Mayim Bialik Is Going To Take Over Jeopardy And Fans Are Furious
Mayim Bialik will be hosting Jeopardy! starting May 1 until the end of the season.
If you prefer Ken Jennings over Mayim Bialik as the host of Jeopardy!, you might be disappointed with the upcoming hosting schedule. TV Insider reported that producer Sarah Foss appeared on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, where she revealed that Jennings will be returning to host from March 10 until the end of April, and Bialik will be hosting the rest of the season. The Twitter hive is pretty riled up about the hosting news, and they have plenty of thoughts:
Some users don’t like Mayim Bialik as host so much that they feel like they’re being punished by the Jeopardy! producers. While it’s probably just more of a scheduling issue than anything, the people have spoken, and they prefer Jennings in the role. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that these users are feeling upset.
If you don’t tune into the long-running quiz show on a regular basis, you might wonder why fans are so upset with Mayim Bialik hosting Jeopardy!. While some viewers seem just to prefer Jenning as host, others have specific reasons for not being a fan of Bialik. Primarily, the big sticking point seems to be the pauses she takes after a contestant answers a question:
Apparently, the pausing accusations have been going on for a while. People definitely seem to be irritated that Mayim Bialik doesn’t confirm if the answer is correct or incorrect right away on Jeopardy! It has definitely been part of the fan discourse for a while:
The main issue people seem to have with Mayim Bialik’s hosting style is that it breaks up the flow and cadence of Jeopardy!, saying that it’s much smoother when Ken Jennings is hosting. Jeopardy! is a fairly zippy show, so it makes sense that people might not like it being slowed down when they’re trying to figure out if a question is right or wrong. However, it does seem like this would be an easy fix, so maybe it’s something that will change as Bialik gets some more experience under her belt.
In any case, it does seem like the co-hosting situation is going to be permanent, so people are just going to have to get used to it, or else they’ll have to keep going to Twitter and complaining into the void. At the very least, some of the fans have some solutions that they think would work better to fix the issue. For instance, this user suggests that Ken Jennings handles the main syndication version of the show and Mayim Bialik steps in for the Jeopardy! primetime hour-long episodes:
Mayim Bialik, along with being a neuroscientist in real life, is best known for her role in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. After long-running Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek passed away, the hosting situation was in flux with a revolving door of guest hosts until the network settled on a permanent replacement. Eventually, it was decided that Bialik and Jennings would be the permanent replacements and would swap hosting duties on an ongoing basis.
Mayim Bialik is currently hosting the Jeopardy! High School Reunion Tournament. You can see Ken Jennings return to host on March 10. Bialik will be back to host on May 1.
