At the beginning of 2014, Sean and I sort of spontaneously started DVR-ing Jeopardy and watching it every night. It's truly become one of my favorite rituals, and we couldn't have timed it better, because we started watching just as Arthur Chu began his reign.
Not familiar? Well, here's an article or another one about the most divisive person to grace a quiz show stage since tv games were rigged back in the 50s. Arthur has won more than $200K in EIGHT days through an upended way of playing the game that is simultaneously riveting, maddening and insanely aggressive. I've been watching Jeopardy since before I can remember memories, and I can't recall anyone ever playing the game like this.
Basically, he's all about the money and will do anything to get it. This includes hunting the board for Daily Doubles, making as many of them "true Daily Doubles" as possible, starting his game with the high-scoring questions in his comfortable categories and talking as fast as he can in order to have more time to answer more questions to make more money. The first few episodes, I was frankly offended by his brashness. Now, I'm totally hooked. He is, quite literally, a game-changer and I don't think I can ever un-see his method now that I've seen it!
Besides just generally making money like a boss, he's also been ruling the "getting to know you anecdote" portion. When other folks have talked about their volunteerism or dumb coincidences or stupid travel stories, he's been laying down anecdotes about playing a zombie at the White House Halloween, having his own theme song and performing in an improv troop of Washingtonian muckety-mucks.
On top of all this, he's just genuinely well-rounded in his trivia knowledge and seems to have very few category weaknesses. We actually spent part of dinner debating what it will take to bring him down! It's crazy to say the least.
This might qualify as one of the weirder posts I've ever written, but I'm just so into it and I have to know if you guys are, too! What do you think? Is he the best or absolute worst thing to ever happen to the game?
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