Nobody had a better tweet than LeVar Burton as word spread on Friday that Mike Richards is stepping down as Jeopardy! host. His typical Friday greeting was short enough to fit on the little monitor for Final Jeopardy without resorting to small print.
In a move no one predicted, the search to replace a beloved evening game show host has taken on the drama of a daytime soap. After a string of highly publicized guest spots, the program’s executive producer, Mike Richards, decided, in a Dick Cheney-looking-for-W.’s-VP-fashion, that the best fella for the gig was, in fact, himself.
The choice was a dagger to the heart for all who championed Burton, the television and education hero who had to self-generate an opportunity to get a test run to begin with. But recent reportorial digging unearthed that Richards was involved in multiple past bias lawsuits. Additionally, on the outer rim of the internet, where nothing ever dies, there existed a podcast called, we kid you not, The Randumb Show. In 2013 and 2014, Richards cracked a number of gross jokes on this show, the likes of which would never be heard from someone as kind and sophisticated as Alex Trebek. In the face of all this, Richards handed in his microphone.
The question (or the answer?) we have now is: who gets to host the show? The New York Times reports that Mayim Bialik will keep her sidekick role and not ascend to the podium. Notably, the now-shamed Richards will stay on as executive producer as the search continues for someone to anchor the show.
While Burton, the Roots, Star Trek, and Reading Rainbow star ranked at the top of a viewer poll (16 percent favored him for the job as opposed to Richards’s three), Newsweek reports that Burton’s test stint was, alas, the lowest-rated of all the 16 guest hosts.
However, there could have been other factors at play. Burton’s week (July 26 through 30) coincided with the Tokyo Olympics, which “had a ruinous effect on syndicated shows across the board,” as Newsweek put it. Meanwhile, last week, Ava DuVernay tweeted that she was daydreaming about creating a show for Burton to host and turn into “an international hit.” Burton responded that she should check her DMs. If anyone can engineer this into a win, it’s LeVar Burton.
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