- Jeopardy Productions, Inc.
- Our hero, Julia Collins
Last week was a demoralizing week in television.
As for her Jeopardy! run, she’s second only to Ken Jennings in number of consecutive wins; Jennings won an obscene 74 games back in ’04. Her take, $428,100, makes her the third-winningest contestant of all time. And there aren’t any statistics I can quote, but it’s my unscientific opinion that she’s also the number one least smug multigame winner in Jeopardy! history. I mean, we regular viewers recently witnessed Ken Jennings, Roger Craig, and Brad Rutter share the stage during the Battle of the Decades, so we know from smug. She was like the anti-Arthur Chu. In her 21st game, Collins went into the Final Jeopardy round in second place, which had become extremely rare—her wins were very often runaways—and then botched a question about John Irving winning an Oscar for adapting his own book (The Cider House Rules), and that was that.
I kinda get what a “supply chain specialist” is now.It has to do with the making of things, the buying of things, and getting things where they need to go, which I suppose I could’ve deduced.
Her experience of Alex is basically our experience of Alex.I thought I was in for some real dirt when I asked Julia what Alex was like and she replied, “Alex. He’s, um—how can I say this . . . ” Really, she didn’t have much to say, because the amount of interaction between the host and contestants that we see on camera—the post-first-commercial-break interviews, the handshakes after the game, the during-the-credits conversation—is really the extent of their interaction. “I think he’s very good at his job. You don’t get personal with him, he’s very professional, and he’s really good at putting the contestant at ease. I have nothing but good things to say about him.” I really wanted dirt.
