So I found a way to watch the J! premiere…on Tuesday. Why has it taken until Friday in the middle of the night for me to make the post about it? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that it involved being very busy. And possibly some kittens?
Basically, apologies for my delay in getting a recap up, but here we are. I took copious notes (yay for being able to pause!), and kept my Coryat for the first time, but it being two days since I saw the episode, said notes have become a bit incomprehensible. But just a bit. Anyways…here we go. This might be a bit crazy. 🙂
The season kicked off with a bit of a different entrance by Alex…he bypassed the sliding glass doors and instead walked out with…a cast, if I remember right. It was a nice gesture for him to thank those who had sent him well-wishes after his incident in San Francisco.
The first contestants of the new season were (sorry I don’t have pictures like Jeanie often does):
- Jane Stimpson, a reference librarian from League City, TX.
- Glenn Edwards, an attorney from New York, NY.
- Our returning champion Justin Sausville, a urologist from Baltimore, MD, with a 2-day total of $58,401 in winnings.
Justin started things off by selecting “Who’s Biblically Speaking” for $200. Glenn grabbed the first money of the game by correctly responding with John the Baptist. I got that clue as well…but the rest of the category was a trainwreck for me. I thought I knew the Bible, but my 3 clams and 1 neg for the other 4 clues in the row say otherwise…
It didn’t take long for Justin to chime in, however, as he got the very next clue, “Americans In Paris,” also for $200. (Woodrow Wilson was the correct response.) Jane also got a chance to shine before the first commercial break, getting the top 2 clues in the category “From ‘B’ to ‘Y'” correct. At the commercial break, Justin had $2200, Glenn was leading with $4200, and Jane had $600.
The interviews were certainly, well, interesting…Jane talked about some weird foods she’s eaten, one of them being fish ovaries from Spain. (Alex quipped, “Are you married?” Jane let it be known that she isn’t.) Glenn has sung with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus for the past 15 years (a random personal connection…I believe we sang a great arrangement of “I Saw Three Ships” at BYU [in our own Men’s Chorus] a few years ago that was commissioned for the group Glenn is in), and Justin has once dressed in drag, for a ‘pageant’ to raise money for the American Cancer Society. (He won. :))
After the interviews, I picked up a clue that ended up being a triple stumper (“Americans In Paris” for $1000; the correct response was Isadora Duncan), and ended up sweeping the category. (I didn’t do so well in one of the next categories, “Nobel Prize Categories By Winner,” though. 1/5…ouch.) Glenn found the first Daily Double of the game in the second-to-last clue of the round…the category was “Friends with Benefits” (Alex’s warning during the category reveals: “Be careful…it may not be what you think it is.” :)) and the clue was: “‘My friend…told me that he wanted help before’ this country ‘died,’ George Harrison sang in 1971; he had a benefit for it.” Glenn answered correctly with Bangladesh, and picked up $1000. At the end of the round, the scores sat at $5600 each for both Justin and Glenn, and a healthy $2800 for Jane.
And holy wow, this is getting long. I’ll try to keep it simple (but most likely will fail miserably, judging from past experiences). Jane opened the round by knowing that Macbeth ruled Scotland (or space, depending on which version you’ve seen) in the “The Country He Ruled” category for $400, and Justin followed up with the $800 clue, which asked about Haile Selassie’s rule of Ethiopia. (This was yet another brutal 1/5 category for me at home. I said Spain for the $1600 clue, which asked about King Umberto I of Italy.) Justin got into a bit of trouble on the last clue of the category…he thought Canute IV ruled England, but it turns out Canute I did so (along with Denmark), and Canute IV actually ruled Denmark exclusively. (Gotta keep your Canutes straight, I guess.)
The “It’s A Dogfight” category was very informative for me…now I know that the first jet engine dogfight occurred in 1950, and my notes for the $2000 clue read, “So THAT’S ‘six o’clock.'” (Hey, I’m not very familiar with airplane positions. It happens to the best of us?) Also, it kept sounding like Justin was pronouncing dogfight as “dohg-fight.” Hmmm. The next category, “Friends With Benefits” (this time about insurance benefits, and also not about…well, y’know), held the first Daily Double of the round. Justin lost $4000 on this seemingly easy clue that ended up having a strange outcome: “Matt’s employer lets him choose among various benefits; it’s this type of plan, like his favorite eating spot.” Both Justin and I answered “a la carte plan” (isn’t that a common term?), but it turns out the correct response according to the judges was “cafeteria plan.” I’ve quite honestly never heard the latter term, so that surprised me.
The second DD belonged to Jane, in the category “Word & Phrase Origins”: “This type of victory in which losses are ruinous is named for a cousin of Alexander the Great.” I didn’t know this one, but Jane did (it was “Pyrrhic victory,” which just took about 10 tries for me to properly type) and gained $3600 to move up to $10000. (Her surprised reaction to pulling the response out of thin air was charming: “Oh, OK. Awesome!”) A few clues later in the “Film Alias” category, I had no idea Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies was actually named Dougie Powers, and the players had no idea either, I guess, because it ended up being a triple stumper. (I’ve only seen the first movie, though, so I guess I have a small excuse.) Before they could finish the category, they went through Hispanic-American Firsts (Alex had a small slip-up and said Oscar Chavez instead of Cesar Chavez for the $400 clue, before catching himself), which, as a proud Hispanic-American, I’m glad to say I didn’t completely embarrass myself on. Going back to film aliases, though, wasn’t as smooth…the only clue I ended up getting in the category was about “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which I knew even though I haven’t seen the film in question. Jane answered the final clue, about Keyser Soze of “The Usual Suspects” (there was a bit of talk on the J! board about how she pronounced it a bit incorrectly, and it was surprising the judges didn’t overturn her correct response), to make things heading into Final Jeopardy! $9200, $14000, and $13600 for Justin, Glenn, and Jane respectively.
The Final Jeopardy! category was “American Writers,” and the clue went as follows: “In the 1840s, he wrote, ‘I can ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” This one had me stumped (all my mind was going to was Alexis de Tocqueville, who was neither strictly American nor strictly a writer), and eventually I went with a WAG of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Henry David Thoreau was the correct response, and the reveal of Justin getting it right was a head-slapper. He wagered a somewhat non-strategic amount (all his money but a dollar), but it paid off for him in the end, as both Jane and Glenn answered incorrectly (Jane said Jacob Riis, while Glenn went for Walt Whitman), and wagered $10400 and $13000 respectively. (Glenn was shaking his head throughout the FJ! reveal, Alex said.) That made Justin a 3-day champion with $78,600 to his name. Can he continue his streak? Well, I guess you’ve already seen if he has or not. (And I have too…while I went to the look at the J! Archive to refresh my memory on some things, I saw the player listings for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Oops.)
Sorry this was such a long post…I guess it’s to make up for all the time I missed? Sure, let’s go with that. The next postings will probably be shorter, if I can help it. (Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s are so short, you can’t even see them! :)) To close, my inaugural Coryat score, along with the Coryats for the three players on Monday (thank you for always diligently posting them, J! Archivists):
9-19-11: Justin Sausville $13200 Glenn Edwards $13800 Jane Stimpson $12000 Me $11200
See you soon with some more substitute posting.