Mayim Bialik Blamed For Jeopardy! Error That Ruined Episode
Jeopardy! executive producer Michael Davies said that Mayim Bialik had to reshoot her opening monologue, which was why the recent Jeopardy! screw up where the game's ending scores were shown at the beginning of the episode happened.
Did a flubbed line from Mayim Bialik ruin the Jeopardy! High School Reunion Tournament? That’s what Jeopardy! executive producer Michael Davies eluded to in a recent episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast. Davies said that the brief shot of the contestants’ final scores in the beginning minutes of the episode was the result of reshooting Bialik’s opening monologue.
Mayim Bialik started a recent episode of Jeopardy! with a typical monologue explaining the amount of money up for grabs. Suddenly the screen briefly cut to the show’s three contestants and what looked like their final scores. When viewers got to the end of the episode, and the contestants had won the same amount from the start of the show, they weren’t happy.
While Davies didn’t throw Mayim Bialik directly under the bus, he definitely pushed The Big Bang Theory star in front of it. The exec went on Inside Jeopardy! to do damage control and blamed the snafu on reshoots. Davies said reshoots are usually the result of incorrect facts or performance issues hinting that Mayim Bialik as the Jeopardy! host of the episode said or did something wrong at the beginning of the show.
To be fair, Davies put most of the blame on editors and other behind the scene personnel that should have caught the mistake before the episode aired. “This was then not caught in post [production]; it was not caught in the final QC [quality control]… there are so many elements that should check this,” admitted Davies. Indeed, it’s standard Jeopardy! procedure for the scores to be digitally erased during reshoots which somebody clearly forgot to do.
However, there wouldn’t have been anything to reshoot if Mayim Bialik hadn’t screwed something on Jeopardy! up to begin with. Unless Jeopardy! releases a blooper reel from the episode, fans will never know what caused the reshoot. Davies, for his part, isn’t really interested in placing blame as much as he just wants to prevent the mistake from happening again.
“We have now put in place a new series of protocols that will prevent this from happening again.” the gameshow exec explained on the podcast. Davies also said that any punishment he could devise would be nothing compared to the grief everyone involved puts themself through when there’s a mistake of this magnitude. The producer compared it to “self-flagellation,” the act of whipping oneself to atone for sins, either real or perceived.
While no Jeopardy! fan wants Davies and Co. to go that far the new protocols–whatever they may be–will be a welcome addition to the show’s production. Myam Bialik is bound to flub another line on Jeopardy! somewhere down the road, she’s only human, after all. Luckily these new measures will keep minor screw-ups from becoming game spoilers.
Meanwhile, the (alleged) Mayim Bialik Jeopardy! mistake was on the first night of a two-night competition, meaning that the real final score wasn’t spoiled for viewers after all. Still, there is a lot of Jeopardy! watchers that enjoy playing along with the show while they watch. Seeing the final results so early most likely put them off doing so with that particular episode.
For that, Michael Davies apologizes.
