Ken Jennings’ Repartee with Father Steve

You may know by now that Father Steve Jakubowski, a Roman Catholic priest, appeared on Jeopardy! last Thursday, September 19th, even if you don’t watch the show.

More than a few articles have sprung up about how some of the ladies found Father Steve “hot”, mostly from entertainment sites and tabloids. Imagine that! I don’t think they’d do the same thing if it was a female contestant, but somehow it’s okay when it’s an ordained priest. That is not at all the impression Father Steve was hoping to make. Per the Catholic News Herald, he was hoping to give a generally good impression of the church and clergy.

Final Jeopardy: New York Movies (9-19-24)

Ken Jennings, Jeopardy!’s new permanent host, is becoming well-known for his repartee with the show’s contestants. It seemed to me in this episode that Ken focused on bantering a lot more with Father Steve than is usual and I wanted to make a video of it. I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take me, so I put if off until the weekend. I’m glad I did now or my video would have turned up in all those icky articles.

Also, I wasn’t really sure it would come out all right because the video editor I’m using doesn’t have the ability to trim off seconds with precision. In the end, it didn’t take me that long and I thought it turned out pretty good.

You can see in the video that it looked like Father Steve was going to run away with the game. Then he hit that Daily Double. 7 clues later he lost $2,000 when he took an ill-advised guess at Dylan Thomas’ birthplace. Father Steve was also the only one to get the final clue wrong, but that wasn’t a big surprise to me. That film has more f-bombs than any other ’80s film. I would have been more surprised if he saw it! Ironically, Father Steve shared that his best subject is geography. Friday’s Final Jeopardy! “Island Chains” clue was probably right up his alley. He might have been the only one to get it right.

Whether Father Steve will be invited back for Second Chance, as some fans have hoped, remains to be seen. That doesn’t mean that he can’t turn up on other game shows. The last Catholic priest to compete on Jeopardy was Father Bill Metheny, who appeared on 6/11/2013. He didn’t win on Jeopardy! but 3 years later, Father Bill won $250,000 on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”