This year’s been a long one for Ukrainians (and Russians) after Vladimir Putin decided to wage an imperialistic war. This move quickly backfired with Ukrainians (including grandmas) refusing to accept defeat and Russian army numbers dwindling to such a point that Putin called up hundreds of thousands of replacements, who are abandoning tanks after being told that there’s no medical care, sorry, and please bring tampons to treat your own bullet wounds. It’s no wonder that, along the way, we’ve heard mutterings about how Putin’s underlings were secretly maneuvering to install a successor, should he be found incapable of continuing to lead. And it sure sounds like they got closer to doing so this week while the world awaited fallout from the stray (mystery) missile that killed two people in Poland.
Previously, independent Russia news outlet Meduza had revealed that Putin’s henchmen were (via The Daily Beast) tiptoeing around with “an understanding, or a desire, that in the fairly foreseeable future he will not run the country.” Amid missile gate, Putin’s inner circle reportedly prepped themselves for imminent action to oust and replace the president at a moment’s notice. Also from The Daily Beast, it sounds like a relevant Telegram channel (apparently run by an ex-Russia security services member) detailed how high-ranking Russian security dudes consulted each other and plotted:
“Knowing Putin’s penchant for raising the stakes through escalation, … this group of security officials quickly became convinced that in response to a Russian strike on a country included in NATO there could be both a retaliatory strike and an ultimatum.”
So, according to the channel, they decided that “if the U.S. leadership and the adjoining countries show readiness for a harsh response, then the best way out would be to remove the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from power and create a collegial council of security officials to ‘temporarily’ take control of the country into their own hands … blaming all the problems on either a seriously ill or law-breaking president.”
As it turns out, there’s been no immediate action from Poland, the U.S., or NATO at large, so this could all be moot, at least until the next stray missile rolls out. Or when Putin officially runs out of Botox, which seems like only a matter of time, given that he’s tanked the Russian economy and earned pariah status for his country. But yeah, we have to have Botox jokes to cope with the enormity of this entire conflict. What a disaster.
In a move that will surprise absolutely no one given her MAGA credentials, Arizona gubernatorial candidate (and Todd from Breaking Bad fanatic) Kari Lake has refused to concede in her race against Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs. In a message to her supporters on Thursday, Lake promised/threatened that her legal team is carefully scrutinizing the results.
“Rest assured, I have assembled the best and brightest legal team and we are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” Lake said in the video. “I’m doing everything in my power to right these wrongs.”
Throughout her campaign, Lake has notably side-stepped questions about accepting election results. To make matters worse, she’s reportedly flown to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump who knows a thing or two about making a giant stink after losing an election. Via The Washington Post:
Kari Lake, who was projected Monday to lose her race for governor of Arizona, traveled Thursday to former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, according to two people familiar with the activity. One of the people said she received a standing ovation when she entered a luncheon hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded last year by Trump allies and former members of his administration. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private events.
Considering almost every Trump-backed candidate lost during the midterm elections, which has turned a significant swath of the Republican Party against him, the former president has a vested interest in seeing Lake win her election. However, the last time he tried to overturn election results, a throng of MAGA rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, so we should probably keep an eye on these two. Just to be safe.
For the last few days, much of the talk around the NFL has been about the weather expected in Buffalo as the Bills were set to host the Browns. A massive snowstorm is expected to sweep through the area off of Lake Erie starting on Thursday night, with some models projecting 2-4 feet of snow accumulation, along with strong winds in the area.
As such, there was concern from some about whether the game could be played in Orchard Park or if it would need to be moved (as has actually happened in the past in a Browns-Bills game), as playing a football game outside in a snowstorm can be difficult, to say the least. On Thursday, the league decided to proactively move the game to Detroit, with the Lions on the road at the Giants, where the Bills will play back-to-back games — as the home team against Cleveland and then again on Thanksgiving against the Lions.
Due to public safety concerns and out of an abundance of caution in light of the ongoing weather emergency in western New York, Sunday’s game against the Browns will be moved to Ford Field in Detroit.
The game will still be a 1 p.m. ET kickoff on CBS, but obviously is moving indoors at Ford Field in Detroit. While both teams play in the elements in their home stadiums, the Bills have a bit more experience with the specific unique weather of Buffalo, playing fairly regularly in snow and wind with a quarterback who feels those effects less than others in Josh Allen given his ability to run and also his preposterous arm strength. That won’t be a factor now in Detroit, where the Bills will spend a full week in a rare situation for NFL teams.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Thor is back once again and he brought some new friends with him. Natalie Portman, to be specific. Which is fun. This follow-up to the also-fun Ragnarok has made the move from theaters to streaming and into your living rooms. That’s another fun thing. It is almost unreasonable how good Chris Hemsworth is in these movies. You should not be allowed to look like that and be that funny. Someone should make a rule about it. Until then… watch it on Disney Plus.
If you’re missing Key & Peele, we have some good news for you. Multiple seasons of the Comedy Central series will arrive on Netflix in November, so you can get your Hingle McCringleberry on, right from the comfort of your living room. In the meantime, you can enjoy Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s voices (along with that of Angela Bassett) as they play plotting demons who tangle with a teen who digs punk rock. Watch it on Netflix.
Sorry to Mariah Carey but Lindsay Lohan is taking her place as the rightful queen of the holiday season this year. Her throne sits atop the bones of all the Hallmark movies she had to slaughter to get here and every Netflix Christmas flick that follows in her wake will shudder when those first few bars of “Jingle Bell Rock” begin to play. This is the future every millennial raised on The Parent Trap — and the Disney Channel Original movie Life-Size starring Tyra Banks — has manifested. In all seriousness though, this thing looks cute. Lohan plays a hotel heiress who, after a skiing accident, loses her memory and must live amongst the peasants of a snowy mountain town. While there she bonds with a sheriff/single-dad played by Glee’s Chord Overstreet and, presumably, realizes her former life wasn’t as picture perfect as she thought. Watch it on Netflix.
Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne star in a mostly fictionalized account of Charlie Cullen, a New Jersey nurse who was found responsible for dozens of murders of patients over a 16-year period. The star power is here and everyone seems to love semi-true stories about serial killers lately so there’s at least even money odds that this sucker takes off. Just don’t watch it before you have a doctor appointment. That would not be fun. Watch it on Netflix.
Jennifer Lawrence ended her mini-acting hiatus with last year’s Don’t Look Up, but she was part of an ensemble cast with other A-listers. The Oscar winner is front and center (along with Atlanta great Brian Tyree Henry) in A24’s Causeway as a soldier who struggles to adjust to her life after returning home to New Orleans. It’s the kind of movie that she hasn’t made since her breakout performance in Winter’s Bone — and it looks just as good. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Cringe-inducing festival appearances and celebrity break-ups heralded by salad dressing recipe sharing aside, Olivia Wilde’s second directorial effort is a very pretty, very fun watch. Most of that is because of Florence Pugh, who plays a young housewife slowly descending into madness once the cracks of her perfect suburban existence begin to show. The rest is thanks to an intriguing plot that keeps you guessing until the very end, a capable supporting cast (and yes, we count Harry Styles amongst them), and Chris Pine, who seems to be having the time of his life playing a suave pseudo-cult leader who favors unbuttoned shirts and misogynistic family hierarchies. Watch it on HBO Max.
Thank goodness Henry Cavill didn’t sign on to play Superman again before filming this sequel, or there’d be another The Witcher-esque switcheroo in the works. Cavill is back, but more importantly, Millie Bobbie Brown returns as the sassy younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. One of the bigger plot finds roots in the real-life Bryant & May match factory atrocities, but somehow, the overall mood stays light. Enola sets up her own detective shingle and goes undercover, so you can only imagine what hijinks will ensue. Watch it on Netflix.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, obviously. The fake biopic depicts the world’s premier polka-loving pop song parodist as a hard-drinking sex maniac, obviously. It also stars Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, obviously. Should you watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story this weekend on the Roku Channel? Obviously.
Amy Adams returns in her breakout role, but she’s a princess who actually isn’t having as much fun as she imagined would be the case. Giselle is still married to Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and they’re still searching for their fairy tale. Maya Rudolph climbs onboard for a semi-evil role as a villain of suburbia, and this is all very G-rated material again because c’mon, Disney. The story will be as charming as always, but the real attraction is James Marsden’s returning Idiot Prince. Basically, I just want the Idiot Prince to get plowed down at every opportunity again. Watch it on Disney Plus.
Ralphie is back, over 30 years later, and he’s returning to the hometown where everything went down the first time around. Is this pretty much just nostalgia bait? Sure. Did anyone really need to know what Ralphie is up to in 2022? Probably not. Are you going to watch it anyway and end up charmed by the whole thing, up to and including the part where they actually got Peter Billingsly to reprise his role from the original? Hmm. We bet you are. Watch it on HBO Max.
Apple TV+ is getting into the Christmas movie game with this musically inclined re-telling of that classic Dickens tales. Ryan Reynolds plays the modern-day Scrooge here, a guy named Clint Briggs who doesn’t take his holiday haunting lying down. Will Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present who’s determined to inject a bit of cheer into the proceedings no matter how many musical numbers and tap-dancing solos it takes. As far as Charles Dickens adaptations go, you could do a lot worse. Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Imagine if Lost took place on a transatlantic steamboat and you’ve got the gist of this mystery-drama. Made by the same twisted geniuses that gave us Netflix’s Dark series, this show follows a group of passengers hailing from all over Europe who find themselves stuck on a cursed ship bound for America. After the recent disappearance of another company ship months earlier, everyone on board is a bit on-edge and the tension only escalates when passengers start dying, weird time loops start popping up, and a boy who should be dead arrives with an ominous-looking pyramid that makes everything go haywire. Watch it on Netflix.
You’ve surely seen the 1990s movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst, and now, Anne Rice’s most popular gothic novel gets the small-screen adaptation. Great news: this version is better than the film for several reasons. Jacob Anderson of Game of Thrones gives us a very different Louis while Sam Reid swaggers about as Lestat de Lioncourt, and Claudia’s story gets expanded with Bailey Bass giving us a brazen and tragic performance and a secondary narrative framing device. The leading duo takes their sexual tension out of the closet, too, which adds a lot of layers (and fun) to this update. Watch it on AMC Plus.
Sylvester Stallone portrays a mafia capo who’s not swimming with the fishes. However, he might as well be on Mars in this Taylor Sheridan-created series that takes him to Route 66 and the land of the Golden Driller. Tulsa’s experiencing a hotspot-like effect these days in the midst of Reservation Dogs and following Watchmen, but it’s going to be quite pleasurable to see him as the O.G. who’s dropping a “nice little place you got here” in a weed dispensary. This show looks to be full of 1980s-style one-liners that could put the Sly and Arnold movies of yesteryear to shame. Watch it on Paramount Plus.
Emily Blunt can kick some butt even while wearing a ridiculous array of aristocratic-type dresses. That’s not the main highlight of this series, believe it or not. Rather, we’ve got a worthy Western story that pairs two well-matched contenders as they battle the nefarious forces that be. Cartoonish villains rear up in this parable, which tells a tale of power and destiny and what America does when it digs inside of one’s soul. Also, the show is stunning to look at and incredibly well-lit, unlike plenty of other movies and shows that will give you a squint-induced headache. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
How do you end a show the “right” way? Do you try to say something profound, pay off longtime viewers with fan service, or end with a shocking twist? For Dead To Me‘s just-released final season, the answer is an emphatic yes to all of the above as creator Liz Feldman delivers a triumphant close, leaning on the otherworldly onscreen chemistry of stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as they lead us through the twisty chaos of the show’s central story while dealing with heavy matters of life, family. love, and death before ending on high with a tear and a tease. Watch it on Netflix.
It’s easy to think of Mythic Quest, now in its fourth season, as Rob McElhenney’s “other” show, but that would be a mistake. Yes, sure, he’s best known for the incredibly long-running Always Sunny, which is fair because that show rules. But this one is great, too. It’s sweet and mean and funny and everything a workplace comedy — this time in a video game studio — should be. No television show did a better job of grasping the pandemic while it was still new and really scary, too. Do not miss this because you relegate it to second-tier Mac status. This is the good stuff, too. Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
Revenge dresses. Extramarital affairs. Royal yacht refurbishments. The Crown’s fifth season ramps up the melodrama to deliciously enjoyable levels as Elizabeth Debicki channels Princes Diana and Dominic West steps into Prince Charles’ (less desirable) shoes. Though the conflict between the couple spurs much of the action this season, there’s still room for Imelda Staunton (who plays Queen Elizabeth II this time around) and Lesley Manville (as Princess Margaret) to give some spectacular performances that ground the soap opera vibes a bit. If anything, this season draws a clear line between the supposed pros and very apparent cons of the British monarchy, showing how the fallout of their familial squabbles had very real consequences for their subjects. Watch it on Netflix.
George Lucas has frequently insisted that, like Wu-Tang Clan, Star Wars is for the children. But Andor sure looks like it’s geared more towards adults. The Rogue One prequel starring Diego Luna, reprising his role as Cassian Andor, is gritty, mature, and other words you use to describe movies and TV shows that aren’t messing around. And with this being the first Disney-era Star Wars show to be filmed in real-life locations, Andor isn’t messing around. Watch it on Disney Plus.
I hear what you’re thinking here. The title of this show doesn’t sound particularly fascinating. Maybe it even sounds a little bit pretentious. Yet this show’s actually a satiric little jaunt that turns marriage-divorce drama on its head. Jesse Eisenberg plays the dude whose wife, played by Claire Danes, leaves him and then quite literally leaves the building. He’s suddenly in the midst of parenting and awful dating experiences, and all of this wouldn’t be as fascinating if Eisenberg wasn’t so good at being awkward. He’s flanked by Lizzy Caplan and Adam Brody (there are worse companions out there) while trying to find his way. Watch it on Hulu.
The first season of Abbott Elementary was a feel-good network sitcom that caught a massive wave of popularity and won a bunch of Emmys in a time when feel-good network sitcoms are kind of not supposed to do that. Credit for this goes to creator and star Quinta Brunson, who realized that an underfunded inner-city public school was exactly the right place to show us people with good hearts working inside a system that can be cold. Kind of like Parks and Recreation but in Philadelphia. The second season is underway and does not appear to be missing a beat. This is basically a miracle, all around. Watch it on Hulu.
The first season of The White Lotus took the world and the internet by storm with its combination of misery and drama and beautiful Hawaiian scenery. Season two takes the action to a new resort in the White Lotus chain, this one in Italy, and replaces almost the entire cast. “Almost” being the key word here because Jennifer Coolidge is back as Tanya. Which is good. More shows should be about Jennifer Coolidge going to fancy hotels around the world. This is a nice start. Watch it on HBO Max.
So you know how Sony has been making movies about Spider-Man characters like Venom and Morbius, but they don’t actually have Spider-Man in them due to a convoluted rights-sharing agreement with Marvel? Well, surprise! Sony is bringing that whole mess to streaming.
Starting with the new live-action series, Silk: Spider Society, Amazon will become the new home for the confusingly expanding Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which again, does not actually have Spider-Man in it. (For now.) The series will feature Marvel Comics character Cindy Moon, a classmate of Peter Parker who also got bitten by the same radioactive spider and became the similarly spider-powered hero, Silk. Angela Kang (The Walking Dead) will act as showrunner with Chris Miller and Phil Lord (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) executive producing. Still with us? Okay. Great.
“We can’t wait to bring the adventures of Cindy Moon to life, thanks to the creative dream team of Chris and Phil, Angela and Amy, along with our partners at Marvel and Amazon,” said Katherine Pope, president of Sony Pictures Television Studios. “We know this exciting series with new and never-before-seen characters and storylines will wow audiences watching first on linear MGM+ and then around the world on Prime Video.”
Oh yeah, that’s right. Before the live-action Silk series hits Amazon, it will first premiere on MGM+, which is apparently a thing that exists. Although, in fairness, that additional step does add an extra layer of confusion to the whole process, which is entirely on brand for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe that does not have Spider-Man in it.
As Taylor Swift fans curse out Ticketmaster, let’s take a moment to appreciate a service (mostly) working like it’s supposed to. House of the Dragon was a hit, with viewership in the tens of millions, but HBO’s streaming service HBO Max held up pretty dang well with the traffic surges on Sunday nights. It took months of tests to get there.
“Preparation for something as big as House of the Dragon starts like six months before,” Avi Saxena, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Chief Technology Officer, told The Streamable. “We do a lot of events on our platforms, like the Olympics in Europe, and every time we have a very big tentpole event, we start like six months before to make sure the teams and the platform are ready for it.”
To make sure HBO Max wouldn’t crash with every new episode of House of the Dragon, a team was assembled (I’m picturing dragons in glasses and lab coats). The “special operation” was called the “Project House of the Dragon Reliability,” or “Project HODR,” which Saxena called “appropriate for the project. I think these project code names are very important to get the teams excited to rally behind the project.” It’s a fitting name, even if it brings back a flood of emotions, but, I would have gone with Operation HotD.
From there, they turn their attention to making sure that their systems are able to handle the volume of viewers that will be tuning in on a weekly basis. “Load testing basically creates the simulated load on our services,” Saxena said. “Every time you run load [testing], you identify a bottleneck, [or something that] did not work. We go back, fix that, rerun it… And this exercise continues until we successfully run the test end-to-end for all the services.”
If that’s too much techno-babble for you, maybe this will help:
Watching someone dance usually means watching their legs and feet move in creative, graceful or rhythmic ways. Dance steps are called dance steps for a reason, after all.
But for nearly 75 years, Russia’s Berezka dancers have delighted audiences with their dance skills without anyone catching so much as a glimpse of their legs or feet. Berezka dancers’ dance steps are clearly impressive when you see what they do with them, but no one gets to see the steps themselves.
How can that be?
Berezka dancers’ floor-length dresses (called sarafans, the traditional female dress of the Russian peasant class, according to ARTpublika Magazine) hide what their feet are doing as they seem to “float” around on the stage. But make no mistake, they really are moving their feet themselves, without the use of wheels or treadmills or hoverboards or whatever else it might look like they’re using.
You’d be forgiven for not believing it, because check out what they look like in unison:
u201cIn the Russian dance Berezka, women move with short steps, so short that they look like they’re floating.u201d
The original choreographer of the “floating step,” Nadezhda Nadezhdina, described the method to The New York Times in 1972. “You have to move in very small steps on the very low half-toe with the body held in a certain corresponding position.” It is apparently very difficult to perfect.
If you prefer to keep the floating dance steps a mystery, stop here, but if you want to see a tutorial showing how these dancers manage to move around the stage without their heads bobbing so much as an inch, this tutorial shows what their feet are doing. (Skip to minute 4:20 to see her doing the steps quickly.)
Here’s the problem with starting an argument with someone who’s clearly wrong. People with opinions that are not based on facts or logic have trouble with critical thinking, which also makes having a discussion with them terribly tricky because they don’t know the rules of engagement.
The first step to avoiding these situations is not having an argument. But if you have to settle a disagreement, it’s best to frame it as a discussion instead of an argument. The difference? “A discussion is a respectful exchange of information. An argument is a coercive attempt to be acknowledged as right or smart or sensitive,” Steven Stosny, Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today.
“In arguments, we invalidate feelings and undermine perspectives. In discussions, we validate feelings and expand perspectives,” Dr. Stosny continues.
One of the keys to having a good discussion is to listen to the other person and ask plenty of questions. This makes the other person feel heard and more likely for the two of you to find common ground. It can also reveal how much they know about the topic at hand.
But if you wind up getting into an argument, there are some telltale signs that you won the debate because the other person has been thrown from their facts and talking points and has to save face. A Reddit user by the name ViForYourAttention asked the forum, “What statement screams ‘I just lost the argument’? And they received a ton of great tactics and sayings that people turn to as a last resort.
The discussion wasn’t just full of great “gotcha” moments but a frank discussion on how to have an honest debate by learning to spot cheap tricks and personal attacks.
Here are 17 statements that scream, “I lost the argument.”
1.
“Pointing out a small discrepancy in an otherwise factual statement and pretending that invalidates their whole argument. ‘I saw you get in a blue car and drive off with your secret lover when you said you were going for a walk.’ ‘You’re completely wrong. It was a blue SUV, and I did go for a walk after.'” — jiyida8112
2.
“As soon as someone shifts the goalposts. It is important to be able to identify this. It is also important to know the difference between this and someone wording their initial argument poorly. … But in general shifting goalposts means that they were losing an argument because of a unstable basis, so they’ll shift their previously dogmatic basis to something more broad or they’ll change their entire opinion midway through a conversation. The way to combat it is simply to always keep in mind the original intent of the conversation. Know what the initial claims were and move on from there always keeping those in mind.” — Sovreign_grounds
3.
“I concede.” — Southern_Snowshoe
4.
“You spelled ‘x’ the wrong way.” — GustavoAlex7789
5.
“I know you r but what am I?” — MineDamnBrain
6.
“Any personal insult. As soon as you comment on the person and not the topic, you’ve lost.” — Aunt_Anne
7.
“[The moment someone says] ‘I don’t even care’ or ‘this is dumb.”‘ — KarlaKaress
XXXSimply unstable added:
“‘Whatever’ or ‘I’m over it’ or both combined into ‘Whatever, I’m over it!'”
8.
“You just lost a customer.” — Sucros
9.
“When my husband sits there with that look on his face. That look that says he is waiting for me to put together some obvious pieces that I missed. I always find those pieces eventually. And then I concede, with an air of torture because he’s always right. Always! As soon as I see that look, I lost.” — gecepix937
10.
“Saying something completely irrelevant to the argument that they found on your post/comment history.” — PM_ME_UR_FEET_69
11.
“‘Oh yeah? Well, I know someone else who thought that way. Adolf Hitler!'” — hawt_pawket
12.
“Do your research.” — Orenge01
13.
“‘You always have to get the last word.’ A statement made exclusively by people who are trying to have the last word, but are out of points.” — ScruffyTuscaloosa
14.
“‘I’m not talking about it anymore!’ Yeah, because you know youre making absolutely no sense.” — WRA1THLORD
15.
“Bringing up an entirely different topic. Whataboutism as they say.” — TDeath21
16.
“When they start projecting. For example, they start accusing you of something that they’re doing – like being bigoted. Or they start threatening to report or block you even though they’re in the wrong.” — HyperDogOwner458
Jeopardy! is a world where there are right and wrong answers. In a reality full of misinformation and denials of the truth, you either answer correctly or incorrectly with the occasional clarification from the judges. The folks behind Jeopardy! work incredibly hard to make that the case with lots of research and debating how questions are phrased, but it doesn’t mean that things won’t fall through the cracks. And in Wednesday’s episode, the Final Jeopardy question left some fans claiming the show got it wrong.
The Jeopardy! Tournament Of Champions has featured some impressive play from Amy Schneider, Andrew He and Sam Buttrey. Tuesday’s episode featured a comeback for Schneider in Final Jeopardy, a tough question no player actually got right. And Wednesday’s episode featured another comeback, with Schneider faltering on a Daily Double in the second Jeopardy! round and He betting big to take a lead he lost before the last question.
That question was about a Jeopardy! mainstay: the bible. But it involved a question some New Testament scholars say doesn’t have a clear answer.
“Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations,” the question read.
But!
As CNN detailed, the answer got a number of scholars talking about the question on Twitter, and there’s been plenty of formal discussion about the subject in the past.
All of the answers refer to books in the Bible that are collections of epistles, or letters, ostensibly from Jesus’ apostle Paul to different groups in the formative days of the Christian church. However, experts have varying opinions on whether Paul actually wrote the letter to the Hebrews – and thus, whether the answer was actually correct. In fact, there are bitter divisions among different schools of Christian thought regarding Paul’s Biblical influence and authorship.
Many “Jeopardy!” viewers thought Buttrey’s answer should have been the correct one, since scholars generally agree Paul was the author of the book of Romans.
Both Buttrey and He’s answers were deemed incorrect on Wednesday, with a big bet from the former making He the champion for the day. But as many scholars weighed in online, a different ruling would have given Buttrey his first win of the tournament and evened the matches at one win apiece.
When you need to study theology to answer Jeopardy…
The challenge: Hebrews has the most OT quotes of any NT letter; it was historically attributed to Paul; but today most argue he didn’t write it based mainly on internal evidence. (Romans is right if Paul didn’t write Hebrews.) https://t.co/iBf5Y1jSSL
So far, however, there’s been no correction from the Jeopardy! crew. And since the tournament has been pre-taped, the results are unlikely to change. But it’s certainly giving biblical scholars something to talk about this week, which is always fun.
You can watch the full highlights for Game 3 of the Tournament of Champions — including the final controversial question — above.
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