Jeopardy! producers apologized for a significant editing error that spoiled the end of the March 8 episode at the beginning. During the introduction, a shot of the three High School Reunion Tournament finalists revealed the results of the episode too early. Executive producer Michael Davies said they forgot to reset the contestants’ podiums when they re-shot Bialik’s introductions.
At the start of the March 8 episode, Bialik introduced students Justin Bolsen, Maya Wright, and Jackson Jones, congratulating them for reaching the final episode of the tournament. When the camera cut to show the contestants, their scores were on their podiums. Those scores matched their totals at the end of the episode. It was a blick-and-you’ll-miss-it snafu, savvy Jeopardy! fans caught it and were shocked to see such a mistake make it to the broadcast.
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“Right off the bat, apologies to the entire audience, we totally blew it at the top of the show,” Davies said in the latest episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, via CinemaBlend. “We made a horrible error, where we revealed the final scores at the end in the opening cutaway shot during Mayim’s monologue. It’s a series of errors that it’s somehow remarkable that they all happened.”
Davies’ team decided to re-shoot Bialik’s introductions, but he could not remember the specific reason why. When they went to do that, the contestants’ podiums were not reset. The mistake even made it past post-production and quality control.
“Of course, it should be standard procedure – and it is supposed to be standard procedure – that we take the scores on the podiums back to the original level, but it didn’t happen,” Davies explained. “This was then not caught in [post-production], and it was not caught in the final [quality control]. There are so many elements that should check this. We have now put in place a new series of protocols that will prevent this from happening again.”
The error could have been much worse if it happened during a traditional show. Instead, the March 8 episode was just the first part of a two-part tournament final, so the scores shown at the top of the show were not the results of the entire event. In the end, Bolsen made a comeback and won the $100,000 tournament prize after finishing in second during the first night.
While the producers are to blame for the March 8 mistake, they certainly aren’t the ones to blame for a bizarre occurrence during the March 2 episode. The contestants showed how unfamiliar they were with sports when all three missed every clue in the “In The Sport” category. After the contestants couldn’t remember that baseball is a sport with the terms “inherited runners,” “appeal play,” and “pickoff,” one contestant quipped, “The Internet’s gonna love that.”
