Question: What do you think of the decision by Jeopardy! to run two weeks
of Alex Trebek’s best episodes that began on Dec. 21 and delaying his final five current episodes until the week of Jan. 4? One of the things I truly liked about Alex is that he was up to date on when the individual episodes would air, but now he’ll be wishing us all a merry Christmas two weeks after the holiday has passed. Or will this be taken out and possibly be replaced with a final tribute to him? —JV
Matt Roush: I’m OK with this, because the reasoning had everything to do with respecting these precious final episodes and not subjecting them to the possibility of pre-emptions
on many affiliates during the holiday weeks because of special sports events
and other programming. I don’t know if the producers can or would edit Alex’s comments (I doubt it) to avoid the post-Christmas awkwardness, but even if not, fans can understand why this happened and be glad and proud of this man for doing what he loved for as long as he could. I’m actually looking forward to the two weeks of repeats, if they’re curated as well as they were earlier this year, which could act as the best tribute to Alex Trebek we could hope for. And then the final week in January will be even more of a bonus. We’re sure going to miss him. We do already.
To submit questions to TV Critic Matt Roush, go to: tvinsider.com