Review: Pop Culture Jeopardy!

Michael Davies is running the Jeopardy! brand into the ground.

During the 2023 writer’s strike, Davies—probably with his hands tied by obligations to Sony and syndicators—decided to go hog wild on tournaments, which burned out so many people. Then there was the ABC Celebrity version, the ABC Masters’ tournament, and now there’s a Geeks Who Drink-driven Bar League live outfit, and Pop Culture Jeopardy!, an Amazon Prime-exclusive show that for some reason exists. Jeopardy!, at this points, insists upon itself.

A bit of history: in 2006, VH1 and Michael Davies produced a show called The World Series of Pop Culture, a pop culture based trivia tournament in which teams of three with quippy fun names (and sometimes fun outfits!) compete in a battle to win $250,000. Lasting for two seasons, it was a blip in the game show universe, but a blip that was fondly remembered by fans for being interesting, engaging, and challenging.

So now Michael Davies, the steward of the most important trivia brand in America, is revisiting his old ideas and slapping the Jeopardy! branding on them, whether anyone likes it or not. But that’s Hollywood, right? Why do something new when you can bank on a format you know works, with a brand you know everyone in the country probably still loves—for now? With the help of Amazon, who no doubt poured money into converting the game board into one giant screen, adding some swooshes into the backdrop, making the podiums now the size of a large canoe to fit three people and so many fucking “POP CULTURE JEOPARDY” signs everywhere, Michael Davies is back with another series of The World Series of Pop Culture, with a new name and a slightly modified format—America’s Favorite Game of Answers and Questions.

The last time an online streamer had a niche Jeopardy! spinoff, it was Crackle and sports—Sports Jeopardy! was a spinoff done under Harry Friedman, the previous Jeopardy! executive producer if we, as usual, ignore Mike Richards. Hosted by Dan Patrick, Sports Jeopardy! leaned in hard to the sports motif, putting the show in a liminal-space mix of a Buffalo Wild Wings and Ebbets Field, hosted by Dan Patrick, a broadcasting figure that probably had as much gravitas as Alex did, but with the sports pedigree to earn him the podium. The other niche spinoff, Rock and Roll Jeopardy! on VH1, felt very much a the late 90s-early 2000s “cool person” version of Jeopardy—younger host in Jeff Probst, more avant-garde looking set, etc etc. Pop Culture Jeopardy!, on this spectrum, feels like it should lean closer to Rock and Roll Jeopardy!.

Other than some signs and some waves in the background, this is the bog-standard Jeopardy! set. You can probably look at it and say “oh weird something’s different with Jeopardy!” even if the extra 6 people on the stage isn’t enough of a giveaway. The giant POP CULTURE JEOPARDY! sign that ominously hovers above the contestants, almost hearkens back to the classic game show set, but its impact is hampered by the same fucking sign but on the floor. The iconic Jeopardy game board, now one giant monitor instead of 36 separate monitors, kinda feels like Jeopardy!. For the nerds out there: clues are still set in Korinna, categories are still set in Swiss, but point amounts are in a wider typeface, and the marbled blue background is replaced with a smooth blue to slightly darker blue. The over-the-shoulder graphic for Daily Doubles (and a new thing I’ll touch on later) is replaced with a lower third, probably to avoid a team member getting Mike Wazowski’d. One rather jarring and silly change to the set is this reveal for Final Jeopardy!, now that the smaller monitor next to the host is removed from the PCJ! set:

The game is the same, mostly—new host Colin Jost does a good job keeping the game moving, reading the clues with the correct inflection, and quipping nicely with the contestants. The contestants range from cringingly annoying (we get it, all in, bring it, yadda yadda, it’s old) to endearing (they like Pokemon AND Lady Gaga!) but everyone is pretty much to the level that you’d expect from Jeopardy!—very good, smart players in this pop culture realm. The game material is accessible if you’re a pop culture fan—my partner sniped a 2,000 point clue from under me by pulling out Jethro Tull, but I definitely knew who Bella Poarch is, so who’s more chronically online now? The generation gap is pretty noticeable but makes sense—your Boomer and Gen-X properties (like Cool Hand Luke or the aforementioned Jethro Tull) fill out the bottom, harder parts of the board, while more recent things (references to Chicken Shop Date, the Corn kid, and someone named ‘Taylor Swift’?) fill out the rest. I don’t have data on hand, but it seems like, to the writing team’s credit, there is more representation for black media and culture on the board than a standard Jeopardy! episode (the folks who run Black Jeopardy! Misses can let me know how off base I am with this impression).

Each player on a team has a signalling device, and only one player answers. If they get the response wrong, the whole team is locked out from that question. It’s logical and actually isn’t that overwhelming, thanks to a good scoreboard on the front of the podium that lights up with the name of who rang in. Each board gets cleared out, and the game is played for points, and not dollars. The tournament structure starts with 81 teams that get whittled down to 1 champion and a prize amount of $300,000, so people who want to watch this for 40 episodes, get ready to enjoy Jeopardy! on Prime Video! (As an aside, it’s refreshing to watch Jeopardy! without advertisements for Consumer Cellular and Neuriva, so thank you Amazon.)

A new element, the Triple Play, allows teams to earn the dollar amount of a clue up to 3 times, by each member of the team giving one of three possible correct responses, as long as you answer correctly from left to right starting from the person that originally rang in. (This is not explained during the show but an out-of-order response from a team clarified the rule for the folks at home). Wrong answers lose points and control and other players can ring in and sweep up. Cute, but wildly unnecessary. (I would’ve given more style points if they called it a Triple Threat, the discarded gameplay mechanic from the Merv Griffin 1980s run-throughs, ah well).

The show’s intro rips off Kroll Show’s concept of pop culture logos reworked to have the show’s title in it (probably in retribution). The show’s theme song, is a third “cool” reworking of the Jeopardy! theme, after the superior Rock and Roll Jeopardy! version (which I reckon they could’ve used without any issue and would’ve been a friendly nod to loyal fans) and Jep! (which doesn’t have its theme in the clear anywhere but here’s the think music and it’s cool as hell, they could’ve used this too). The Think music is the same as the mothership, which is surprising—why pay for a full theme and not do the most iconic cue of the show? Another baffling production decision.

At the end of the day, this is still Jeopardy! and the game of Jeopardy! is still fun to play along with and fun to watch. For me, the game felt more accessible because I’m stronger with pop culture trivia than I am with more scholarly areas. But the production decisions made for this show that ultimately fall under Michael Davies’ purview and responsibility are at best, inconsequential and at worst, baffling.

From a zoomed out view, I’m starting to panic with Michael Davies as the steward of one of the greatest game shows of all time. In a mirror to what Davies did with Who Wants to be a Millionaire on ABC, the Jeopardy! brand is being diluted to almost homeopathic levels, and to what feels like a larger and larger amount of fans of the show, is causing a lot of burnout and apathy. The things that Jeopardy! isn’t doing (an updated home game, making the primary show the best it can be) are things that the fans want—we don’t need Jeopardy! on Tune-In Radio, we don’t need Jeopardy! on Amazon Prime, we need Jeopardy! the most where we always find Jeopardy!—once a day, on our local station. (And maybe back on PlutoTV for background noise).