Celebrity Jeopardy! (Saturday Night Live)

Celebrity Jeopardy!
Saturday Night Live sketch
Will Ferrell (as Alex Trebek) and Darrell Hammond (as Sean Connery).
Written by	Norm Macdonald
Stars	Will Ferrell Darrell Hammond Six episodes: Jimmy Fallon Five episodes: Norm Macdonald One episode each: Dean Edwards Ana Gasteyer Tom Hanks Matthew Perry Amy Poehler Horatio Sanz Molly Shannon Ben Stiller Kenan Thompson Kristen Wiig Reese Witherspoon
Total episodes:	14
Timeline:	1996–2009

Celebrity Jeopardy! was a recurring sketch on the television comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live that regularly aired between 1996 and 2002, the years when Will Ferrell was a cast member. It parodies the same-named special event on the television quiz show Jeopardy! which features competition between notable individuals with all winnings going towards charitable organizations, and significant reductions to the game's level of difficulty. Fourteen sketches aired between December 1996 and May 2009: two sketches per season from 1996 to 2002, when Ferrell was a regular on the show; and one each in 2005 and 2009, when Ferrell returned to the show as host.

Ferrell appeared in all fourteen sketches, portraying host Alex Trebek. Darrell Hammond also appeared in each sketch, twelve times portraying Sean Connery, in an impersonation that "often questions Trebek's sexuality and sometimes implies that he has known Trebek's mother in a carnal sense." Norm Macdonald appeared in five sketches, all as Burt Reynolds. Jimmy Fallon appeared six times, each time portraying a different character.

All fourteen sketches took place on reproductions of the 1996-2002 Jeopardy! set, even though the sets changed on real Jeopardy!

On several occasions, Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches have been referenced during actual episodes of Jeopardy!

Origins

During the May 2007 special Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation, Norm Macdonald revealed that he created the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch purely as an excuse to do his Burt Reynolds impersonation.^{[citation needed]} Macdonald also stated that Reynolds is a fan of the sketch and that there were talks to do a sketch where the real Reynolds would crash the game and punch out Macdonald. Reynolds would then play the remainder of the game, with his responses being even dumber than Macdonald's. However, Macdonald was fired from Saturday Night Live before that sketch could be written.^{[citation needed]}

At the end of almost every sketch (with one exception), all three celebrities are losing, with scores usually in the negative thousands of dollars, and in most cases, a humorous, often sexual, Final Jeopardy! punchline is delivered by Hammond's Sean Connery character.

The sketch

Under the guise of a celebrity game show wherein celebrity contestants appear and donate their winnings to charity, the sketches usually begin at the start of the second round of Jeopardy!, called Double Jeopardy! The host, Alex Trebek, welcomes the audience (while sometimes apologizing for any inappropriate acts which the celebrities have performed in the game's first round), and introduces the celebrity contestants, along with their current scores, which are revealed to be either $0, a negative score, or a very low positive score.

The rules of Jeopardy! require that a contestant select a category and a dollar value from the game board in order for the game to proceed. Many times, the celebrity contestants on the SNL sketches will refuse or fail to select a clue, grinding the game to a halt. Often, Trebek violates the rules by making the selection himself. The sketch always used the category "Potent Potables". The sketch originally used such reasonable categories as "Celebrities," "Movies," and "Popular Music," but as the celebrities' ineptitude grew more apparent the categories became more childish, even including categories whose titles suggest that the contestants will be able to infer the correct response without even reading the clues, such as "Colors that End in 'Urple'," "States that Begin with 'Californ'," "Black Comedians Named 'Whoopi'," and "Drummers Named 'Ringo,'" and categories that do not require any responses whatsoever, such as "Don't Do Anything" (where all three contestants are required to remain motionless in order to receive money), "I Have a Chardonnay" (where the contestant automatically gets the points and Trebek would get to have a glass of wine), and "Automatic Points" (where a contestant is "automatically awarded the points" just for choosing a dollar value from the category). Categories are often misunderstood by the celebrities and transformed by one of the contestants (almost always Connery) into sexually suggestive phrases (i.e., misreading "Catch These Men," a category about people on the FBI's Most Wanted list, as "Catch the Semen;" "A Petit Dejeuner," a category about French phrases, as "Ape Tit [...];" "The Pen Is Mightier," a category about quotes from famous authors, as "The Penis Mightier;", etc.). Connery would also appear to change categories, such as crossing off letters in the category "I Have a Chardonnay" to make it read "I Have a hardon," and occasionally covering up entire categories with a piece of paper with a new one on there (ex. "Potpourri" was covered up by "Things Trebek Sucks").

Trebek eventually grows exasperated with his inability to conduct the show, and cuts it short by moving to the Final Jeopardy! Round. Often, he discards the scripted category; when this happens, the scripted category is usually not revealed (although at times, if conducive to another contestant's character, they will, as in the category "Famous Mothers"). When Trebek discards a category, he moves in favor of a much easier task; for instance, he will ask the celebrity contestants to write their own clue and respond to it, or make any mark whatsoever to earn a correct response. Sometimes, a childishly simple category is announced, such as "First Grade Math" or "Horsies." Despite constructing scenarios wherein it appears impossible for the celebrities to fail, they invariably do. On rare occasions, contestants respond correctly to Final Jeopardy! clues, but such success is never accompanied by an appropriate wager, rendering the whole effort pointless. Connery occasionally provides the correct response, but uses his wager to transform the text into a rude phrase. For instance, when Trebek asks the contestants to write a number to earn a correct response, Connery writes "V" for his response, which Trebek acknowledges as correct since "V" is the Roman numeral for 5, but Connery reveals "SucK it, Trebek" for the wager (the "V" forming the top of the "K"). In some occasions, Connery appears to have sympathy for Trebek until the wager reveal, which happens to be a rude drawing at Trebek's expense. However, Connery wasn't the only contestant to perform this. In response to a Final Jeopardy! question from one of the earlier sketches, which has each of the contestants name their favorite food, John Travolta responds "miso," surprising Trebek who says that miso is indeed a soup; yet when he asks for the wager, Travolta reveals it to be "horny," which is read as "me so horny."

Trebek then ends the show, many times by announcing that money will not be awarded to charity or by declaring his intention to resign or commit suicide.

Both the host and contestants are played as caricatures of their real life personalities. In Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Hammond said that, while his initial Connery impression was as accurate as possible, it would eventually morph into a "bastardization" of the actor, which audiences—and Hammond himself—found far more entertaining. Though Trebek shaved his trademark mustache in 2001, Ferrell retained it as long as he played the character, even in the twelfth sketch—Ferrell's last episode as a cast member—when a clean-shaven real Trebek made a cameo at the end.

Trebek is the beleaguered straight man, and is generally the only person on stage who is interested in playing the game. The contestants, who often appear either unaware of what the game is or uninterested in playing it, will either ramble incoherently, deliver irrelevant monologues, or openly antagonize the host. Whenever a contestant takes the game seriously, he/she proves utterly incapable of supplying a correct response. In all fourteen sketches, no contestant ever buzzes in with a correct response; Phil Donahue in the second sketch came closest, answering "This December 25th holiday involves decorating a tree and opening presents." with a vivid description of a Christmas morning scene but going out of his way to never actually say the word "Christmas". Meanwhile, Trebek makes little to no effort to hide his contempt for the celebrities' stupidity, and in return, is bombarded with sophomoric insults from Sean Connery. Initially, Burt Reynolds had been the celebrity who appeared on each episode. When Reynolds appears for the last time on the sketch, he misreads categories in the same way as Connery, and insists that he be addressed as "Turd Ferguson" because, as he states, "it's a funny name."

Episodes

#	Original airdate	Celebrities impersonated			Notes
1	December 7, 1996	Sean Connery	Burt Reynolds	Jerry Lewis
2	May 10, 1997	Phil Donahue		Marlon Brando
3	October 4, 1997	John Travolta		Michael Keaton
4	May 9, 1998	Sean Connery	Minnie Driver	Jeff Goldblum
5	October 24, 1998		Tom Cruise	Adam Sandler	Sandler was the only former cast member to be parodied.
6	March 20, 1999		Nicolas Cage	Calista Flockhart
7	October 23, 1999		Burt Reynolds	French Stewart	Only episode with the four people (Ferrell, Hammond, Fallon, Macdonald) who appeared more than once
8	April 15, 2000		Keanu Reeves	Hilary Swank	Ricky Martin (Chris Kattan) appears in the Video Daily Double. Swank was the only contestant to be played by a person of the opposite gender.
9	December 16, 2000		Robin Williams	Catherine Zeta-Jones
10	February 8, 2001		Ozzy Osbourne	Martha Stewart	SNL Prime-time Extra 2
11	September 29, 2001		Chris Tucker	Anne Heche
12	May 18, 2002		Dave Matthews	Björk	Rock & Roll Edition; Connery had recorded an album of filthy limericks "just so I'd be eligible". Alex Trebek made a cameo appearance, and last episode with Ferrell as a regular cast member
13	May 14, 2005		Bill Cosby	Sharon Osbourne	Ferrell, now hosting, reprising his role as Trebek
14	May 16, 2009		Kathie Lee Gifford	Tom Hanks	A fourth podium for Burt Reynolds appears for only one round, then he and his podium mysteriously vanish while no one is paying attention, only to re-appear at the end of the sketch. Tom Hanks appeared as himself. Darrell Hammond's last episode as a regular cast member.

Cast

SNL cast members

A typical Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch featured three cast members (two as contestants and Ferrell as Trebek) plus that week’s host as a third contestant. The thirteenth edition of the sketch (Cosby, Sharon Osbourne, Connery) featured three members of the SNL cast as the three contestants and Ferrell, now hosting, reprising his role as Trebek. The episode with Connery, Ozzy Osbourne, and Martha Stewart featured cast members in all four roles.

Cast Member	Celebrity
Dean Edwards	Chris Tucker
Jimmy Fallon	Nicolas Cage Dave Matthews Adam Sandler French Stewart Hilary Swank Robin Williams
Will Ferrell	Alex Trebek
Ana Gasteyer	Martha Stewart
Darrell Hammond	Sean Connery Phil Donahue John Travolta
Norm Macdonald	Burt Reynolds
Amy Poehler	Sharon Osbourne
Horatio Sanz	Ozzy Osbourne
Molly Shannon	Minnie Driver
Kenan Thompson	Bill Cosby
Kristen Wiig	Kathie Lee Gifford

SNL hosts

13 of the 14 sketches included the episode's host, usually as a contestant (the tenth sketch was the only one not to feature a host, as it was part of an SNL primetime special that did not feature a guest host). Both Ferrell and Macdonald were previous cast members that reprised their Celebrity Jeopardy! role upon their return.

Host	Celebrity
Drew Barrymore	Calista Flockhart
David Duchovny	Jeff Goldblum
Will Ferrell	Alex Trebek
John Goodman	Marlon Brando
Lucy Liu	Catherine Zeta-Jones
Norm Macdonald	Burt Reynolds
Tobey Maguire	Keanu Reeves
Matthew Perry	Michael Keaton
Winona Ryder	Björk
Martin Short	Jerry Lewis
Ben Stiller	Tom Cruise
Reese Witherspoon	Anne Heche
Tom Hanks	Himself

Real Jeopardy!

On several occasions, Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches have been referenced during actual episodes of Jeopardy!

• During the September 5, 2001 episode, the Double Jeopardy! categories were "Sean Connery", "Surprise Me, Trebek!", "Therapists" (misread by Connery as "The Rapists"), "Things You Shouldn't Put in Your Mouth", "The Number After 2", and "Rhymes With 'Dog'".
• The June 27, 2006 episode featured the category "Japan-U.S. Relations", which had been misread by Connery as "Jap Anus Relations".
• In the 2006 Celebrity Jeopardy! tournament, categories included "Surprise Me, Trebek!" and "Answers That Start With 'Feb'".
• On the November 23, 2009 episode, the categories in the Jeopardy! round were inspired by Celebrity Jeopardy!, including "SNL Celebrity Jeopardy!", "States That End In Hampshire", "What Color Is Green?", "Current Black Presidents", "Sounds That Kitties Make", and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Word That Rhymes with Star".