Celebrity Joepardy!

This skit used to appear regularly on Saturday Night Live in the late nineties, as a parody of the popular game show, which used to have a celebrity-only game every once in a while where the questions were noticeably easier. SNL, which airs on NBC at 11:30pm on Saturday evenings, appeals mostly to young people would could probably recognize the celebrities being parodied. This assumption is vital, because the skit is much funnier when you know who is being imitated, and how good the imitation is. If you are familiar with the celebrity, and the characters they often play, then the jokes get so much funnier.

Each installment of the recurring sketch has Will Ferrel playing an exasperated Alex Trebek, and various other cast members and hosts as the three contestants. The skit got really popular when Darrell Hammond came on as a very rude Sean Connery, driving Trebek up a wall. The sketch critiques the modern celebrity, ridiculing them for their lack of intellect. The contestants rarely, if ever, get the questions right, even though most children could answer correctly.

This example comes from an October, 1998 episode where the contestants are Tom Cruise (payed by Ben Stiller), Adam Sandler (Jmmy Fallon) and Sean Connery (Hammond).



"Celebrity Jeopardy! Cruise, Sandler, and Connery." Saturday Night Live. Host Ben Stiller. National Broadcasting Company. 24 October 1998. 27 March 2009.