If there’s one thing we’ve learned during the history of Jeopardy!--and game shows in general--it’s that some days are good days for contestants and others are not. This week featured a particularly wild episode, when two contestants were eliminated before the final round. Check it out, below.
On Wednesday, the contestants were nearing the end of the second round. Stephanie Hull was already in the red, while Brad King was sitting steady with $1,800 to his name and Kristin Sausville was over the 10K mark. Unfortunately, within just a few seconds at the end of the round, contestant Stephanie just kept digging her hole deeper, attempting to get out of the red. She ended the round down a lot of money, with -$6,800. Her fellow contestant, Brad, also answered a particularly tough question incorrectly, ending up with -$200 in his bank account. The whole thing is pretty brutal, especially since there were still five clues on the board at the end of the round.
It also means that Sausville was the only contestant who was able to participant in Jeopardy’s final round. Obviously, host Alex Trebek (who recently re-upped for more episodes) took the opportunity to make some snarky jokes about Kristin’s fortune. However, the awful Jeopardy! play didn’t end there. The final category was US Government, and featured a question about Bill Clinton making an organization independent. You can give it a shot, below.
On Aug. 15, 1994, 59 Years & 1 Day after FDR signed the original act, Bill Clinton made this an independent agency.
Sausville got the answer wrong. (The correct answer was the Social Security Administration.) She still was smart enough not to wager all of her money on the round and took away $6,800 from the game. However, if you want a good gauge of how badly this round went, Kristin ended up taking home less money than Brad and Stephanie combined were in the red by the end of the round. That's a dismal figure.
On the bright side, Wednesday’s game was Sausville’s second game, and in her first game, she took home more than 20K, making her 2-day total a respectable $31,601. It could have been way worse. Jeopardy! has seen a lot of fails over the years, not just from contestants, but from the creative team, too. But there are also a lot of great moments that have come out of the series. When a show has been around since the 1960s and has aired in syndication since 1984, you learn to take the good with the bad. And even though this was one of the most unfortunate Jeopardy! rounds I’ve ever encountered, it’s still a fun watch.
