Celebrity Jeopardy! (Saturday Night Live)
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.
that features competition between notable individuals with all winnings going towards charitable organizations, and significant reductions to the game's level of difficulty.
[2][3][4][5] The participants in each sketch consist of Ferrell, Hammond, the host for the episode, and a third cast member; after Norm Macdonald left the series, the third celebrity would be most frequently played by Jimmy Fallon.
Trebek welcomes the audience and, occasionally, apologizes for an offense or incident that occurred before the break.
As the celebrities' growing ineptitude and lack of interest became apparent, the subject matter used for categories shifted from normal topics (such as "Movies" and "Popular Music") to more childish topics, categories with titles giving not-so-subtle hints as to the correct response without reading the clues (such as "Colors that end in 'urple'", "Countries between Mexico and Canada", and "Current Black Presidents"), and those requiring no responses whatsoever (such as "Automatic Points" or "Tie Your Shoe").
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 wildly 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 (such as "Let It Snow" as "Le Tits, Now" or "Catch These Men" as "Catch the Semen"; or in terms of vandalizing, "I Have a Chardonnay" as "I Have a hardon"), 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!.
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.
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!
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.
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.
The episode with Connery, Ozzy Osbourne and Martha Stewart featured cast members in all four roles.
A fan of the sketch series SCTV, Macdonald acknowledged that his concept would be substantially the same as "Half-Wits," a recurring sketch on the short-lived The Martin Short Show (1994) in which Eugene Levy played a parody of Trebek, exasperated by the incredibly dumb contestants on the program.
[8] During the May 2007 special Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation, Macdonald said he created the Celebrity Jeopardy!
Trebek also stated that during every taping of the show, he was asked by one of the audience members how he felt about Ferrell's impression, and always replied that he loved it.
", "Therapists" (misread by Connery as "The Rapists"), "Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Mouth", "The Number After 2", and "Rhymes With 'Dog'".
featured "The Pen is Mightier", a category about famous authors and their books (which was misread in a Celebrity Jeopardy!
When contestant Brad Rutter picked the category for the first time, he too shouted its name in an imitation Sean Connery voice.
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!
1999 from October 1976, Bob Swerkski's Quiz Masters (featuring Bill Swerski's Superfans) and the comedy themed Stand Up and Win in 1992, "Das Ist Jeöpardy!"
(an episode of Sprockets) in November 1993, and the April 1995 sketch Gapardy, featuring The Gap Girls.
Among the "third" contestants have been: The sketches are implied to take place in an apartment building in a residential neighborhood as opposed to a TV studio, and also have several sponsors pertaining to African American stereotypes, most of them fictional though Sprite was listed as one due to that drink's long association with the National Basketball Association.
