ABC announces Alex Trebek tribute special, Jeopardy! episodes are banked through December 25
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Beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek died this morning after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019, and tonight ABC News will be celebrating him and his life with an hour-long special called Alex Trebek, Remembered: A 20/20 Special at 10 p.m. ET. The show will have “rare footage of his early days on television” and will include interviews that Trebek gave with Michael Strahan and T.J. Holmes aboud “what he wanted his final days to be like and what he learned while confronting stage four pancreatic cancer.” This comes from Variety, which says ABC will also air a Strahan interview with Trebek’s wife, Jean Trebek. It sounds like this all might lean closer toward his battle with cancer specifically, rather than career-spanning highlights or classic Jeopardy! moments, but we’ll see.
Trebek continued working throughout his battle with cancer, though he did take a break last summer for treatment, and suggested at one point that “anything is possible.” Because of his commitment to the show, then, Variety says Sony Pictures Entertainment (which owns Jeopardy! these days) was able to bank enough Jeopardy! episodes to get through December 25. It’s unclear if anyone knew that Trebek was filming what would end up being his last episodes when those were made, but Trebek didn’t want to make a big show out of his final Jeopardy! episode anyway. At the beginning of this year, Trebek explained that all he’d want from the producers at the end of his last episode is 30 seconds “to say goodbye.” It’s also unclear what plans Sony Pictures Television has for the future of Jeopardy!, if any, but it’s far too soon to talk about that anyway.
33 Comments
I’m guessing they’re gonna take a few months off after these episodes air out of respect and also time to find a decent replacement. I could also see them doing weeklong guest hosts for a while during their search
Do you think they’d ask Ferrell?
Maybe not to host, but it would be great if they got Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond and Norm McDonald to come in, as themselves, for a celebrity charity game. Those Celebrity Jeopardy! skits gave all their careers a boost, and Trebek himself always said he loved them. It would be a nice tribute considering the men they parodied in those skits have all passed away—Trebek and Sean Connery most recently, and Burt Reynolds two years ago.
My dad mentioned, and I think I agree, that taking Ken Jennings on as a consultant was probably a way to ease him into the role. It makes sense — he’s personable and smart. I wouldn’t mind him as a replacement.
While Jennings is the obvious answer, he did just sign on to host a different game show knowing that Trebek wasn’t long for this world. Either he told them he doesn’t want it, or they told him he doesn’t get it.
It’s on ABC and it was with the other Jeopardy! GOATs — so that’s not a deal-breaker. If ABC wants him for the host, it’ll work out.
The Chase is going to be in primetime so likely more finite than Jeopardy and Jennings isn’t the host. Essentially contestants will face off against 1 potential person so every third episode would feature Jennings. I don’t think that would preclude him from doing both especially since he already took on the producing role at the same time (which may have just been a thinly veiled way of bringing him into the fold)
Interesting, I didn’t know that! Although based on the other comments, it seems like he’s not hosting, so maybe it won’t be such a conflict. Either way, he’d be my first pick.
Trebeck hosted 3 gameshows at one point in the 90s. It’s not the most time consuming of gigs.
Indeed! Game show hosts have often had two or three shows going at the same time.Also, as we saw throughout his illness, Trebek’s work ethic was phenomenal. Most of us mere mortals would have bowed out, and there would have been no shame in doing so. I think he refused to let his illness dictate his life any more than was absolutely necessary.
I think Jenning’s new show is likely a test run to see how he does. If he gets decent ratings I can see ABC making him the new host at some point. He wouldn’t be the first game show host to have multiple shows airing simultaneously.
The game show is on ABC, which means it’ll be one day a week, probably around 10-15 episodes, max. He can easily do both shows.
I think that’s the natural choice, though Trebek said he’d like to see a woman in the job. That was several years ago and he most recently said he didn’t want to have any input on who would follow him as host.
Didn’t know that either! But that sounds like the kind of thing he’d say. Hm. That I’d have to think about a little more, although I’m sure I could come up with a few names. Off the very top of my head, I could see Felicia Day having a blast with the job.
I would have considered Jane Lynch for the job a year ago, but she’s way too much of a perfect fit for The Weakest Link.
I honestly didn’t know she was doing that until the conversation about replacing Trebek started, and now I keep hearing it. I’ll have to check it out. Defector (are we allowed to talk about them here?) started a list trying to answer the same question, and I think they have some good ideas. Although I really like one that popped up in the comments: LeVar Burton. !!
Jane Lynch has the perfect amount of friendliness and snark for The Weakest Link. It’s better than Celebrity Game Night could have ever been.As for LaVar Burton, that would be awesome. I could see him easily taking on the role. He’s got just the right combination of personability, smarts and authority to make it work.
Newsweek just put out a story on the petition to name Burton as the next host.https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/levar-burton-touted-as-alex-trebek-jeopardy-host-replacement/ar-BB1aX0aV?li=BBnb7Kz
I made a Sean Connery joke here, then noticed that well had been plumbed to death on the RIP article.Kinja won’t let me delete this folly
That’s ok; pretty much anything *witty* i’ve ever posted has been used 4 thousand times before.
I just said this the other day!
+(4,00)1
So if all the decent people out there watch the last episode this Christmas perhaps we can generate enough good sentiment to break the 2020 curse a few days early…
I hope Alex Trebek was lucid enough yesterday to see Biden declared the
winner of the election. He would have been pleased since he wasn’t a fan
of Trump. Once said that if Trump were ever to be on Jeopardy, he’d
probably dispute that the correct questions were correct. But Trump
probably doesn’t give a damn about his passing since Alex was a
naturalized American citizen, not native-born.
I’m happy Biden won. However your hope is that someone spent their last minutes not enjoying time with their family, but rather concerned with matters trivial to them. Politics probably did not concern the man at the end.
I hope he didn’t spend any of his last moments thinking about Trump in any way and I would love to think about him less but it’s hard when his name is brought up no matter what the topic is
You mean President Pelosi?
Oh, all he wanted was 30 seconds to say goodbye on air? That’ll roughly translate to 3 hours of sobbing for the rest of us.
It’s going to be super weird watching this final run of episodes.
Oh yes. I just watched tonight’s episode and that was very strange.
Something just occurred to me: all he wanted was a chance to say goodbye at the end of his last episode.With his work ethic, and his knowledge of how Jeopardy tapes and airs, he likely both asked for that message and recorded it with the knowledge that it would air a… significant amount of time after his death. Not just in the premiere, but in syndication, possibly for years on.That feels like a VERY strange message to record.
I have to assume he recorded it, and they’re going to air it at the end of that Christmas episode. I doubt, although I do find it theoretically possible, that he did it at the end of his last episode, knowing his own health.What I wonder is how they’re going to acknowledge it on today’s episode. They can’t just let it pass by without mention, right?
Here is the official announcement from Jeopardy! Executive Producer Mark Phillips on the 11/9 episode.