Jay Leno's version of You Bet Your Life has reportedly been renewed for a second season. I don't know if I said it here but I told several friends that I didn't think it had a chance. In so doing, I was committing one of the most frequent mistakes in Show Business: Underestimating Jay Leno.
The guy hosted The Tonight Show for close to 21 years in two stints and for all but about 18 months, it finished first in a highly-competitive time slot. That is way better than anyone expected of whoever followed Carson in the job. He could have been there much longer had not someone at NBC made the bonehead decision of yanking him off the air while he was still in First Place.
I suspect in every one of the 251 months he hosted, someone high-up in the TV business predicted an imminent plunge in his ratings and his departure from the job but they were as wrong as wrong could be. Apart from his deservedly-forgotten (and in many ways, sabotaged) show at 10 PM, he's done pretty well since he first started guest-hosting for Johnny. In Bill Carter's book on the Leno/Conan mess, he quotes Conan partisan Lorne Michaels as admitting, "Fortunes have been lost underestimating Jay Leno." I shall not make such predictions again.
In the meantime, I go through cycles when I do or don't watch Jeopardy! and I'm lately a watcher. When they get one of these constantly-returning champions who has it won halfway through the first round, I tend to find other shows to watch. And on this evening's episode, I could have won handily if I'd found some way to inject my opponents' buzzers with Krazy Glue. Knowing the answers is only part of what it takes to win. Ringing in first is a big part of it.
I've watched this show a long time but only recently did I learn something about it which I'd somehow missed. The player with the most money at the end of Final Jeopardy! wins that amount and comes back. The other two players don't get the amounts displayed on their podiums. The second-place finisher gets $2,000 and the person in third-place gets a thousand. Some of the wagers made in that last round make more sense to me now that I know that.
Again, I don't know if I said this here but when they were doing the tryouts, I told friends that I thought Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings were about equally good. After many months of seeing them alternating in the position, my opinion is that Ms. Bialik sounds too much the same in everything she says and that Mr. Jennings has grown into the job. But I'd probably watch just as often if she held down the job by herself. The host doesn't matter that much.