‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Tricks Alex Trebek With ‘SNL’ Homage
Most of us know Jeopardy! as a game where you have to make sure you add “What is or Who is” to the beginning of your answer. Sometimes the questions are insanely hard and you wonder how these contestants know the answers to these trivia questions. On Wednesday night a constant made everyone’s night when she didn’t know the answer to her Final Jeopardy question and instead tricked Alex Trebek.
During the Final Jeopardy round instead of answering aloud, the contestant has to write the answer down and then Trebek reads the answer aloud. After getting the question “This song from a 1999 animated film about censorship had a word censored from its Oscar performance,” Talia Lavin had no idea what the answer was and instead of writing something lame down she decided to write the best responses ever, “What is the love ballad of Turd Ferugson?”
If you don’t understand what the Turn Ferugson reference is, it’s from an SNL skit that featured Will Ferrell and Norm Macdonald, with Ferrell portraying Trebek and Macdonald playing Burt Reynolds who is constantly trying to get under Trebek’s skin.
https://youtu.be/jHFBltF44uo
Lavin talked to Today about her decision to throw the game and pay homage to SNL.
“I knew as soon as I had $600 going into Final Jeopardy that I wanted to make a joke, because I couldn’t win. But then I had 30 seconds to think of a joke and that was the one my brain came up with. I love [comedian] Norm Macdonald, so I’m pretty psyched that ‘SNLs’ best-ever skit is getting more exposure.”
Lavin continued to say that Trebek asked her about her answer and at first did not realize it was a joke from SNL but then Lavin explained it to him where Trebek replied “Oh, I haven’t watched them in awhile.”
Lavin filmed the episode of Jeopardy! about a month ago and had to keep the joke a secret which she found difficult but worth it.
“The internet is a beautiful, roiling, sometimes vicious, delightful, fickle playground of the id, and I’m glad I got to stand on the jungle gym and let out my barbaric yawp.”
[Image by Amanda Edwards/ Getty Images]
