Is there a more awkward two minutes in television than the obligatory Jeopardy contestant chit chat? First of all, who decided we as television viewers want to know more about these people? Don’t the producers of the show know we’ve already passed judgment on the participants based on the criteria already provided: appearance, place of origin, occupation, and last but not least, how annoying their voice is.
Exactly how do they come up with these banal bon mots to begin with? What does the contestant bio-sheet they force these trivia-meisters to fill out look like?
Question 1: Describe the most embarrassing event ever to happen to you in the most uninteresting way possible (Don’t worry, we almost never pick these to air)
Question 2: Do you have a hobby that even Michael Jackson would find eccentric? Please describe it in fervent detail.
Question 3: Did you have a brush with fame? Please elaborate in a way that will give Alex Trebek the feeling of self-satisfying superiority that he so desperately desires.
Question 4: How boring is your job? No really, just how boring is it?
