Amy Schneider’s “Jeopardy!” Reign Has Come To An End
And Just Like That… Amy Schneider’s Jeopardy! winning streak has come to an end after 40 episodes and $1,382,800 in prize money. Amy was finally defeated last night by Rhone Talsma, a Chicago librarian in chic statement glasses. The loss comes two days after Amy surpassed 2020 champ Matt Amodio’s 38-game record as the second-most winning contestant in the show’s history. Ken Jennings still reigns supreme at 74 wins. And if Ken wasn’t also the one hosting these episodes, I’d be mighty suspicious of this “Rhone Talsma” character. Scramble the letters in his name and you get “I AM KEN JENNINGS” (actually, you get “SALMON HEART”, but that doesn’t work for the joke).
Amy got me watching Jeopardy! for the first time since Alex Trebek’s death, and I honestly didn’t know how anyone could beat her. Even if all the contestants’ scores were similar before the first commercial break, Amy would dominate Double Jeopardy! and whoop all their butts. Usually, she was so far ahead before Final Jeopardy!, it didn’t matter if she got the answer wrong. But not last night. Before Final Jeopardy!, Amy’s score was $27,600 and Rhone’s was $17,600. Minutes before Rhone had doubled his money after correctly answering a Daily Double.
The Final Jeopardy! question was: “The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an ‘H,’ it’s also one of the 10 most populous.” Bitch! I don’t know! And you could tell Amy was struggling too. Turns out the answer was “Bangladesh,” and Rhone got it right, adding $12,000 to his score and pulling $2,000 ahead of Amy. And then, Ken went to Amy. Did the champ come up with Bangladesh? NOPE. She blanked, dropping her score to $19,600. Rhone was the winner! I screamed, Amy sighed, and Rhone practically hyperventilated. Here are highlights from last night’s game, including Amy’s Final Jeopardy! loss:
Here’s her post-show interview:
Amy told USA Today:
“Being on ‘Jeopardy!’ has been the most fun thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, and I didn’t want it to be over,” she says. “And it was really hard to accept that it was, even though I’ve known for a while this could happen.”
Once Schneider left the stage, she was taken to where contestants were eating a snack, where she tried “to keep it cool.” Then she “excused myself to the bathroom and cried for a couple minutes. And then pulled myself together and headed back out.”
But she says there are bright spots to ending her run.
“I know that one of the first thoughts I had was, ‘Well, I don’t have to come up with any more anecdotes” for the small talk between contestants and Jennings. “Beyond that, it had been a lot. It had been a disruption in my life. I haven’t been able to spend as much time with my girlfriend and my cat. So there’s definitely a part of me that was like, ‘I’m glad I can just get back to all that.'”
This morning, she also did an interview with Good Morning America. She told them it was “hard to be that sad when I did so much better than I ever expected”:
Rhone said in a statement that he was “still in shock”:
“This is my favorite show. … I was so excited to be here, and I just wanted to do my best. I did not expect to be facing a 40-day champion, and I was excited to maybe see someone else slay the giant. I just really didn’t think it was going to be me, so I’m thrilled.”
Here’s Rhone’s post-win interview:
Watching last night’s Final Jeopardy! was the most excited I’ve been in quite some time. Is this how sports fans feel? Should I get into sports? Maybe? No.
Pics: YouTube