Double Jeopardy

Recently I watched an episode of “Cheers” in which Cliff competes on the game show “Jeopardy” and I realized that he is one of three sitcom characters I know of who have been on that game show or attempted to be on.   The others are Dorothy from “Golden Girls” and Fran from “The Nanny”.  There may be more instances of this in shows I have not seen but these are the three examples I am familiar with.  They all enter for different reasons Dorothy is obsessed with the show and wants to prove how smart she is Cliff knows a lot of trivia and Fran is the victim of a bet that is making fun of her for being dumb.  It’s somewhat ironic that Fran does the best of all of them, she winds up winning because of well timed questions about her favorite subjects of food and Barbra Streisand movies.  Dorothy takes the entry test and does well but is not chosen for the show because they say she is not likable enough she then has a dream sequence where Rose beats her on the show because the questions are about cows and farm life which are topics Rose knows similar to the way Fran won.  Cliff does well and is in a great lead until he risks it all in final jeopardy and does not know the answer.  The thing that I noticed when watching that episode earlier this week was how young Alex Trebek looks I did the math and the episode was probably filmed about 22 years ago so it makes sense that he would be older now and it also demonstrates how much a part of our culture the show is.  Back in the 80s and early 90s sitcom characters were trying to be on the show and now Ken Jennings is trying to beat a computer. I think I like the way it worked out for Fran the best of the three examples because when I watch the show there are sometimes categories that I am an expert in and get all the questions (once it was Seth Green and another time it was the SCIFI channel) so I find her ability to win when it got on her preferred topics to be believable and relatable.  Of course I might not know enough general trivia to qualify for the show but its still fun in theory. How long will the “Jeopardy” theme song be stuck in your head after you read this?