Jeopardy! Fans Blame Host Mayim Bialik For Change (Likely) Made By Producers

Let's talk about how shows get made. A host often takes a lot of the heat for what they say, but what you need to know about every TV show or piece of pro media you consume is that there is usually an entire team working together.

Jeopardy! fans are reportedly ticked off that new host, Mayim Bialik seems to have taken it upon herself to make a modification on the language used on the show for several decades.

Jeopardy! first aired in 1964 and I hardly think Mayim Bialik is masterminding some plan to shift it to something different to suit her needs.

What I'd like to know is, where does the belief come from that she has taken it upon herself? Where are the questions and accusations toward producers and script writers?

Mayim is a host who comes in and does a job under the supervision of a long-standing tv show staff. Perhaps she does have pull as a neuroscientist…but frankly, that sounds pretty silly. And hey, maybe she has pull because she has her own sitcom. Maybe the staff is just in awe of her because like me, they were big Beaches fans as little kids.

Maybe they dressed up as Blossom one year for Halloween and they don't want to correct the scary 45 year-old woman wreaking havoc on the system they've built?

People are pissed off because Mayim has allegedly made a change and instead of calling the first round of the show "the jeopardy round"- she's calling it "single jeopardy."

(Full disclosure, though I don't watch the show regularly, the wording feels off and also potentially grammatically incorrect. You wouldn't be in single jeopardy- you'd just be in jeopardy, wouldn't you? Pop in to offer thoughts grammar nerds!)

But what does any of this have to do with Mayim?

If Mayim is indeed going 'off book' and making a change, that is the job of the staff to address. If Mayim has made a change to the long-standing institution of Jeopardy!- the likelihood is that someone on set would yell cut and say something like, "Mayim darling, that's wonderful, but let's go back and do that take again. It's not single jeopardy, it's just jeopardy."

Photo by Sean Do on UnsplashUnfortunately, googling this issue and reading several articles did not give me any insight on what is actually happening here. What I do know is, fans have taken to twitter to address this issue; I can't tell you if any responses exist.

Look… Maybe Mayim does have an evil plan to change the first jeopardy round to "single jeopardy" - - but more likely, that's not what's going on at all.

Most likely, Mayim is reading a teleprompter that has the phrase single jeopardy written on it.

Maybe she thinks it's stupid, too!

But the most important takeaway here is, we don't know that.

So, what we're seeing here is the phenomenon of people watching things on tv and judging the wrong person. TV actors deliver lines written by writers - writers answer to producers… producers answer to networks.

Watching fans denigrate Mayim Bialik for this tiny, but incresibly fixable issue is gross. It's also like watching people yell at the customer service person every day instead of calling corporate.

Are you mad about "single jeopardy"?"

Here is an actionable solution.

Send a tweet to @Jeopardy or better yet, find a relevant email address. Respectfully make a case about why you'd love to see the script return to its previous state.

Honestly, I'm a little bit annoyed at the production team- this isn't one tweet, it's a lot of people making this argument.

At this point, I'd like to see it addressed by them- I'm waiting for a tweet from @Jeopardy that says anything that veers away from letting their new host take the brunt of this awkwardly inflammatory issue that logically, may have nothing to do with her.

If you're pissed- go find the right person to talk to.

Don't bug Mayim Bialik, who is raising a family, acting on her sitcom Call Me Kat, trying to fill the shoes of Alex Trebek, and dealing with the idiotic pressures of being a woman in Hollywood.

Watching people hold a new female host accountable for changes in her script is a brand new kind of secondhand embarrassment.

On the other hand, glad you all took a break from bothering the extras from 1998 film Titanic about the accuracy of their costumes. Back to work.

I'll take logic for $100, Mayim.