Alison Betts Season 40's First Five Time Jeopardy Champion Recap

 

 

Having spent a considerable amount of time and words trying to bury Jeopardy on Tuesday, I imagine some might consider it somewhat hypocritical for me to praise it on Friday. But one must give credit to where its due and the fact that Jeopardy has it’s first five game winner of the season just six games into ‘regular’ play is a considerable accomplishment.  More to the point it is my habit of writing on superb Jeopardy players for this column and few who have watched the show for the past week can denied Alison Betts one of them.

On the second day of Season 40, Jeopardy watchers were introduced to Alison Betts. She gave four correct responses in her introduction and jumped to $9000 at the end of the Jeopardy round. Challenger Brian Hardzinski gained a lot of ground back in Double Jeopardy and it was only due to an incorrect response on the penultimate clue of the round that Allison moved back into the lead. Had she not you would not be reading this article.

In Final Jeopardy the category was SPACE SHUTTLES. “2 space shuttles were named for craft commanded by this man who died far from home in 1779.” Alison knew the correct response: “Who is Cook?” (Discovery and Endeavour) She won $28,600 on her first day and was gracious in victory to her challengers.

Her next two victories were utter runaways and in her first three victories she was averaging $32,500 a win. In her fourth game she got off to another great start and had $6800 at the end of the Jeopardy round.

Then in Double Jeopardy challenger Eric Reimund did something no one had since her first win: got to a Daily Double ahead of. He managed to double his score to $4800 and closed the gap considerably. One clue later, he found the other Daily Double in SAY IT IN SPANISH and then fell victim to one of the oldest rules in Jeopardy:

“A song often heard in Spanish-speaking countries at Christmastime is this ‘Sabanero’, meaning ‘My Little Christmas Donkey.” Eric paused for a long time before saying just as time ran out ‘burrito’. This was the correct response but because he didn’t phrase it in the form of a question he lost $4000.

He managed to make an impressive recovery and on the last clue of Double Jeopardy passed Alison for the lead with $11,600 to her $11,200. It was the first time in her run that she went into Final Jeopardy behind – and that, ironically, may have preserved it.

The Final Jeopardy category was WORDS & THEIR MEANINGS: “Churchill gave this word a new meaning when he called for a ‘talk with Soviet Russia upon the highest level…a parley at” this. Alison guessed: “What is Yalta?” It cost her $1000. Eric had written down: Himalayas?” The correct response was a summit – Churchill was calling a high level conference a summit. It cost Eric all but a dollar. Allison had won with $10,200 and again she was gracious in victory.

Game 5 was a very tough fight for everybody. Alison built an early lead over Vidya Ravella and Jeff Plate but it was not an easy one: there were many incorrect responses and clues that stumped all three players. Alison herself gave eight incorrect answers during the match. At the end of the Jeopardy round Alison was ahead narrowly with $3600 to $2200 apiece for Jeff and Vidya.

Vidya moved ahead on the first two clues of Double Jeopardy. Alison got the third clue correct and found the first Daily Double on the next one in THINGS TO DO IN THE CITY. Clearly uncomfortable with it she still wagered the $4800 she had:

“In June, take in the ‘white nights’ of this city; after 19 hours of daylight, bridges across the Neva are raised at nights so boats pass.” She knew it was St. Petersburg and doubled her score to $9600.

Two clues later Vidya found the other Daily Double in WORDS FROM MYTHOLOGY. She wagered $6000: “This shield or breastplate of the gods now means the protection of any powerful entity.” Vidya struggled before guessing aurora instead of Egypt. She dropped to $600 and would finish the match in the red. Alison managed to play just well enough to finish with $12,800 and lockup her fifth straight win. Final Jeopardy added just $1000 to her final total.

From the start, it was clear that yesterday’s match against Rob Blumenstein and Marko Saric was not going to be a picnic. Alison didn’t help her cause when she found the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round in SECOND CITIES (Each response would be the second-most populous city in its country.):

“The historic site Pedra de Sal in this second city has been called ‘the birthplace of samba.” Alison guessed: “What is Buenos Aires?” It was the next country over: Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. He lost everything she had. She rebuilt quickly and had $2600 at the break and was in the lead with $5000 when the Jeopardy round ended. But Marko had $4400 and Rob had $3600, so it was clear it would be a fight to the death.

Rob got to the first Daily Double on the second clue of Double Jeopardy in 9-LETTER WORDS. He bet the $3600 he had: “This verb can mean to create through skill, or to construct a lie or forgery.” Rob knew it was fabricate and jumped into the lead with $7200.

Three clues later Marko got to the other Daily Double in BOOKS IN HISTORY. He had $6000 and was narrowly in second. “Economist F.A. Hayek’s  The Road to Serfdom came out in 1944 when this woman was at Oxford and was a huge influence on her later policies.” Marko knew it was Margaret Thatcher and added $2900 to his score, putting him in the lead.

The rest of the match was fought pretty evenly among all three players. Rob only got ten correct answers and one incorrect one, but that was enough for $9600. Alison got 19 correct answers and three incorrect responses, which put her at $11,000. Marko managed 22 correct answer but also gave six wrong ones, and he finished with a very narrow lead at $12,900. It was anyone’s game going into Final Jeopardy.

The category was an easy sounding one ALPHABETICAL AMERICA. The clue wasn’t even close. “Until Alabama became the 22^nd state, this one was first alphabetically.” All three contestants went to the obvious choice: Arkansas. But Arkansas didn’t become a state until after Alabama did. The correct response was Connecticut. So it came down to wagers.

Rob bet $9559, leaving him with $41. Alison wagered $8500, leaving her with $2500. Marko bet $9101, which would have given him enough to beat Alison by $1 had she been correct and wagered everything. Instead it left him with $3799 – enough to win and ended Alison’s streak at five games and  $121,500.

Alison could have won if she’d wagered less but Rob’s close third place score forced her hand. Her $8500 was clearly enough to finish ahead of Rob if he wagered everything and she was hoping Marko would make a mistake.

As it is Alison’s five games, while not the record of a super-champion are still impressive. Indeed it’s the most won by any Jeopardy contestant since Ben Chan’s nine day run last May. There were two players in Season 39 who qualified for this year’s Tournament of Champions but each of whom won significantly less money in a similar or even more games. Ben Goldstein won $49,298 in five games last June and Suresh Krishnan won $96,595 in six games. (She was also running dead-even with Matthew Marcus after four games, though he lost in his fifth appearance.) Alison is also the first woman to win five games since Hannah Wilson managed to win 8 games last season.

Going back to Season 38,  she also finished significantly higher than Megan Wachspress who won $60,603 in six games and  more money than Tyler Rhode who won $10,5901 in five games. And though speculation is the devil’s playground here’s how she was running in comparison to some of Season 38 super-champions after they had punched their ticket into the Tournament of Champions:

Matt Amodio: $147,800

Jonathan Fisher: $117,700

Amy Schneider: $170,400

Mattea Roach: $117,200

Ryan Long: $105,801

Alison Betts: $121,500

I expected her to be running well behind Amodio and Schneider, but her comparison to the other three was a shock

That being said, she compared a lot worse with some of last year’s big winners at a similar point in their run. Here are the biggest winners of Season 39 at Game 5, aside from the ones I’ve already listed (I’ll leave Cris Panullo out of the equation)

Ray LaLonde: $132,200

Stephen Webb: $139,281

Hannah Wilson: $147,801

Ben Chan: $157,000

Troy Meyer: $170,401.

In other words Alison is clearly a very good Jeopardy champion but calling her a great one is hard to say. What is clear is that in her play she was fun to watch, spirited in her banter with Ken, and incredibly gracious in victory. She is the kind of Jeopardy champion the show often produces and who we always need. Whenever the next Tournament of Champions takes place I more than look forward to her presence and I’m sure fans of the show will too.

 

The Griffith Dynasty, Part 3: 1924 - Walter Johnson, The Senators Pennat Race And The Thrilling World Series

 

Much of the credit for the Senators winning the pennant in 1924 is given to Walter Johnson and he did much to deserve it. But as Johnson knew all too well, it is almost impossible for a single player, even a pitcher as great as Johnson to do so. By that point Clark Griffith had managed to build one of the greatest teams in the American League and Johnson was helped by four superb players. But even though three of those players got into the Hall of Fame and the fourth was a revolution to baseball, they are among the most underrecognized players in all of baseball history despite their impressive accomplishments. So let’s give credit where its due to those four men.

Sam Rice, like Babe Ruth and George Sisler before him, had first come to the Senators as a pitcher in 1914. A solid minor league pitcher, he became a Senator by fate. The owner of the minor league team who had his contract owed a $300 debt to Griffith and he offered Rice to him in advance of the debt. Despite his competence, the owner convinced the Senators to let Rice be an outfielder.

In 1917, his first full season as a regular he hit .302. He was recalled to the Army in 1918 but his unit never saw combat. In 1919, he hit .321 and became one of the great line drive hitters in baseball. In 1020 he hit .338 and stole 63 bases. In 1921, he hit thirteen triples, the first of ten consecutive years he would finish in double-digits in that category. Never a power hitter, he batted .322 lifetime and would finish his career with 2987 hits. At the time of his retirement, no one knew how many he had exactly. But when the number was finally calculated, he declined an offer by Griffith to return for the 13 it would take to put him at 3000, even then a significant milestone for most hitters. In 1924, he hit .324, stole 24 bases and hit 11 triples.

Goose Goslin had been called up by Washington at the end of the 1921 season and had been promising enough that he became a starter for the team the following year. His first full season he hit .324, the next he hit .300 with 18 triples and 99 RBIs. In 1924, he was one of the best run producers in the American Lead. He lead the league with 129 RBIs, managed 199 hits, 299 total bases and 17 triples. He only hit 12 home runs that year (Griffith Park was noting kind to home run hitters) but he would be one of the most consistent hitters in the American League, finishing with a .316 batting average, 248 homer runs and 2735 hits. Most impressive, he was a vital part of five American League Pennant winners and two World Champions while never playing with the Yankees (he won three pennants with Washington, two more with Detroit)

Firpo Marberry had started pitching with Washington in August of 1923, going 4-0 in 44 2/3 innings with a 2.82. For the rest of his career he was used both as a starter and a reliever, but unlike previous bullpen pitchers, he was used far more in the latter. Though no one kept records of it until years after the fact, he would lead the American League in saves six times in his career. Because Marberry also started many times, he never had the impressive bullpen measures of today’s closers. Indeed, in the latter half of his tenure with Washington he started as many games as he relieved. The record indicates he was good at both: in 1926 he saved 22 games and in 1930 he went 16-4.

Because he spent so much time being used as both and that is most likely the reason he has yet to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Because Goslin and Rice did not play for prominent teams, it may explain why it took so long for them to get into the Hall of Fame: Goslin wasn’t inducted until 1966, and Rice until 1963. The 1924 Senators had many other skilled players on their roster, though none at the level of the three players I’ve listed. Roger Peckinpaugh was one of the great defensive shortstops of the era and once hit in 29 consecutive games. Muddy Ruel was a great defensive catcher and Joe Judge a superb hitter and fielder. The team also had a fairly good supporting cast of pitchers, including Tom Zachry who went 15-9 and a 2.75 era, which would be good enough for second in the American League. (Zachry is remembered more for the fact he gave up Babe Ruth’s 60^th home run in 1927.) But one of the more critical factors was their second baseman.

Despite only hitting 214 as a call-up in 1919, Griffith made Bucky Harris Washington’s regular second baseman in 1920. Never a great hitter he was good defensively and a fearsome competitor. On February 9^th Griffith stunned the baseball world – and Harris – when he named him the player-manager of the Senators.

Player-managers were not uncommon in the first half of the twentieth century more as a cost-cutting measure then confidence in a player’s ability to do both jobs.  Some had immense success at the job. Frank Chance had led the Chicago Cubs to four pennants and two world series between 1906-1910, along with average 104 wins a season.  Third baseman Jimmy Collins had led the Boston Red Sox to the first ever World Series championship in 1903. Tris Speaker had guided the Cleveland Indians to their first ever pennant and World Series in 1920. Before the 1924 season began, three of the first twelve players inducted into Cooperstown in 1939 – Speaker, Ty Cobb of the Tigers and George Sisler of the St. Louis Brown – were player-managers in the American League.

But Harris was a different story. He was only 29 by far the youngest man to ever manage a major league team. While many thought Harris was a good player, no one gave him – or the Senators – much of a chance going into the 1924 season. Why should they? The Yankees had won three consecutive American League pennants and going forward their roster, led by the reigning home run king – and recently crowned American League MVP Babe Ruth – was unchanged.

It didn’t seem like much had changed for the Senators after opening day. 26,000 fans came to see Calvin Coolidge throw out the first pitch to Walter Johnson. By this time Coolidge was the fourth President to see Johnson start opening day. Johnson threw a 4-0 shutout against the Philadelphia A’s.

As was typical the Senators dropped into second division and by May they were in seventh place. Then on May 23^rd Johnson threw one of his greatest games, a one hit shutout over the White Sox, where he struck out 14, including six White Sox in a row.

They hovered at .500 until a Johnson win over the A’s put them there for good. Four wins over the Yankees in three days put the Senators in first place on June 21. It was the latest in a Washington season a Senator team had been in first. By the end of June Washington had a four game lead over the Yankees. Pennant fever for the Senators had swept the country. For the next six weeks, Washington, New York and Detroit battled it out for the pennant. They lost five straight in St. Louis to drop behind both clubs, but on August 7^th Johnson broke the club’s six game losing streak.

After Johnson beat Detroit on August 17^th to pass the Tigers for good, for the last six weeks of the season Johnson’s pitched with only three days rest. Johnson told Harris that if he could help Washington win the pennant, he didn’t care if he hurt his arm.

By the end of August, something extraordinary was happening when the Senators played on the road, they got more cheers then the teams they were playing. This seemed true even at Yankee Stadium. Damon Runyon, a New York columnist himself gave an explanation that holds as much water today as it did a century ago:

“It will be a great thing for baseball if Washington gets into the World Series. This is treasonable from a New Yorker but true. The country at large can not work up much interest when two New York clubs are fighting for the championship of baseball.”

Of course there was also just as much national sentiment for Walter Johnson. And Johnson proved he was worthy of their appreciation. Even in an era was dominated by hitters, he was still capable of leading the American League in strikeouts, shutouts, earned run average and wins. Washington had by far the best pitching in baseball in 1924 – they had the lowest ERA in the American League that year – but Johnson was the man everyone feared,  Even before the season ended, he was a near unanimous choice by the sportswriters  for American League’s Most Valuable Player, receiving 55 of the 64 votes cast.

Near the end of the season the Yankees caught Washington and Johnson helped propel the Senators with 13 consecutive victories. But after his last one and his 23^rd win, disaster struck on September 26^th. Washington lost to Boston 2-1, ending both Johnson’s winning streak and Sam Rice’s 31 game hitting streak. Worse, Johnson was hit on the elbow by a pitch and forced to leave the game in the seventh. But the next day the Senators won 7-5 and the Yankees lost to the A’s. The Senators had a two game lead with two games left to play. The next day, they beat Boston 4-2 to clinch their first pennant.

On October 1^st a parade went down Pennsylvania Avenue with an estimated 100,000 people witnessing it. The Senators knew their opponents would be John McGraw’s New York Giants. Unlike the Yankees, they had won their fourth consecutive pennant, the tenth and what would be the last won by the legendary John McGraw.

How great this team was has been inflated by Cooperstown, though there are several men elected to the Hall of Fame, they are among the weakest selections in the history of Cooperstown. But it was good enough to strike fear into the hearts of the National League with George Kelly at first, Frankie Frisch at second, Travis Jackson at shortstop and a recent call-up named Bill Terry at first. Hack Wilson who would one day set the record for RBIs in a season with 190 was in the outfield along with Ross Youngs and Irish Meusel. This team had beaten the Yankees twice and lost a hard fought series in 1923. The Giants were supremely confident.

On October 4^th  Walter Johnson finally got a chance to pitch in a World Series game. The country was listening on telegraph, electronic scoreboards and a brand new medium: radio. NBC was broadcasting the World Series.

Johnson may have been a little nervous at the start. He retired the side in order in the first but in the second he grooved a fastball to George Kelly who hit a fly ball into temporary stands designed for the crowds at Griffith Park. In the fourth, Bill Terry swung late on a fastball to hit another home run. It was 2-0.

Giants pitcher Art Nehf didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning. Then in the fifth Earl McNeely doubled, moved to third on an infield out and scored on another one. .

The Giants held their lead until the bottom of the ninth. Then Ossie Bluege doubled and Peckinpaugh to tie the game at 2. The game went into extra inning and it was not until the 12^th that it broke. Hank Gowdy, the Giants catcher was hit by Johnson. Nehf himself hit a liner that dropped in front of McNeely who fumbled the ball. There were runners on second and third. One out later, Ross Youngs popped a Texas Leaguer that dropped in front of McNeely and pinch runner Billy Southworth tagged on a fly. The Giants led 4-2.

But the game wasn’t over. A pinch hitter for Johnson reached second on an error. After one out, Harris drove a run in with a single. Rice followed with another drive but ran too far and was picked up. Goslin hit a slow roller to Kelly but he made a one-handed grab and threw the first to get him before Harris scored the tying run. The Giants took Game 1 4-3.

Johnson had struck out 12 in 12 innings to tie the World Series record at the time. But the Giants also managed fourteen hits. Johnson had lost but by no means ignobly.

In the second game Zachry pitched better, giving up just four hits and one run in eight innings. The Senators got to Giant pitcher Jack Bentley earned with 2 runs in the first and another along the way. In the ninth Zachry walked Frisch who scored on a long single by Kelly to right. The Giants tied it with two down in the ninth. But in their half of the ninth, Judge walked, Bluege bunted him to second and Peckinpaugh hit a ball just out of reach for the Senators to win Game 2 and tie the series at one game apiece.

The series moved to New York and the Polo Grounds for the next three games. Game 3 was a mess as the Giants won 6-4 and the play was worse for Washington then the box score indicated. Washington managed nine walks and nine hits but left thirteen men on the bases. The Giants got three unearned runs of Washington, including the surprise starter Marberry, who had earned a relief win the previous game and his three successors. In the midst of the game, the Senators also lost Peckinpaugh as he pulled a muscle and he was lost.

To give Johnson an extra day of rest George Mogridge started Game 4. He gave up just three hits in 7 1/3 innings before Marberry came in to close it out. The Senators won 7-4, helped by Goose Goslin who went four for four with a home run and 4 RBIs.

Johnson was up for Game 5. He started the first two innings fine but in the third Jackson managed a hit. Pitcher Jack Bentley singled and Lindstrom dropped a bunt no one could catch. Johnson got out of a bases loaded jam but the score was 1-0. The Senators tied it up in the fourth but Bill Terry tripled on ‘the longest line hit John McGraw ever saw at the Polo Grounds. “ Wilson hit the next pitch right at Johnson who caught Terry snoozing.

In the 5^th however the Giants scored two runs on a Bentley ‘home run’ that was the fluke kind that came in the Polo Grounds. Goslin hit a home run in the eight, becoming the second player in history to hit 3 home runs in a World Series. (Ruth had done it the year before.) But in the ninth the bottom fell out as the Giants barraged Johnson for three more runs. Johnson stayed in for all of it. Harris could not bring himself to take Johnson out no matter how bad it got.

As Johnson left the stadium, he was in tears. He had failed his team and the fans by losing both his starts. He knew he would not get another chance even if the Senators managed to win the series – and they needed both games to do that. Washington was encompassed in a similar gloom when the team came back home. Walter had lost twice and without him, what chance did the Senators have?

In Game 6, Zachry refused to let the Senators go quietly. After giving up a run in the first, he shut them out the rest of the way. In the fifth, Peckinpaugh bandaged heavily and singled to left. He limped to second on a sacrifice and got to third on a grounder by Zachry. Nehf had been pitching superbly but then he walked McNeely who then stole second. It was Harris himself who singled to drive in the go ahead runs. Washington won 2-1.

It was time for Game 7, which would be one of the greatest games in World Series history. Harris was strategizing. The terror of the Giants had been Bill Terry. He’d only started three games (McGraw had not started him against right-handers) but he was hitting .429 with 3 walks.

He started Curly Odgen as a ruse to keep Terry on the bench. Odgen struck out Lindstrom to lead off and one batter later he pulled him for Mogridge.

For five innings Mogridge held the Giants scoreless. Giants started Virgil Barnes only gave up one hit out of the first ten Senators. That hit, however, belonged to Harris, who hit a home run. (He hit two in the series. In his entire career, he only hit 9.)

In the sixth Mogridge lost the plate and with 2 men on, Harris removed him to put it Marberry. Walter Johnson started warming up in the bullpen and received a huge ovation. Marberry couldn’t hold it and the Giants took a 3-1 lead.

After six innings the Senators had managed just a single hit. In the bottom of the eighth, however, Nemo Leibold pinch hit a double. Muddy Ruel had yet to hit in the series but he managed one. Bennie Tate pinch hit for Mayberry. Tate worked a walk to load the bases. McNeely hit a fly ball.

Harris was up. He worked the count to 2-2. Then he hit a ball to third that hit the turf and bounced over Lindstrom’s head. The score was tied 3-3. Griffith Park went insane. Nehf came in to replace Barnes and retired the side.

It didn’t quiet much later because walking onto the mound was Walter Johnson. “The park was in an uproar. Utter strangers were hugging each other in the stands because Walter was going to get one more chance in the series.” Clark Griffith said. Christy Mathewson, covering the series, however said: “It’s a shame to send him in.” Mathewson had been in this position before, having been on the mound to lose the 1912 World Series and he’d had more than one day’s rest.

The first batter he faced was Fred Lindstrom, who’d gone four for four against him in Game 5. Johnson got him out. Frisch then hit a screaming line drive that looked sure to go for an inside the park home run before McNeely managed to stop I for a triple. The crowd when quiet. Youngs was intentionally walked to face the National Leagues home run leader George Kelly. Johnson threw three straight fastballs by him. Youngs stole second on the next pitch uncontested and Irish Meusel was retired. The Giants were retired.

The Senators rallied in the ninth but they could not score.

In the tenth Johnson walked Hack Wilson but struck out Travis Jackson and Hank Gowdy hit into an inning-ending double play. The Senators went down in order, though Johnson hit a long-fly ball that look like it might leave the park before Wilson hauled it down.

In the eleventh the Giants had a runner on second but Johnson struck out Frankie Frisch. He walked Ross Youngs but Johnson again struck out Kelly to retire the side. Jack Bentley took the mound for the Giants in the eleventh. Goslin managed a double. Judge was walked  and Bluege grounded out.

In the 12^th Meusel single, but Johnson struck out Wilson and got Jackson and Gowdy.

Finally with one out in the twelfth Muddy Ruel hit an easy pop-up to Gowdy – who tripped over his catcher’s mask. Given a reprieve, Ruel hit a double. Johnson hit the next pitch just out of Jackson’s reach.

Earl McNeely walked to the plate. He hit a foul into the stand, Bentley threw a fastball to Lindstrom, who was waiting for the ball. And then hit a pebble.

Muddy Ruel, as Shirley Povich said later, was ‘the slowest man in baseball”. Even though the ball was well into left field, everyone held their breath. Griffith said it felt like an eternity before Ruel finally crossed the plate to score.

The stadium exploded. The Senator players poured onto the field. McNeely made it to first and watched as Johnson got to second and stayed there, with a broad smile on his face and tears rolling down his cheeks. They even tore past Calvin Coolidge.

In the dugout Harris was stunned, forgetting to put his clothes on after he showered. Even the Giants themselves all walked into the locker room to shake hands with the man who’d beaten him. Even Jack Bentley, the losing pitcher was good humored about it. “Walter Johnson is such a lovable character that the good lord didn’t want to see him get beat again.

Grantland Rice summed it up:

Destiny waiting for the final curtain stepped from the wings today and handed the king his crown. In the most dramatic moment in baseball history, the wall-eyed Goddess known as fate, after waiting 18 years, led Walter Johnson to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The next day a victory parade was led down Pennsylvania avenue by Walter Johnson himself. The entire team took pictures with the Senators. Rice reported “a close observer has it on a good authority that President Coolidge’s vocal chords twitched.”  Johnson had every intention of making that moment his last on a ball field but fate would intervene. And though he could not know it glory would come to the Senators again almost the next year.

In the next article I will deal with the 1925 season which for much of the year seemed even more glorious then the previous one – until it ended in heartbreak for Washington and Johnson in particular.

The West Wing at 25, Part 2: How Five Votes Down Shows Us How A Bill REALLY Becomes A Law

 

 

The episode I consider the comic masterpiece of Sorkin’s stewardship of The West Wing is ‘Celestial Navigation’. There are almost not moments when I’m not roaring on the floor laughing at it, and the rest of the time I’m smiling.  There are so many classic moments – CJ telling Josh she had root canal, Josh coming up with ‘a secret plan to fight inflation’,  Sam using the North star, which turns out to be a commuter jet -  it’s the funniest episode of a series that always had great fun. I would love to write about those moments, and I will in a separate article, but for the purpose of this one I have to start with the impetus of as Josh calls it ‘the news cycle that wouldn’t end.”

In it the Secretary of HUD Deborah O’Leary (CCH Pounder) has reacted to a Republican congressman’s comments at a subcommittee hearing. She’s ask if he’s a racist and O’Leary says: “If the shoe fits…” (The President’s actually more upset that this is the most imaginative phrasing O’Leary could use than the actual remarks.)

Through circumstances that I wouldn’t dare spoil, O’Leary is told by Leo she has to apologize. There’s an exchange in this conversation that I heard dozens of times but only recently realized how pertinent a remark Sorkin was making:

O’Leary: “Why should I have to apologize to his narrow-minded constituents?”

Leo: “Because his narrow-minded constituents are also our narrow-minded constituents.”

It’s here we see a clear illustration of the divide between being part of the government and leading it. O’Leary has already made it clear that she has a responsibility as ‘the highest ranking African-American in the administration” and that’s who she was playing to. She’s forgotten she’s part of Bartlet’s administration and that administration is in charge of all of America, not just hers.

O’Leary chooses to deflect by saying: “When are you  going to stop running for President?” and Leo acknowledges there is some truth in this, but there’s a larger story that far too many conservatives and progressives ignore. The President’s job is to deal with all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. There may be conservatives who will say that Obama “wasn’t their President” but there was a lot of progressives who wished that Obama would start taking this statement seriously.

In an article I wrote I mentioned a meeting between Robert La Follette, the Progressive Senator with Theodore Roosevelt in 1906:

 Roosevelt believed that leadership came from preserving order between the old guard and the radicals like La Follette. When La Follette presented a bill and spent two hours defending to TR, the President pointed out that it would never get through Congress. La Follette told him that passage of the bill was not his first consideration. “But I want to do something,:” TR said. The clash between idealism and pragmatism has been something that the extremists have never been able to reconcile, and it was certainly true in the case of La Follette. The idea of half a loaf, the whole purpose behind democracy and government, was something that La Follette refused to accept.

This is the kind of story that Jed Bartlet no doubt would have loved telling his staff, if perhaps not in those exact words. Some would have been frustrating by it – Toby Ziegler in particular – but they would have understood it. And while Bartlet never said it, it played out so many times with members of the Democratic coalition who had relatively little power in Congress but were just enough of a menace to make the job of Bartlet’s White House even harder than it had to be. There are countless examples of this, but the one that I’m going to use that is the most pertinent is one of the first episodes in the series: ‘Five Votes Down’.

In the previous episode we learned that the White House is on the verge of passing a gun control bill through Congress. (In the late 1990s, this was still something that could achieve some kind of bipartisan support.) In the teaser for ‘Five Votes Down’, President Bartlet is giving a speech announcing that bill will be passed within the next few days. As he concludes the speech, Josh receives a phone call informing him that they have lost five votes, all on the Democratic side. The Bartlet Staff reconvenes that night to deal with the problem.

There are several things to note about the episode before further discussion. First, it opens with a long tracking shot with no cuts which was a major directing feat even then. Second, the opening scene is one of only two in which we see Martin Sheen in the entire episode: it was a bold decision by Sorkin to keep Bartlett out of the action this early in the series.

Now a reminder from my first article: Bartlet is a Democratic President but the House is Republican. As we shall learn as the episode progress, this bill is a fairly weak bill but was no doubt the best that the administration could get to receive whatever little bipartisan support they could manage. At the time, there were also several conservative Democrats who were against gun control – and this episode will involve two of them.

In the discussion Leo utters one of the most famous adages in DC: “There are two things you never want to see get made: laws and sausages.” The West Wing will show several episodes involving this but this is the most detailed because it involves all of the contortions that have to be managed to get bills passed – and it is so exhausting that at one point in the episode Josh, one of the most cynical characters says: “I’m so sick of Congress I could vomit.”

They have 72 hours to pass the bill. Over Chinese food, Leo tells them that he knows who two of the holdouts: Katzenmoyer and Chris Wick. Josh thinks one is O’Bannon, but he thinks Wick is a mistake. Sam says that he believes O’Bannon and Katzenmoyer are two of them, and he guesses the other two hold outs are Tillinghouse and Leibrandt. Sam says they’ll need help, but when he tells him they’ll need the Vice President (a Texas Democrat) Leo automatically says No.

The next day Sam confirms that there are all five. Sam tells Josh ‘votes are expensive’ and makes clear what O’Bannon and Katzenmoyer will want. Josh, who plays the heavy well, says that he doesn’t want to give away anything. “L.B.J. would never have taken this kind of crap from Democrats in Congress. He would have said: “You’re voting my way, in exchange for which, it is possible that I might remember your name.”  When Josh asks Leo for ‘permission to kick his ass”. Leo in wary: “We do that. It doesn’t work, we can’t do it again.” Josh tells him: “if it doesn’t work he’ll back off but if it does, he thinks they’ll get the other four votes no problem.”

Leo has a smile when he says: “I should sell tickets to this meeting.”

The scene that follows features one of Bradley Whitford first great moments on the show. Kaztenmoyer tells Josh that he won his district with 52 percent of the vote and can’t afford to become the target of the NRA. He says to ask him in two years.

Josh tells him: “Fifty-five thousand more people will be shot and killed with guns two years from now, but that’s very much beside the point…Forgive my bluntness, and I say this with all due respect Congressmen, but vote yes or not even going to be on the ballot two years from now. You’re going to lose in the primary.”

In the next few lines Josh makes it very clear that if Katzenmoyer doesn’t vote the way they say, the President will return to his district, personally anoint a challenger and that will be that.” As he walks away, Josh puts on his sunglasses and says: “President Bartlet’s a good man. He doesn’t hold a grudge. That’s what he pays me for.” So much of Josh’s future character is shown in this moment.

Josh comes back to the White House and says he has Katzenmoyer as well as O’Bannon and Lebrandt. (It’s not clear he has the latter two.) However he tells CJ that he can’t get Tillinghouse without the Vice President. He then tells Donna to let Chris Wick wait in the mural room. Donna, still timid, reminds him that Wick has been waiting for 20 minutes and he has another meeting in 15 minutes.

Then Josh meets with Wick is so fresh-faced he looks like he’s barely old enough to shave. Wick starts to introduce his staff but Josh tells them to leave, and says he’s not impressed. Then he vents on Wick as to how pissed he is that this made him look in front of the minority whip because he said Wick was solid and he wasn’t.

Josh didn’t mention the guns in front of Katzenmoyer, but he does in a very long way in front of Wick. It’s clear the two of them were friends and that Josh helped get him elected. Wick now makes it clear that in order to look good he needs a photo-op with the President. Wick has been in Congress less than a year.

Josh now gets infuriated: “You’re voting down a measure that would restrict the sale of deadly weapons because nobody invited you to the cool kids table?”  Wick just says: “Got your attention.” That’s when Josh utters his line about Congress. After agreeing to the photo-op, Josh says to him: (Bartlet’s gonna kick your ass.” When Wick protests, he cuts him off: “Chris, you’re a Congressman. You’ve gotta make that real. This time it was me in the Mural Room. Trust me when I tell you, you do not wanna have this conversation with the guy next door.” (Speaking for myself, I genuinely wish that Biden would have conversations like that with just about any member of the Squad from the moment he was elected until now.)

In the next scene Josh tells Leo that they have to get Tillinghouse. Everyone is agreed except Leo. Leo says he’s going to go to Richardson. Richardson, as we shall learn, is the head of the  Congressional Black Caucus and Josh has been doing this before. He warns Leo that they shouldn’t “get em any more pissed off at us than they are already.” Leo tells him he’s going to talk to Richardson alone. It’s this scene that I want to talk about.

Richardson knows exactly why Leo’s here. When Leo tells him it’s all they could get right now, Richardson tells him he didn’t work hard enough. When Leo tells them they have do this inch by inch, Richardson dismisses him saying “I know how you guys work.”  When Richardson tells Leo that ‘Keeping the White House strong is number one on my list of priorities,” Leo counters: “If the White House isn’t strong it doesn’t really matter what number two on my list is.”

There’s a certain measure of this that is logical in Richardson’s argument: as we will learn later this bill is for show more than anything else. But there’s a larger message here that Sorkin is illustrating for the first time and will come back to repeatedly: even bills that are for show can do some good. Richardson has clearly been in charge of the caucus long enough that he is served under Republican Presidents but his decision to equate Bartlet with ‘you guys’ shows a very clear demarcation on the left’s frequent refusal to recognize reality. That a stronger bill likely could not have gotten through Congress doesn’t matter to Richardson or his caucus. Bartlet wants to get something done but as far as the black caucus is concerned, something is worse than nothing. The irony is, as we shall see, people in the administration hold the same idea.

While this is going on there is a story of how Leo has forgotten his wife’s anniversary and is trying to make up by holding a huge celebratory dinner. He’s bought a diamond choker and is trying to hire a musician. However when he gets back home, he finds his wife has packed her bags and is telling him that she’s leaving him because he has put the job first. She walks out on him.

The scene that follows is one of the more moving in the episode. Leo goes to see Hoynes and he is almost in tears. Hoynes picks up on this and asks if he’s okay. Leo tells him that his wife has left him. Hoynes pats Leo on the back, asks for a glass of ice water, offers a shoulder to cry on and without a second thought tells Leo he’ll get the vote. Leo is about to leave when Hoynes asks with genuine compassion: “When was the last time you went to a meeting?” Leo acknowledges for the first time he’s a recovering alcoholic and what meeting he could go to. Hoynes says: ‘Mine. I’ve got my own meeting. Every week. Nine of us. Three senators, two cabinet secretaries, one federal judge and two agency directors. There’s an agent outside, the whole thing looks like a card game.”

Leo is stunned. “Do I have enemies in this room?” Hoynes assures him they’re ‘all are own people.” Leo nods and John assures him that everything will be okay. At the end of the episode Leo goes to the ‘card game’

The next day Hoynes meets with Tillinghouse, whose clearly a Southern Democrat and Tillinghouse tells him that he’s voting his conscience and there are members of the House unhappy with Josh’s behavior towards them. Hoynes nods and tells him: “Which is why you’re going to vote yes on the bill. And you might want to pass that message on.” “And why would I do that?” Tillinghouse asks, Hoynes tells him: “Because I’m going to be President someday and you’re not.”

When the episode ends the bill has passed by one vote. However, the Vice President receives most of the credit from Congressional Democrats. And Richardson has no comment which is considering by reporters as a snub. Everyone is upset except Leo. “We got what we deserved. It was hubris and we got what we deserved.” That night Josh goes to see Hoynes. Hoynes congratulates him on the bill and Josh admits it’s a crappy law. “I helped write it. I’d say it’s roughly the equivalent of fighting the war against tobacco by banning certain color matchbooks covers.” (This is, remember, the man who shouted at his friend for not wanting to ban a grenade launcher.) Josh then says. “You did well sir. In fact, you might be the only one who did.” Hoynes says nothing but when he leaves he pats his former aide on the shoulder and says: “Welcome to the NFL.”

This episodes tell you lot about what Sorkin thinks about gun control legislation even at a time when it seemed feasible. There’s also a subtler message that I didn’t pick up until years later, and it would be the far from the last time Sorkin tried to make it clear.

Richardson’s gesture about not having the caucus vote for the bill and saying nothing about is as symbolic as Chris Wick’s decision to demand a photo op with a president. But there is something more damaging about it that says a lot about not only the black caucus but so many other leftists. Josh acknowledges it’s a pathetic bill but even the worst bill is better than nothing. Richardson is one of many Democrats who will demand a pound of flesh for their support when they believe they have the White House over a barrel. On several occasions in his tenure on The West Wing,  the administration will often go to Republicans rather than the extremes on either end of their party because they are far easier to deal with. Time after time, the various wings of the coalition – African-Americans, environmentalists, women’s group – all demand that the impossible be done for them even though it might hurt the Democrats down the road or even sooner. Sorkin is making a very clear point about the difference of leading a coalition and leading a party.  This message was probably lost under Sorkin’s clear Democratic policies but they are obvious all the same on second and third viewings.

To paraphrase Lincoln, my opinion of democracy is that you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Five Votes Down is the first time Sorkin makes it clear that even within the Democratic party, the individual units each consider the last statement is possible – as long as their group is the ‘all’.  The president has to deal with every American, not just the ones who voted for him. Sorkin, for all his admiration for progressive ideals, makes it very clear in ‘Five Votes Down’ that ideals are not enough if you want to get something done.

How Michael Davies Is Wrecking Jeopardy From the Inside - And An Idea of What We The Fans Should Do

 

Introduction: I wouldn’t have tried to write an article like this even a couple of months ago. Those of you who have read many of my op-ed piece over the years know how both how much contempt I hold writers who write negative pieces that seem to suggest imminent doom and how little faith I have in either the internet or social media to make a difference in any of the major problems facing the world.

The piece I’m about to write may seem to make me a hypocrite. But in this case, I don’t think I’m entirely shouting into a void. I’ve seen my readership stats over the past several months grow exponentially and I know that in particular my pieces on Jeopardy have some of the highest readership of any of my articles. I know that articles on medium do have a certain power to extend outside the original site, so it’s possible I might have a larger reach then I know. And as you will see when I get to the end, what I am suggesting, while highly unlikely to work, does have precedent at least within the entertainment industry.

So with that in mind, let’s begin with my metaphor..

When George Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees in 1973, he was taking over a once mighty franchise that had fallen on hard times and was considered a shell of what it once was. He famously claimed he would be an absentee owner but that promised lasted less than  a few weeks.

Steinbrenner’s reputation was rehabilitated in the last fifteen years of his life and the passage of time as well as pop culture has done much to erase who he was. And as anyone who had to work under him during that period knows, he was an ogre.

Very quickly in his tenure he made it clear that nothing but a first-place finish would satisfy him and this led to the constant interference with management. He was also willing to spend huge sums of money to restore the team, both in refurbishing the stadium and hiring big stars by free-agency.

Initially it worked. By 1976 the Yankees won their first pennant in twelve years and the next year their first World Series in fifteen. But even with the success there was always an immense out of chaos, both in the dugout and in the front office. The team got the nickname the Bronx Zoo by one of its relievers Sparky Lyle.

But no matter how successful the Yankees were, it never satisfied Steinbrenner. He kept tinkering with the team and by 1982, they were in fifth place. He became a source of belligerence in New York, feuding with everybody, his best players, the press, and constantly firing managers and general managers. By the time I moved to New York in 1990, the Yankees were a national joke.

In 2021 Jeopardy was in a similar state of disarray. Much of this was due to circumstance: Alex Trebek’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which he would succumb to in November of 2020, the pandemic in which lockdown would lead to a premature end of Season 36, and the chaos that unfolded in the search for a new host when Trebek passed away. The chaos was aggravated immensely when executive producer Mike Richards announced at the conclusion of Season 37 that he would be taking over as permanent host, which outraged the fanbase. A subsequent controversy about the toxic behind the scenes behavior under Richards tenure led to him being fired, first as host, then executive producer and writer. When Michael Davies took over the show as executive producer in October of 2021, there were many worried about the fate of the show.

As it turned out Season 38 would lead to millions of new fans watching the show and led to many arguing for the era of Peak Jeopardy. But in hindsight, Davies’ taking over as executive producer seems to be the foundation of so many of the problems the show is currently undergoing and in that case, I’m beginning to see a bit of Steinbrenner in Davies.

Perhaps Davies, like Steinbrenner with the Yankees, sees Jeopardy as an extension of himself and believes that its success after such controversy is attributable to his leadership. Anyone who is a fan of Jeopardy knows that is complete horseshit. Jeopardy was saved because of Matt Amodio,  Amy Schneider and Mattea Roach, with assists from Johnathan Fisher and Ryan Long. Even more than a baseball team, the success of Jeopardy has always been attributable far more to the players than any one person. Alex Trebek was associated with the success of Jeopardy but he had the common sense to make everyone else the star: the players, the writers and the champions. I think the chaos that unfolded in the immediate aftermath was more due to the fact Trebek did not have a chosen successor in mind after his diagnosis.

There’s also the possibility that Davies felt a need to make an imprint on Jeopardy that was different than that of Richards’. I don’t know if such things as the Professors Tournament or the prime time College Championship were in development under Richards’ tenure but perhaps Davies thought that he could not consider them his own. This isn’t unfair; the person producing a show is entitled to make an impact on it. The problem was that Richards’ for all the controversy around his behavior had been enough of an institutionalist not to tinker with the actual format of the show. Ever since Davies took over, that’s all he’s been doing and it’s hard to understand the rational.

The most obvious one of these changes was, of course, the Second Chance Tournament. I still can’t comprehend why anyone would think this was a good idea; even when Davies announced it he said: “I may have broken the show.”  Did no one at any point from the moment it was suggested to the time it was greenlit ever say to Davies that at no point in the history of game shows has anyone ever wanted to see players who had lost? Yet it happened in 2022.

Then there was the alteration of the format of the 2022 Tournament of Champions itself, something no one had done since the show had started in 1984 and perhaps back to the original founding. At the time I was willing to consider this a conflagration of events that had to do with the pandemic. But even then there was no logic to two of the participants having to win the Second Chance Tournament. Considering that the actual tournament had two three game champions who served as alternates, the obvious question is: if you’re going to do this, why not invite back players who’d actually won some games and who fans might want to see? No one questioned that either.

In Season 39 there were also clear warning signs. The College Championship and the Professors Tournament of the previous season did not take place at all. The former had been a staple of Jeopardy since 1989 so it was hard to understand why it wasn’t part of the schedule. The only special tournament of Season 39 was the Teen Reunion Tournament, and even then it was hard to understand the logic when it came to who was invited. That was overshadowed by the inaugural Jeopardy Masters which was a huge success and deservedly so as well as the success of the return of Celebrity Jeopardy as a prime time event.

But there were clearly warning signs, first as Davies announced that not only the Second Chance Tournament would return in Season 40 but also the creation of Champions Wild Card. The latter at least was based more in a place of logic when it came to Jeopardy then the former ever was but once again it was hard to understand the reasoning.  In his second year Davies seemed increasingly determined undo the foundation of the show for the last thirty eights seasons and erode the goodwill of the show’s long-time fans. This became increasingly clear after he made the decision that all of the special tournaments –  ‘the postseason’ as he notoriously named it – would open Season 40. This idea was met with hostility from fans almost from the start.

In hindsight, the Writers and Actors strikes last summer demonstrated just how much Davies viewed Jeopardy as an extension of himself. We will never know unless we learn from anyone involved, but I believe that Mayim Bialik’s decision that she would not cross the picket line in the summer of 2023 was the reason she was unceremoniously let go that same year.

I think Davies’ believed in his heart Jeopardy was above the strike and I think everything that happened for the last year is because Davies, like Steinbrenner was known to do, threw a tantrum when certain facts were pointed out to him. Jeopardy was his show and no one was going to stop him from airing it as scheduled, even if it meant his writers weren’t involved. It wouldn’t shock me if we learned later that Davies yelled and screamed at Ray Lalonde on the phone when he told him he was not going to cross a picket line. It wouldn’t shock me if he threw further tantrums when former Jeopardy champions chose to stand by Lalonde rather than the show. And I’m willing to bet that anyone who tried to tell him that at the very least they should postpone this postseason until the strike was resolved that he shouted that he was the boss and he wasn’t going to have his show spoiled by those ungrateful brats.

I’m almost inclined to think the extended postseason that took up so much of the first half of Season 40 was the equivalent of Major League Baseball’s proposed idea to have replacement players start opening day of the 1995 season when the players were on strike. Only the owners, including Steinbrenner, were smart enough not to go through with it. Davies’ not only insisted on going through with it but decided to double down on what was already a bad idea. The fact that he chose to assure the fans with ‘replacement clues’ while the writers on strike increasingly showed the contempt he was holding  the viewer he was ostensibly doing the show for.

I don’t know when the idea of the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament was struck upon – I first heard of it last December. Maybe Davies thought that this would not only bring up suspense for the following year’s Masters, but it would manage to appease the fans who had spent much of the first several weeks and months of Season 40 being vocal on the Internet about the endless postseason. There’s also the fact that he wanted to bring suspense about who the final player would be – though the fact that he said it was ‘the producer’s choice’ should have been a red flag.

There were complaints as the Invitational proceeded about how the three former Masters – Amy Schneider, Andrew He and Sam Buttrey – were not competing against each other in the quarterfinals and semi-finals. I didn’t see anything sinister at it at the time, but I am beginning to wonder if this was an attempt by Davies to try and generate the outcome that he thought would be best for the show. You would think that after the previous two Tournaments of Champions that he would have learned that was something you couldn’t do or that indeed if it happened it would be the desired outcome. But then again, Steinbrenner spent decades with the belief that he personally could motivate his players to win without even having to play the game.

The final straw came Friday and demonstrates where we are in the Davies era compared to Steinbrenner. After the 1980 season, Dick Howser had led the Yankees to a 103 wins and a division title. They had then been swept by Kansas in the ALCS in three games. Steinbrenner had decided this was an unacceptable outcome and fired Howser. He then staged a press conference in which with a straight face he told the media that he wanted Howser to stay, but he’d found a better opportunity in Florida real estate. It was humiliating for everybody, including Steinbrenner.

Similarly Friday, Jeopardy was staging a live event at Hudson Yards where the ‘producer’s Choice’  in the 2024 Masters was finally going to be announced. There had been a huge amount of speculation and anticipation as to who that sixth player would be – I participated in much of it, as you’ll recall. Then on Friday Davies announced that the producer’s choice would be Amy Schneider.

Schneider as we recall had finished second in the Invitational Tournament to Victoria Groce. In essence Davies was basically telling the fans that the entire purpose of the Invitational was a joke.

These were horrible optics in every way. And Davies took what he had to have known was a horrible decision and then made it worse. He told the assembled that he knew that the internet would be upset by him but that he had to do what was best for the ratings of the Masters. To be clear, at a fan event, he was telling that he, the producer, both knew what was best for the fans and didn’t care what they thought anyway. By comparison Mike Richards behavior was subtle.

He was greeting with no applause either when he made this announcement or when he finished his statement. The Internet backlash has been even worse. I knew it would be bad before I knew the circumstances and hearing this statement has made it very clear where Jeopardy is right now.

It is clear that Jeopardy is being run by a man who has no regard for the show’s past, present or future. He is in the process of tearing down all the institutions that made the show great and replacing them with ones that make no discernible sense, even from the standpoint of ratings. He has demonstrated that he has no regard for anyone who works for the show,  little regard for the champions, past or present, and no real regard for the viewers. Like Steinbrenner with the Yankees, he sees Jeopardy as an extension of himself, its successes are his alone, whatever failures are everyone else’s. He thinks he knows what it best for Jeopardy despite all evidence to the contrary.

But there is a critical difference between Davies and Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner was the sole owner of the Yankees and answerable to no one. Davies may be the executive producer of Jeopardy, but he is answerable to many other people. They include the network executives who run Sony and ABC; the various guilds in Hollywood, as well as whatever corporations control it. (I think CBS is a co-producer.) We saw all too quickly how public pressure was brought to bear to bring down Richards after he overreached. I believe the same can be done to Davies.

And here is where I make my suggestion. As I’ve stated I don’t believe social media and the Internet alone is enough to bring the kind of pressure to bring about permanent social change. But there is an exception where social media can do that – and it’s the entertainment industry.

This was true even before Kickstarter was founded and created the sites that led first to the Veronica Mars movie and then the follow-up season. Back in 2001, after USA had aired the final season of La Femme Nikita, a grass roots campaign was starting online where the fans wanted another season. First a petition was started on line, then the fans donated cash. And USA made one more season. We saw a similar campaign done for Jericho after it seemed to be prematurely cancelled. Not all of these campaigns work, obviously but there is precedent.

And there have been bigger institutions where ogres have been forced to give in to public pressure. As John Oliver reported in a special on Vince McMahon, while McMahon refused to listen almost anybody,  there had been times when he would listen to pressure from the fans when it came to his decisions for wrestlers.

Now I know because I spent a lot of time online that there is a lot of frustration about so much that has happened involving Jeopardy and the endless postseason that has been Season 40. I know that there was just as much outrage after the producer’s choice on Friday. I’m all too aware that outrage can be used for negative fashion far too often, but I also know that it can be done for positive change if it is properly directed. The fans of Jeopardy are upset about so many of the changes but they have not directed their often justifiable outrage towards the real perpetrator. And in this case, it’s very clear who that man is.

Now I don’t like the idea of using whatever influence or indeed any influence to do this kind of thing. I know far too well that so many of these movements start with the best intentions and become the online equivalent of a lynch mob. But maybe it’s because Jeopardy is something I have felt strongly about for thirty years and I don’t like how Davies has decided to work to bring it down from the inside. Or maybe it’s because I fear that by the time things reach the point that Davies leaves Jeopardy – either of his own free will or is pushed – it may be too late to save the show. Or maybe it’s because while I think saving so many of the things we hold dear are too big and complicated as a simplistic solution, this actually seems like one that is very simple and that can be done.

And the thing is I still like Jeopardy. It’s still fun. The show is still as fun to watch as it ever was. The Tournament of Champions and Jeopardy Invitational Tournament were everything I love about the show when it’s done well. Despite the controversy around her selection, I’m still looking forward to the Masters in May. Jeopardy has demonstrated in the aftermath of Trebek’s passing that is an institution can survive any one person.

What it can’t survive is undoing it from within which it was Davies is clearly trying to do. I think the show is at an inflection point. The postseason brought up a lot of ill-feeling that could be used to put pressure on Davies right now. But memories are short. If enough time goes by and things remain the same Davies will, like Steinbrenner, decide that he can keep buying success and will keep tinkering. By the time the powers that be realize how much harm he’s doing to the show – and as we all know, as long as the ratings are high enough, network will excuse a lot – it may be too late to save it.

So I’m asking not just Jeopardy fans but anyone who has played the game and shares this dissatisfaction with the turn of events to express your frustration. Start online petitions and hashtags. Inundate the powers that be with how upset you are with how Davies is doing. Threaten whatever boycotts or protests you think are permissible.

To be clear, that’s all I’m advocating for. No bigotry, not hate speech, nothing else but your dissatisfaction with the show.  We’re not trying to burn anything down; we’re trying to repair something that is fixable. I don’t deny Jeopardy has problems, but they’re not worth destroying the show. We’re trying to preserve something we love.

Indeed, express your messages that way. Tell them that you love this show and you don’t like what Davies is doing to it. Tell them what you love about the show in the past and what you want to see preserved. Make it clear that not all change is positive and that when it comes to everything Davies is doing that he is trying to fix something that was never broken.

And make it clear that this would never have passed muster when Alex Trebek was still on the show. Naming the stage for him was a great gesture but his legacy deserves more than that. It means trying to preserve something that we all love and is bigger than one person.

For the record, this played out for the Yankees too. Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball for three years in 1991. During that period, Gene Michael as general manager spent that period rebuilding the Yankees, both with veterans and home-grown talent. By the time Steinbrenner returned, the Yankees reached the postseason for the first time in 14 years. Yes Steinbrenner did fire both Michael and Buck Showalter, but he hired Joe Torre and Brian Cashman. The next year, they won the World Series for the first time in 18 years and four times in five years.

Jeopardy is an institution as valued as the Yankees. For it to thrive, we need to get the Boss out.

The West Wing at 25, Part 1: How Aaron Sorkin Got the Vice President Right - And Every Future DC Show Got It Wrong

 

As I’ve written on multiple occasions, mostly in historical and political commentary, I still believe The West Wing is not, for all the arguments of today’s critics and cynics, a world of DC for idealists.

The more I think about The West Wing it is by far still the most realistic portrayal of the government on TV I’ve seen in the last quarter of a century. I acknowledge its optimism but that doesn’t mean it’s not realistic.

For all the arguments of Sorkin’s liberal ideology, the fact remains that while the Bartlet administration was fictional, the America he set it in was the one anyone in 1999 could recognize. There were countless historical references to make this clear. Jed Bartlett was the first Democrat to become President in eight years, probably longer. Over the previous thirty years four of the previous Presidents were Republicans and in 1999 that was the truth. Bartlet was a minority president – he had been elected with forty-eight percent of the popular vote and more people had voted against him than for him. This was true in the 1996 election. The implication was there was a third party candidate who siphoned votes away from the Republican, which had happened in 1992. And Bartlet had been elected President but both houses of Congress were Republican. This was true not only of Clinton in 1996 but had been a way of life for most Presidents in the last thirty years of the twentieth century. Nixon, Ford and George H.W. Bush had never had either House of Congress under Republican Control and Ronald Reagan had never had a Republican House and controlled the Senate for six of his eight years in office. Americans were, if anything, more used to a divided government than then they are today.

I mention all of this information not only as a basis for future articles, but because in every other drama set in DC in the last decade, we never learned much about the makeup of Congress, previous Presidential elections or really anything about how government worked. Shows like House of Cards and Scandal might claim to be set in contemporary DC, but they had so little interest in politics or even governing that for all intents and purposes they might as well have been set in Westeros. Indeed Game of Thrones is a far better analogy to either of these shows then The West Wing ever was and it may explain their popularity among so many people.

There has been an argument made over the last few years that The West Wing was an idealistic version of DC and shows like Scandal and House of Cards were how DC really worked. That argument never held water with me because neither of those shows were about governing and politics the way The West Wing was. Indeed, for all the stories about Scandal revealing the secrets behind the corridors of power, at its heart the show was about sex (like all Shonda Rhimes shows) and power. The show never cared about Fitzgerald Grant’s legislative agenda and indeed Olivia Pope was always there to put out fires that could ‘bring down the republic’. Olivia was never asked to use her influence to get legislation through Congress and while the Grant administration occasionally got involved in foreign affairs, it never really did anything with the Cabinet at all. We were told that making Fitzgerald Grant President was the best thing for the country but the Grant administration never had any record to run on or campaign on and at the end of the day, he was an adulterer whose marriage was a lie and was capable of murder. Really the only qualification Grant had to be President was that he was good enough for Olivia Pope to have sex with.

(That’s the great feminist message of Scandal by the way. A woman can be important enough for the President to have as his mistress and bring down the country but he’s still not good enough for her to have a happy life with. Forgive me, gladiators, if I’ve brought down your heroine.)

 

Similarly I don’t think, even had it not been for the controversy that led to the firing of Kevin Spacey that House of Cards could have ended well. Even by the third season (which is when I stopped watching it) the show was starting to become a slog. And that may have been inevitable. It was fun to watch Frank Underwood walk through the corridors of power, manipulate and betray everyone around him, all so that he could become President. But once he was President, he actually had to build a record to run for election in his own right. Part of this was that the pursuit of a goal is always for fun then achieving it but its also the fact that once Underwood became President, all of the tools that made him good behind the scenes didn’t work nearly as well when he was front row center. It might have been  fun if Underwood killed legislators to get a budget bill through Congress, but the show didn’t want to go that far.

The West Wing was a realistic show because Sorkin made sure that it was about governing as much as it was politics. Elections were important, to be sure, but Sorkin made sure the crises the Bartlett administration dealt with were not sensationalized. House of Cards and Scandal were about nothing but sensationalizing. I think the best way to illustrate this and begin this series is to talk about how all three shows chose to deal with the Vice Presidency.

I need to start this article by bringing up the other quasi-political drama of the era: 24.  The Presidency was not talked about in quite the same way as the other three but because so much of the drama involved both the President and because the model for how the Vice President was viewed may have influenced the latter shows, I feel its merits discussion.

After Day 2 when David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) was elected President, the Vice President was a critical role in the next five seasons. Most of the time this had to do with an aspect of the 25^th Amendment we are now all too familiar with but which 24 and The West Wing first put in the public consciousness. There is a clause that if a majority of the cabinet thinks the President is incapable of doing his duties, he will be removed from office and the Vice President becomes acting President. 24 went to this well quite a bit during its run and the first time came near the end of Day 2.

An atomic bomb has been detonated on American soil and it is believed three unnamed Middle East countries are responsible. President Palmer believes he has no choice but to declare war but Jack Bauer has reason to believe the evidence is faulty. Palmer is wavering on the decision and has decided to call of the attack. His Vice President (Alan Dale) doubts his competency and begins to assemble the Cabinet to remove him from office. It comes to a vote; Palmer is removed and the Vice President is sworn in. We never get a clear idea of their working relationship but it is telling that when the President is proven right the Vice President offers to resign – and Palmer does not accept it. “We have a nation to heal,” he tells the Vice President. Palmer’s Vice President appears again in Day 3 and it’s clear their relationship has improved.

This exact scenario plays out again in Day 6 under different circumstances. Wayne Palmer (DB Woodside) is render unconscious under an attack and his Vice President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe) becomes President. The head of Homeland Security has doubts over an impending on the Middle East and Palmer is revived. Daniels demands the cabinet vote to challenge Palmer’s competency. This time a majority does not vote against Palmer being reinstated but because of an argument over one of the members there’s the possible of a conflict. The President’s Chief of Staff (Peter MacNicol) says they should involve the Court. Daniels wants to find a way around this and his adviser (and lover) agrees to lie under oath. The Chief of Staff learns about this, gets a recording and the Vice President has no choice but to withdraw his claim.

I should mention that in both cases later in the day, the President is incapacitated on a more long-term basis and the President must take over the White House again. The same is not true of the last time this was used in Day 5

(Here I will try to avoid direct spoilers because in this case, the revelations affect the plot and because I don’t want to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of Day 5 – the best season the show ever did – I’ll speak vaguely)

President Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin) is in the midst of a major crisis involving terrorists who posses nerve gas. While trying to deal with it his Vice President Harold Gardener (Ray Wise) appears and says that he wants to help handle. At this point Logan seems to be a weak personality and Gardener the stronger one. Logan’s own wife and his chief of staff both believe Gardener has an ulterior motive and that might be replacing him for President in a year.

As the day progresses, its seems that there might be someone within DC who is responsible for the attacks. CTU believes that Gardener might be that person. The reason we do is not just because of the actor (a critic later said that with Wise’s work “you could smell sulfur) but because by this time we have come to expect that all Vice Presidents are waiting to snatch power away from the President.

It is this model that we would see in both Scandal and House of Cards over the last decade. I’ll start with Scandal because that show debuted first.

Throughout Scandal the Vice Presidency always seemed to exist for the sole purpose of snatching power away from the President. That was one of the major themes that the show went to so many times: no one bothers to wait their turn in line, given the opportunity the wolves will sneak in and snatch it. But Scandal took this to a ludicrous extreme.

Grant and his first Vice President, Sally Langston (Kate Burton) Both were Republicans but Langston was far more conservative then him and Grant had defeated her for the Republican nomination the year before. The President’s Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) hated everybody but especially her. He wanted power more than her. So much so that when Grant was shot at and in a coma and Langston, who was entitled to take power by the 25^th Amendment, Cyrus told her she had no business being President and seemed willing to let a Constitutional crisis unfold then let her be President even for a few days. He then hired Olivia to make it seem the President would be conscious to undercut the living President. This in itself is very close to treason but on Scandal, treason only counted if the opposition did it. Grant had to be forced out of his hospital bed barely able to talk because Cyrus and Olivia had forced it.

Later on Sally Langston left the Vice Presidency to run as an independent, partly out of disgust with the administration, mainly because Cyrus refused to let anyone else share power. He spend much of Season 3 trying to get his husband to seduce hers to create a scandal making her politically toxic, something he felt no remorse for even when it ended with her husband dead.

Needing a replacement for reelection, Grant turned to his old friend and the current Governor of California Andrew Nichols (Jon Tenney). Immediately after Nichols was sworn in, he began manipulating events first to start a war and then to arrange for Olivia’s kidnapping to essentially force a coup. He was then drugged to make it look like he’d suffered a stroke, but he regained consciousness only for Olivia Pope to bash him to death with a chair. This led to the Grant administration for a third Vice President, someone harmless who wouldn’t get in the way of Mellie Grant running for President in her own right in the next election. (I’d say that’s the most absurd storyline yet on the show but that doesn’t come close.)

Meanwhile B613 was trying to manipulating the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to take Jake Ballard (Scott Foley) in a position so that he could be Vice President and then he and Rowan Pope could run the country together. (By this point Rowan Pope had been doing it behind the scenes for years, so you wonder why bother but there was never logic) At the end of the season, when he was being held captive, Olivia arranged for his rescue – so he could run as Mellie’s Vice President.

At this point we’ve gone into such absurdities that by the final season when Cyrus Beene, who had been the  Democratic Vice Presidential candidate became the real one under Mellie Grant (who’d lost the election but somehow became President; no explanation would pass muster) that it was a matter of time before he began manipulating things so he could become President. I know what John Nance Garner thought the Vice Presidency was worth, but in the world of Scandal apparently the question no one asks before they pick them is, if I’m elected do you promise not to plot a coup?

By these standards House of Cards seems less absurd, and at least it started in a more realistic place. During Season 1, Frank Underwood was trying to use Peter Russo to run for Governor of Pennsylvania in an off-year election. The Vice President was the previous governor and they needed to fill his slot. Underwood spent much of Season 1 planning to undermine Russo so that he could persuade the Vice President to resign and run for his old seat.

Unrealistic as that sounded, it had some basis in reality as the show pointed out: Aaron Burr did so to run for Governor of New York, and John C. Calhoun for the Senate. Underwood had done so in order for him to be named Vice President but that was part of the plan. Similarly while Underwood had his eyes set on becoming President himself, House of Cards did not show its hand immediately. Underwood spent all of Season 2 secretly working to undermine President Walker, and eventually managed to manipulate things so that he would be impeached. Even then, the show made it clear that events might turn against him. Walker knew what was being done and was working to manipulate him. Only a last-ditch ploy managed to save Underwood, position Walker to resign and put Underwood in the Presidency.

The problems started in Season 3 when Underwood began to run for election in his own right. They handled it well initially. Underwood spend much of Season 3 trying to use Jackie Sharp (Molly Parker) to run as a stalking horse in the Democratic primary. Underwood promised her the Vice Presidency if she did. However Sharp saw past the manipulations of Underwood and chose to end her candidacy before the primaries began. There were problems with Season 3; these weren’t one.

The larger problem came when the show decided that Frank Underwood’s running mate would be…Claire Underwood. In my mind, this was where the show jumped the shark. Mellie Grant was as ambitious as her husband, but not even Shonda Rhimes was willing to make her try to become President in as bald a way as this: she ran for Senator from Virginia and she had to campaign in the primaries to win the nomination in her own right. When your show is being less realistic than Scandal, it should have been time to take a look in the mirror but from what I understand House of Cards doubled and tripled down from that point on. I’m all in favor of female Presidents on TV but this was ludicrous.

Now that I’ve spent all this time arguing what Vice Presidents shouldn’t be, I’ll deal with how The West Wing demonstrated what a Vice President is. Because one of the things the show got right was how they illustrated the Vice President John Hoynes, played exquisitely by Tim Matheson in a role that earned him two Emmy nominations.

We would learn in Season 2 that John Hoynes had been the Senator from Texas and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1998. Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) had been his chief adviser and was incredibly frustrated by him. “You’re the front-runner for the Democratic nomination,” he tells Hoynes, “and I don’t know what were for. Except we seem to be for winning and against someone else winning.” Hoynes tries to put Josh at ease. Leo McGarry (John Spencer) manages to convince Josh to see Jed Bartlett, then governor of New Hampshire and running in single digits, campaign in Nashua. Josh tells him Hoynes is going to be the nominee. Leo convinces him to come – and Josh ends up signing on for Bartlet, and essentially putting together the plan that puts Bartlet in the White House. We later learn that Josh put Hoynes on the ticket for political purposes: they needed him to deliver the South and apparently he did that. But Hoynes has been resentful ever since

Hoynes is ambitious but unlike his followers in the decades to come, he is a realist and knows his success is tied to Bartlet’s. While he does occasionally want to step out of line, he doesn’t overreach. In the Season 2 opening after Bartlet has been shot and under anesthesia, there is a meeting of the Joint Chiefs. Hoynes is acting President but he sits in the same seat he’s always sat in. Leo, whose present, has to remind everyone to stand when Hoynes enters the room but Hoynes doesn’t fuss over it and quickly tells everyone to settle down. Hoynes doesn’t try to overreach and he is willing to go along with Leo.

Near the end of the second season Hoynes begins to make moves that seem to be running for President. No one realizes at the time that he is doing so because Bartlet has promised his wife that because of his MS, he was only going to serve one term. 15 people know Leo is one and Hoynes is the other. He was told of the President’s condition immediately after taking the Vice Presidency (something he knew before Leo did) When Toby realizes this (in the brilliant ’17 People’) Bartlet is enraged but he has to bury it.

In Season 3, as the campaign becomes more pronounced Bartlet and Hoynes have an argument in the Oval Office. “You outed me, John,” he says, blaming him for leaving bread crumbs. Hoynes is angry, but for a different reason: “I had to start running because no one told me I wasn’t.”

This is the critical difference between Hoynes and his successors. Hoynes wants to be President but because of the distance between him and the President, he is frequently left out of the loop. The West Wing makes it clear on multiple occasions how difficult the relationship between the two is but in Hoynes’ case, there is frustration and that is frequently held because of Leo. But Bartlet does respect Hoynes and he clearly wants him to be President. Even in the midst of this conflict, he tells Hoynes: “It’s not easy being my Vice President, is it?”

This is made clear in one of the best episodes in the series run: ‘Stirred’. Josh has held a campaign meeting with the strategists and he meets with the White House inner circle to tell them that there’s no electoral math that doesn’t make it work talking about dropping Hoynes from the ticket. Toby in particular is stunned because the word has been “if the President is elected, it will be on the Vice President’s coattails.” Josh points out that the Republican candidate for President Robert Ritchie of Florida is the kind of candidate that will make sure that the Dems lose Texas and Florida in November. The conversation that follows also considers the possibility that Hoynes, if dropped from the ticket, will run as a third-party candidate. When Josh points out if he does this his career will be over, CJ reminds him the same will be true if he is dropped from the ticket.

Hoynes does hear about this and he is surprisingly mellow about it. This comes at a time when he is becoming frustrated about his job. At one point he quotes Daniel Webster when he was offered the Vice Presidency: “I do not propose to be buried before I am dead.”  But he knows how the electoral math is going and that Bartlet may lose in November. But Bartlet stands by his vice President. He writes down his reason for sticking with Hoynes on a piece of paper and shows it to Leo and Hoynes. At the end of the episode Leo reveals it: “Because I could die.” There has rarely been a more full-throated defense of a fictional president of their vice president since.

(It is worth noting that, near the end of Season 4, Hoynes is involved in an extramarital affair and resigns from the Vice Presidency. However because much of that deals with The West Wing in the post-Sorkin era, I will let it go for the purpose of this article.)

The role of the Vice Presidency is usually an afterthought for most Presidential candidates. It should be discussed more seriously and in this year’s election I have little doubt it will be more prominent then most of them. Our perception of the Vice Presidency definitely needs to change. The West Wing by far has the most realistic idea of what a Vice President really is rather than what other shows seem to picture them. Hoynes’ relationship with Bartlet was complicated but he understood his place. He was never the kind of VP we saw on later shows where the only time they patted you on the back was because they were looking for where to stick the knife.