I’m Quiz Kid Ken Jennings and I Have a Lot of Tough Love to Give

Ken Jennings, the winningest contestant on Jeopardy!, gaves the show a little tough love on his blog, saying that it needs a serious reworking.

For starters, it just doesn’t mesh with his meat-and-potatoes, guy-from-Utah values:

First up, the categories. Maybe when Art Fleming was alive, America just couldn’t get enough clues about “Botany” and “Ballet” and “The Renaissance,” but come on. Does every freaking category have to be some effete left-coast crap nobody’s heard of, like “Opera,” or, um, “U.S. History” or whatever? I mean, wake me up when you come up with something that middle America actually cares about. I think it would rule if, just one time, Alex had to read off a board like:

• PlayStation
• The Arby’s 5-for-$5.95 Value Menu
• Reality TV
• Men’s Magazines
• Skanks from Reality TV Who Got Naked in Men’s Magazines
• Potpourri

He also brings up the issue of “sound body, sound mind”:

…why are there no physical challenges? It doesn’t have to be Nickelodeon déclassé, buckets of green ooze falling from the ceiling. It could be tasteful and restrained. Like, if you know the answer, you have to run from your podium to the gameboard, jump up to touch the clue in question, and give the answer. “What is an Arby-Q?” Then you run back to your podium to select again. Some of these contestants, frankly, could use the exercise. Oh, also, there are angry bees.

And finally, he addresses the really big issue: that Alex Trebek is in fact, an android:

Finally, Alex. I know, I know, the old folks love him. Nobody knows he died in that fiery truck crash a few years back and was immediately replaced with the Trebektron 4000 (I see your engineers still can’t get the mustache right, by the way.)

Whether you agree with him and think that Jeopardy! is an aging show relevant only to old-fart left coast effetes or think that these are the rants of an ungrateful Mormon version of Quiz Kid Donnie Smith with delusions of becoming a Scott Adams for the Flyover Country set, “Ken Jen’s” polemic is a funny read.

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