Danger! is an institution. For more than three decades, the game show was hosted by Alex Trebek, who, mustache or not, established a reliable tone for his episodes that felt familiar in his own way. The transition to new hosts necessitated by Trebek’s death in 2020 was not without some very notable hiccups, but it also took place in a format that has only gradually changed over the years. When we look at Modern Jeopardy! question we knew.
Because of this, watching Jeopardy! feels strange. And watching a Jeopardy! The pilot before the show premiered in 1964 feels even weirder.
The Official Jeopardy! The YouTube channel decided to bask us all in the uneasiness emanating from the deeply familiar being created by uploading an unaired pilot before its 1964 premiere. From the first frantic flutes and rolling bongos of his old theme song, the pilot feels essentially wrong.
Introducing the show format, Art Fleming interviews his contestants right from the jump, giving us trivia about the players before the game even begins. The reveal of clues and the rhythm of the show as it moves through the rounds of Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy is pretty much the same, but the players are all seated, the music is wrong apart from the immortal Final Jeopardy theme, and everything has a sense of disorder that’s unlike the smooth flow of almost all Jeopardy! Consequence.
Format aside, luckily if the contestants don’t respond to clues you think are obvious (seriously, none of these pranksters know Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein?) you can still shout at the screen to yell trivia on TV play, you would do much better than the people on the screen.
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If you want to watch the full pilot for yourself, you should know that it’s back in Jeopardy! Archive, perhaps accompanied by a descending series of staccato notes, on April 6th.
[via Boing Boing]
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