LeVar Burton’s Cheery, Innocuous Friday AM Tweet Took On A Whole New Meaning After The Mike Richards Resignation Announcement

Mike Richards’ run as new Jeopardy! host is over as quickly as it began. In a surprise move, the embattled executive producer abruptly stepped down on Friday morning, days after his history of troubling remarks surfaced in a lengthy report from The Ringer’s Claire McNear. Add that to what was already known about Richards’ controversial past as a game-show producer, and Sony had a nightmare on its hands.

Well, Richards is out, and the search for a new replacement-for-the-replacement is undoubtedly in process. There’s no word on whether this will affect Mayim Bialik’s role as host of Jeopardy! prime time incarnation and spinoffs (probably not?), but one should expect renewed calls for LeVar Burton to receive additional consideration (and a more optimal guest-host slot, hopefully) after still riding high in fan polls. And speaking of LeVar Burton, look at what he tweeted around the same time that the Richards resignation news broke: “Happy Friday, y’all!”

That’s everything that one would expect from the Reading Rainbow host, even though part of everyone would want this tweet to mean a whole lot more. Admit it, you want to see LeVar drop some shade, too, but alas, this was not what happened. As Whitney McIntosh pointed out on Twitter, this a LeVar Burton tweet that pretty much happens every Friday. The man loves his weekends!

Fingers are still crossed for Burton to tweet something about Richards’ resignation, though. And maybe we’ll also see something from Laura Coates, the Black female attorney that beloved longtime host Alex Trebek once namedropped as someone who he’d like to see as his potential replacement. And the hosting fiasco continues!

UPDATE – 11:55 EST: Judging from this tweet that LeVar “liked,” he’s got a little fire in him, for sure.