Mayim Bialik Wants the ‘Jeopardy!’ Job. Is She ‘Neutral’ Enough?
The New York Times
Alex Trebek projected impartiality. Bialik has questioned vaccines, endorsed a disputed brain supplement and weighed in on hot-button issues.
After the succession debacle at “Jeopardy!” turned one of television’s most respected game shows into a punchline on late-night talk shows and at the Emmy Awards, Mayim Bialik took over as a temporary host this season with a simple goal: not to draw too much attention to herself.
Her job, as she sees it, is to simply deliver the clues, and she has been favoring subdued colors like navy blue over the electric-pink she wore last season. “I didn’t want to be distracting — like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s that lady!’” Bialik said in a recent interview. “I think a lot about ‘Jeopardy!’ just needs to be very neutral to pleasant.”
Neutral to pleasant: It’s a fitting phrase for “Jeopardy!,” a staid television staple. But the show’s efforts to find a successor to Alex Trebek, the beloved host who died last year, have hardly been either. In August it announced Mike Richards would get the post and that Bialik would lead prime time specials. Then the Richards appointment imploded over a series of offensive comments he had made on a podcast. Now Bialik has stepped in as an interim host, while making it clear that she would like the top job permanently.
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