenarios wherein it appears impossible for the celebrities to fail, they invariably do. On rare occasions, contestants respond correctly to Final Jeopardy! clues, but such success is never accompanied by an appropriate wager, rendering the whole effort pointless. Connery occasionally provides the correct response, but uses his wager to transform the text into a rude phrase. 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 "SucK it, Trebek" for the wager (the "V" forming the top of the "K"). In some occasions, Connery appears to have sympathy for Trebek until the wager reveal, which happens to be a rude drawing at Trebek's expense. However, Connery wasn't the only contestant to perform this. In response to a Final Jeopardy! question from one of the earlier sketches, which has each of the contestants name their favorite food, John Travolta responds "miso," surprising Trebek who says that miso is indeed a soup; yet when he asks for the wager, Travolta reveals it to be "horny," which is read as "me so horny."

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

Trebek is the beleaguered straight man, and is generally the only person on stage who is interested in playing the game. The contestants, who often appear either unaware of what the game is or uninterested in playing it, will either ramble incoherently, deliver irrelevant monologues, or openly antagonize the host. Whenever a contestant takes the game seriously, he/she proves utterly incapable of supplying a correct response. In all fourteen sketches, no contestant ever buzzes in with a correct response; Phil Donahue in the second sketch came closest, answering "This December 25th holiday involves decorating a tree and opening presents." with a vivid description of a Christmas morning scene but going out of his way to never actually say the word "Christmas". Meanwhile, Trebek makes little to no effort to hide his contempt for the celebrities' stupidity, and in return, is bombarded with sophomoric insults from Sean Connery. Initially, Burt Reynolds had been the celebrity who appeared on each episode. When Reynolds appears for the last time on the sketch, he misreads categories in the same way as Connery, and insists that he be addressed as "Turd Ferguson" because, as he states, "it's a funny name."