It’s a weird for Jeopardy! Fans in what has been a series of weird weeks for fans of the long-running game show. This week might be peak weirdness, however, as fans will be served a full set of episodes hosted by Mike Richards, who once, for a short while, was the successor to Alex Trebek. That announcement was marred in controversy and Richards ultimately resigned… but he’d still filmed a set of episodes before that happened.
This week is the week. Mike Richards has been on our TV screens for a couple of nights now as Jeopardy’s 38th season gets into the swing of things. The first episode, the short-lived host did nod to Alex Trebek, noting it was the “Alex Trebek stage” the contestants were about to play on. That didn’t stop one fake Jeopardy! account from roasting the first episode with the soon-to-be-gone host, noting,
(This did not happen, but lol.)
It’s a weird thing to reconcile. As a host, Mike Richards isn’t actually so bad at the job, though he lacks the same vibe as Alex Trebek. If it wasn’t for all of the other stuff surrounding his appointment, we might even be saying that Richards doing something different than what Trebek did is a good thing, who knows? (Although it’s worth pointing out different seems to be what the people wanted, just more in a diverse way.) Instead, allegations surrounding Richards’ character and not his performance are what ousted him from the job. I’m not the only one to mention this, however.
Basically if you’ve missed what’s going on here, Mike Richards stepped down from Jeopardy! after reports allege he basically came up with a reason to make himself one of the guest hosts on the series, which later came off poorly when the news came to light. Couple this with a lawsuit from his time running Price is Right and some comments the host had previously made (and had to apologize for) and the short-lived host ultimately decided to step down as host. He was later ousted from the show as an executive producer as well.
Having said this, the now-former executive producer had already actually filmed episodes of the game show before all of this went down. There are agreements in place to air episodes in syndication already and also it would have been weird for continuity in game play if we had simply been missing the first episodes of the season, given the winner of the previous episode returns for the next episode.
This is particularly true given Jeopardy! contestant Matt Amodio is currently on a tear in the series, a run a lot of fans would want to see play out in full, no matter what.
So here fans of Jeopardy! are, stuck with Mike Richards, but only for a week. We can try the James Holzhauer route of simply missing Alex Trebek as a new season is beginning. Holzhauer had previously blasted Richards on social media.
Or we can try the Matt Amodio route and just focus on the game for the next few days. Amodio recently noted he’s gone through four hosts during his tenure on the show, but recently told the Washington Post, “Frankly, the last thing I'm thinking about when I'm in the middle of a game is who's hosting.” Not a bad attitude to have as a fan right now either. The good news? This is our future.
And the future is female.
