LeVar Burton’s second Jeopardy! clue will make Community fans very happy
The actor’s long-awaited guest hosting stint on Jeopardy! begins Monday night
TV News Jeopardy!
We’ve been eagerly waiting for LeVar Burton to finally host Jeopardy! and the wait is nearly over. His five-episode hosting stint begins tonight, and Community fans will be very excited to know that tonight’s episode’s second clue gets very meta.
The category is TV workplaces, and Burton reads out the clue, “Greendale is this title type of college.” Thankfully, a contestant named Patrick immediately got it right—even though he wasn’t the one who selected the category in the first place, winning himself $200.
Great job, Patrick. It would’ve been pretty mortifying if nobody got it right, considering Burton had a recurring role as a fictionalized version of himself on the show. Though it’s a missed opportunity to make the clue “This Jeopardy! guest host was kidnapped by pirates with Donald Glover on this sitcom.”
And besides the meta clue, we need to point out how wonderfully chipper Burton’s way of saying “Correct” is—it just feels right. Burton previously told Entertainment Weekly, “I don’t believe there is anyone out there who is better suited for this job than me. And I will go to my grave believing that.” He wasn’t the only one campaigning to be considered as a guest host. There was a petition with over 200,000 signatures asking for him to be included for the gig. It made no sense that Dr. Oz of all people got to do it before he did! But even with that short sneak peek, we can already tell he’s perfect for the job. And if his time at the lectern justifies all that anticipation, we wouldn’t mind having him as a permanent host—though he has a bit of competition with Aaron Rodgers, who seemed to be massively into his time on the show.
Catch Burton on Jeopardy! through Friday, July 30. (Check local listings for channels and times.)
53 Comments
“I don’t believe there is anyone out there who is better suited for this job than me. And I will go to my grave believing that.”I love how confident he is about this, rightly so. He just fits. I can’t imagine anyone else in the role.
Rodgers would absolutely make the role his own. And parts of the internet would be pissed. Also, Pat Sajak would probably do very well as host. Except he does that spinny wheel show and that seems to take up a lot of his time.
I was actually a little disappointed by Burton, but I think part of that is that my expectations were sky-high in a way that they weren’t for anyone else. I don’t know about best, but I’d bet that he’d be really good with a few weeks of polishing.Aaron Rogers is someone I had zero expectations for, so when he did a pretty good job I was pleasantly surprised.Also, it might be a pipe dream, but I really really really want there to be a Star Trek: The Next Generation clue while Geordi LaForge is hosting. Of course, it ends up being guaranteed if he gets the job full-time.
He’s publicly said that his first night wasn’t great and that the rest of his stint was a lot better once he stopped trying to do it the Trebek way and leaned into himself a bit.
I hope so.
Oh, that’s good to know. Because I REALLY want to like him, but I didn’t. He was like Mayim Bayalik… and actor overenthusiastically playing the role of a game show host.
see, i found mayim dorable and likeable. its not that i dislike him, im watching today and he is doing a lot better, and i loved the next gen(was a bit old for reading rainbow) but if i didn’t know she was already promised on that kat show, id go for her just on the basis of her enthusiasm and enjoyment.
thats what got me, he set the bar really high, then when he had to do that retraction because of how he phrased it hen the on contestant missed the question on time, and he didnt specify that that was the reason. wouldnt have been an issue had he not talked up so much.He did well, and one mistake wont doom him, but it was the old thing, talk smack, and your mistakes stand out that much more.
It’s not even that he set the bar high – I mostly ignore showbiz people when they talk up how awesome they or their product are. It’s that I’m a big, lifelong Star Trek fan. When people started throwing around Levar Burton as a Jeopardy guest host in the early part of the year it was something that sounded like an excellent idea as soon as I heard it. He could have said ‘I don’t know guys, this doesn’t sound like it’s for me but I’ll give it a shot’ and I’d have been equally excited about his guest-host stint.
“This Starfleet Engineer blew up more warp cores than anybody else in history.”
His lips sounded like he could really use a drink and he didn’t do a great job of handling people running out of time. In general, I felt he could do better with incorrect answers.
Rodgers would absolutely make the role his own.He’d probably be pretty good until he got mad at some producer for something and gets pissy and storms off.
I agree. Burton’s the best fit. First, he’s a fan of the show. This isn’t just another gig for him.Second, he’s genuine. For me, he engenders a kind of trust similar to what I felt for Trebek.Third, he’s smart. Like Trebek, it’s easy for me to believe he knows the answers, even though we all know that in reality the only guy who really knows all of them is Jennings.He’s been in my life since 1977 as Kunta Kinte in Roots, helped raise my kids through Reading Rainbow, and Geordi Le Forge was without doubt the coolest Chief Engineer in the entire Star Trek franchise.All that, and it’s 2021. We need this.
In all sincerity, he had the worst performance on his first episode of any of them. Some were bad but at least they didn’t screw the contestants multiple times. And I’ve never seen so many clues remaining on the board. Here’s hoping he improves.
didn’t you read Saltier? We need this. AMERICA needs this.
don’t be that guy.
I don’t get Community alerts, so I didn’t get one about this.
I didn’t get a Community notification for this?
You’re looking for pre-Kinja notifications? I’m surprised there wasn’t a Frakes here…
It’s going to be soooo awkward if he sucks.
“I wanted to look and sound like Alex Trebek. Specifically one of outtake reels where he can’t nail a promo and keeps cursing. While visibly drunk.”
“FUCK IT, WE’LL DO IT LIVE, EH, HOSERS.”I like to think Trebek went Full Canuckistanian when he was angry.
I don’t believe there is anyone [out there alive] who is better suited for this job than me.
Just come right out and say it.
Art Fleming isn’t walking through that door
For $200, this visual representation of a moment captured in time can never be disappointed.
This sounds like you’re trying to sell an NFT
I’ll take ‘Shit People Don’t Give a Fuck About’ for $1000 please.
Annie’s Boobs?
POP POP!
The fact that you call it that tells me you’re not ready.
Sorry, no. The answer we were looking for is ‘What is this article?’Remember to form you answer in the phrase of a question.
Sorry, no. Answers are not formed in the phrase of a question.
Responses are phrased in the form of a question.
If you’re going to be pedantic at least get it right.
Sorry, no. We were looking for Moops
Let me see that. It’s Moors! This is a misprint!
Are you lost?
Sorry, no. The answer we were looking for is ‘What is this article?’
Who is Seven Costanza?
Sorry, no. The answer we were looking for is ‘Who am your mom?’
Does your mother hang around dockside bars?
Ha! Joke’s on you! My mom is dead! My…um… my mom is dead.
Was that the lowest score in the history of the program?
I would not be offended if Mr. Burton were made the ongoing host. But I would fear for his acting career. I’d still like to see him in dramatic works and light comedies.
Burton is a polymath. He directs plenty of TV shows and has podcasts and acts and all kinds of other stuff. If he says this gig is what he wants, I’m cool with it because it is also what I want.
I think he could still do other things. Jeopardy tapes a week’s worth of episodes in one day, so that’s plenty of time off.
More fish for Kunta.
I live in Savannah. The NBC station here carries Jeopardy!. In a normal schedule they play Wheel of Fortune at 7:00 and Jeopardy! at 7:30 before commencing the prime time schedule. However, since we have the 2020 2021 Olympics going on, the network takes over at 7:30, thus preempting Jeopardy!. As a result, we folks on SE GA will not get to see Mr. Burton’s performance for at least another two weeks.
Likewise here in East Tennessee :/
Poor Patrick, setting the record for lowest score ever. I’m sure he’s a super smart guy or he wouldn’t be there but he seemed to take the approach that you should worry first about buzzing in quickly, and second about knowing the correct response.
He was not great, Maybe he will get better, On twitter his fans were raving they didnt hear how bad he was I guess, I signed petition and a woman called me racist because I said he wasnt good, Welcome to USA in 2021. It was also said that they put him on during olympics on purpose because of systemic racism.
Both host and one contestant were painfully bad in Burton’s debut. He was too affected, trying for formal, grand MCing that just came across as very unnatural and stilted. I think he’s been too overhyped as a great choice without he, you know, actually hosting the games first. As this showing demonstrated, he could be a mediocre host. For fans of a show that celebrates facts, ie, evidence, it was odd so many thought he would kill it before any testing of that hypothesis came in.
It’s funny how after one bad day we’re being told not to judge too early by people who declared him the perma-host months ago.I’m still pulling for him, but oof, that wasn’t good.
LeVar has a slower reading cadence than Trebek, I think that resulted in them cutting a
few seconds here and there; there were 1-2 times where I didn’t hear
him respond to a wrong answer. He may have had to look to the judges a
few times too.
Sorry….didn’t respond to the wrong question.
He did fine. There’s only so much you can do with that job. I thought Savannah Guthrie was excellent. The fact that the PhD guy is slaughtering everybody is not helping Burton. The game is really boring right now.