Jeopardy! fans do not miss a trick, so you better believe they immediately noticed a major error during Wednesday night’s episode. As host Mayim Bialik introduced the contestants at the start of the game, their final scores were visible on the screen before the competition even began. Essentially, the show revealed the winner before anyone even started playing.
Of course, eagle-eyed Jeopardy! fans noticed the flub and a clip of the editing error went viral on Twitter as viewers couldn’t believe what they just saw.
“The score display areas should be blank, but there are numbers there. And those are the final scores! Major editing glitch,” Philip Young tweeted.
#Jeopardy #glitch–final scores shown when Mayim Bialik introduces contestants–even before the first question. Check the podiums at the outset. The score display areas should be blank, but there are numbers there. And those are the final scores! Major editing glitch.
— Philip Young (@pmyoung11) March 9, 2023
“Wow, given that this was taped months or weeks ago, you’d think they’d actually proof-view it first before putting on air,” one user said.
Wow, given that this was taped months or weeks ago, you’d think they’d actually proof-view it first before putting on air.
— Jonathan (@Nobilis619) March 9, 2023
“I thought it was Thursday already and that I missed something when I noticed that,” another fan wrote. “But then I realized I didn’t sleep through the day and it was just an error.”
I thought it was Thursday already and that I missed something when I noticed that. But then I realized I didn’t sleep through the day and it was just an error.
— Turtle Small (@turtlesmall24) March 9, 2023
And things started getting ugly. “An inexcusable production error,” tweeted a disgruntled viewer.
An inexcusable production error.
— Amanda Rykoff is Pro-Abortion (@amandarykoff) March 9, 2023
Lilly then offered her own Jeopardy! experience to theorize what might have went wrong:
My guess is that they had to do a pickup on all/part of Mayim’s intro & recorded that at the end of the game but forgot to reset the screens. When I was in the audience for a taping last year, there was a late-game pickup where something like this could have happened. They had put up the [Final Jeopardy] dividers and cleared the contestant names from the screen for them to write their wagers, but then needed Ken to re-do something. So they had to clear the wagers, put the dividers back down, and have the contestants rewrite their names so they would appear correctly on the podiums in the shot. I assume it was just completely overlooked, but it’s also possible someone noticed the mistake but figured it didn’t matter as much since the “final” scores are only the first of a two-day total. Maybe they will address this on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast next week!
Lilly chimed in later with one other piece of info that could also explain the flub.
“They did mention on the podcast that the turnaround on these episodes was TIGHT, usually they tape about 2 months ahead but this tournament taped Jan 29/30/31, just 3 weeks before it started airing,” she wrote. “So the editing process may have been a bit more rushed than usual.”
(Via New York Post)