Matt Amodio’s Jeopardy! streak came to a sudden and shocking end on Monday, but that’s nothing to sneeze at: With 38 consecutive wins, he has the second longest run in the game show’s history, ahead of James Holzhauer’s 33 wins but way behind Ken Jennings’ 74. In that time — only nine days of shooting, by the way, in which he banged out five episodes a day — he amassed a whopping $1.5 million in winnings. What’s he going to do with it? The answer: probably not much.
The 30-year-old grad student was on CNN doing a kind of exit interview, during which he was inevitably asked about how his life will change with a new bounty of cash. But his answer wasn’t as interesting as one of his Jeopardy! questions. “Boring answer, but I’m going to say my goal is to not touch a penny any time soon,” Amodio replied.
Amodio was also asked about experiencing a record Jeopardy! run in the midst of the Mike Richards mishegoss, which saw him having burning through a number of hosts, including the show’s now-infamous former executive producer-turned-almost-permanent emcee. But his answer about that was kind of boring, too.
“I was surprised by how little that affected me, because there’s a whole crew. Jeopardy ism’t just one person, it’s a team,” Amodio said. “And sure, one host was changing all the time, but there was so much that was the same. It felt pretty consistent throughout this whole thing.”
As for who should be the late Alex Trebek’s permanent replacement, Amodio doesn’t have an answer for that either. He said Mayim Bialik, who’s been filling in while the producers find a new one, was “fantastic.” And he says Jennings, who he hasn’t worked with (yet), would also be “fantastic.” But, you know, sometimes, in this wackadoodle world we live in, boring is good.
(Via CNN)
