Celebrity Jeopardy! (Saturday Night Live)


Celebrity Jeopardy! is a series of sketches that aired regularly on the television comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 2002, the years when Will Ferrell was a cast member. It parodies the same-named special event on the television quiz show Jeopardy! that features competition between notable individuals with all winnings going towards charitable organizations, and significant reductions to the game's level of difficulty. Fifteen sketches aired between December 1996 and February 2015: two sketches per season from 1996 to 2002; and one each in 2005 and 2009, when Ferrell returned to the show as host. The sketch was revived for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special on February 15, 2015.
Ferrell portrays Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek. Darrell Hammond also appeared in each sketch, usually portraying Sean Connery, in an impersonation that typically involves crass insults directed at Trebek. Norm Macdonald appeared as Burt Reynolds in six sketches. Jimmy Fallon also appeared six times, each time portraying a different character.
On several occasions, Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches have been referenced during actual episodes of Jeopardy!.

Sketch

The sketch often begins at the start of the Double Jeopardy! round. Trebek welcomes the audience and, occasionally, apologizes for an offense or incident that occurred before the break. He then introduces the celebrity contestants and reveals their scores, which are either $0, a negative score, or a very low positive score. Many times, the contestants refuse or fail to select an appropriate category and dollar value from the game board, grinding the game to a halt and often requiring Trebek to choose one himself. As the celebrities' growing ineptitude and disinterest became apparent, the subject matter used for categories shifted from normal topics to more childish topics, categories with titles giving not-so-subtle hints as to the correct response without reading the clues, and those requiring no responses whatsoever. Recurring Jeopardy! category "Potent Potables" appears in every sketch but is never selected, and when it finally is chosen, it results in an inadvertently offensive pre-recorded Video Daily Double involving Bill Cosby.
Instead of buzzing in with the correct questions, contestants either give horribly incorrect responses or say things that have nothing to do with the game, frustrating Trebek, who does nothing to hide his contempt for the celebrities' performance. Trebek's mood is also exacerbated by Connery's pranks and antics, which include making sexual jokes at Trebek's expense, deliberately misreading or vandalizing the categories on the board to turn them into sexually suggestive phrases, and implying that he has had sexual relations with Trebek's mother.
Trebek eventually grows exasperated with his inability to conduct the show and cuts it short by moving to Final Jeopardy!. He either discards the scripted category in favor of a much easier task, or announces a childishly simple category. Even though it appears impossible for the celebrities to fail, they invariably do. Connery occasionally provides a correct response, yet uses his wager to transform the text into a rude phrase or drawing. Sometimes Connery appears to have sympathy for Trebek until the wager reveal, which happens to be a rude drawing at Trebek's expense; on an earlier sketch, this is also performed by John Travolta, who in response to a clue asking the celebrities to name their favorite food, responds with "miso", an actual soup, yet when Trebek asks for the wager, reveals it to be "horny", which is read as "me so horny".
Trebek is the beleaguered straight man, and is generally the only person on stage interested in the game. The contestants, who are either unaware of what the game is or uninterested in playing, will ramble incoherently, deliver irrelevant monologues, or openly antagonize the host. Whenever a contestant takes the game seriously, they prove utterly incapable of supplying the correct question. No contestant ever offers a correct response; however, two come close: Phil Donahue and Tony Bennett, who in their respective sketches, offer descriptions for the holiday of Christmas and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. When Reynolds, who had initially been the celebrity who appeared in each sketch, makes his return appearances, he misreads categories in the same manner as Connery and insists that he be addressed as "Turd Ferguson" because he finds that name funny.
At the end of almost every sketch, all three celebrities have scores in the negative thousands of dollars, and in most cases, a humorous, often sexual, Final Jeopardy! punchline is delivered by Connery. In one of his sketches, Reynolds is declared an unquestioned winner, even though he wins simply because he has the least amount of negative money, rather than actually earning a victory. When Trebek ends the show, he either states that money will not be awarded to charity or announces his intention to resign or commit suicide.

Episodes

Cast

''SNL'' cast members

A typical Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch featured three cast members, plus that week's host as a third contestant. The thirteenth edition of the sketch featured three members of the SNL cast as the three contestants and Ferrell, now hosting, reprising his role as Trebek. The episode with Connery, Ozzy Osbourne and Martha Stewart featured cast members in all four roles.
Thirteen of the fifteen sketches included the episode's host, usually as a contestant. The tenth sketch was one of two not to feature a host, as it was part of an SNL primetime special that did not feature a guest host. The 40th anniversary special also did not have a host. Both Ferrell and Macdonald were previous cast members who reprised their Celebrity Jeopardy! role upon their return. Notably, two hosts appeared as actual contestants on the real Celebrity Jeopardy!: David Duchovny and Martin Short.
was inspired to create the first Celebrity Jeopardy! after noting how much easier the questions on the real-life Celebrity Jeopardy! were compared to regular episodes. A fan of the sketch series SCTV, Macdonald acknowledged that his concept would be substantially the same as "Half-Wits," a recurring sketch on SCTV in which Eugene Levy played a parody of Trebek, exasperated by the incredibly dumb contestants on the program. Macdonald called Levy and secured permission to co-opt the premise of the sketch.
During the May 2007 special Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation, Macdonald said he created the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch purely as an excuse to do his Burt Reynolds impersonation. He purposely chose to make Reynolds an anachronism, appearing on stage as if Reynolds was still the same age he was in 1972. Macdonald also claims that Reynolds was 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 responses being even dumber than Macdonald's. However, Macdonald was fired from SNL before that sketch could be written.
The host and contestants are played as caricatures of their real life personalities. Hammond said that, while his initial Connery impression was as accurate as possible, it would eventually morph into a "bastardization" of the actor, which audiences—and Hammond himself—found far more entertaining. Though Trebek shaved his trademark mustache in 2001, Ferrell retained it as long as he played the character, even in the twelfth sketch—Ferrell's last episode as a cast member—when a clean-shaven real Trebek made a cameo at the end.

Critical reactions

Critical responses to the sketches have been positive. In 2008, Ferrell's portrayal of Trebek was #3 in IGNs "Top 15 Will Ferrell characters".

Impact

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has mentioned his admiration for Will Ferrell's impression of him in interviews. Trebek also stated that during every taping of the show, he is asked by one of the audience members how he feels about Ferrell's impression, and always replies that he loves it. On several occasions, Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches have been referenced during actual Jeopardy! episodes:
In the May 19, 1999 Celebrity Jeopardy! episode, the Jeopardy! round featured the category "'S' Words", and the Double Jeopardy! round featured "Swords" in the same column. During the September 5, 2001 episode, the Double Jeopardy! categories were "Sean Connery", "Surprise Me, Trebek!", "Therapists", "Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Mouth", "The Number After 2", and "Rhymes With 'Dog'".
The June 27, 2006 show featured the category "Japan-U.S. Relations", which had been misread by Connery as "Jap Anus Relations". In the November 8 and 16, 2006 Celebrity Jeopardy! episodes, categories included "Surprise Me, Trebek!" and "Answers That Start With 'Feb'", respectively. On the November 23, 2009 show, the categories in the Jeopardy! round were "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".
A May 15, 2015 Celebrity Jeopardy! featured "The Pen is Mightier", a category about famous authors and their books ; and on September 16, 2015, a contestant who did not know the actual answer jokingly guessed "The Love Ballad of Turd Ferguson" during Final Jeopardy!
The Jeopardy! round from the July 8, 2016 episode featured the categories "States That Begin with California", "Is That a Hat?", "Catch These Men", "A Petite Dejeuner", "'S' Words", and "SNL Cracks Us Up". On July 10, 2019, the Jeopardy! round featured the category "An Album Cover", which Connery reads in a sketch as "Anal Bum Cover".
The category "Surprise me, Trebek!" appeared again in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time special in 2020. When contestant Brad Rutter picked the category for the first time, he shouted its name in an imitation Sean Connery voice.

Home video releases

The October 1999 Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch featuring Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, and French Stewart was featured in the SNL Game Show Parodies compilation special from February 2000 and its later home video release. The special was co-hosted by Will Ferrell in character as Alex Trebek alongside Darrell Hammond as then-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host Regis Philbin, who was briefly mentioned in the April 2000 Celebrity Jeopardy! installment. Two of the three Best of Will Ferrell home video compilations would include Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches, including the Connery/Reynolds/Stewart sketch in 2003's first volume and 2005's Connery/Osbourne/Cosby installment in 2010's third volume.
Saturday Night Live has parodied Jeopardy! in other unrelated sketches, such as the futuristic parody Jeopardy! 1999 from October 1976, the stand-up comedy themed Stand Up and Win in 1992, "Das Ist Jeöpardy!" in November 1993, and the April 1995 sketch Gapardy, featuring The Gap Girls. A recurring sketch in more recent seasons is Black Jeopardy!, which debuted in season 39, and whose clues frequently invoke African American stereotypes. Additionally, various contestant impersonations, including Connery and Reynolds, have appeared outside of Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches with the same cast members.