The Jeopardy! Experience
7. Walking In L.A.
The contestants in the second game were Lynn, Diana, and Bill. As the returning Jeopardy! champion, Lynn had some advantages over her newbie opponents. One advantage was simply knowing what to expect. Being thrust onto the chilly set of a TV studio flooded with light, with microphone booms bobbing overhead and cameras searching for prey, wouldn’t be the scary distractions Lynn endured during her first appearance. This time, she knew she wouldn’t even notice the cameras, mics, or the studio audience as she played. This put the two new contestants at a psychological disadvantage. Where Lynn was now relaxed, her opponents were nervous and distracted by the strangeness around them. However, the most significant advantage for Lynn—held by all Jeopardy! champions—was having experience with the signaling device.
Lynn led almost all the way through game two, finishing with $12,200 going into Final Jeopardy. Bill was in second place with $7,200; Diana had $1,500. Unlike the first game, where she needed three things to go right, Lynn needed to do only one thing to win, no matter what the other players did: get Final Jeopardy right. The category was “U.S. Geography:”
Diana had written, “What is Ochefenochee [sic],” but it was incorrect. She’d bet $1,400, leaving her with $100. Backstage after the show, she told Lynn she was so nervous she just froze up during the game. She was so disappointed in herself. Diana said she knew the answer to Final Jeopardy but got confused while trying to remember the spelling. Lynn hugged her and said, “But you’re just like me—we were both on Jeopardy! How many people can say that?”
Diana was such a nice lady. After filming, I met her when she came out of the studio with Lynn. Later, I learned that she and Lynn sat together in a little room where the contestants waited before filming started. They both brought needlepoint and chatted with some of the other contestants. By contrast, Bill—a twenty-something with short blond hair, blue eyes, and a very rigid, military-like demeanor—sat by himself reading an almanac. Lynn called him “Kleiner Mensch.” Diana smiled, and when she noticed the almanac, whispered to Lynn out of the corner of her mouth, “If he doesn’t know it by now...” They both gave a quiet little laugh.
Ein Kleiner Mensch Bill got Final Jeopardy right and had bet $7,150, giving him the lead with $14,350. Lynn was now in second place with $12,200 and had to get it right to win. I was sitting just behind Bill’s brother and a friend in the contestant’s friends and family area in the audience. Throughout the game, they wondered, “What’s wrong with him? He’s not like this. He’s always so cool, relaxed, and funny. He looks like a little Nazi down there, for chrissake!” They were on the edge of their seats as they waited for Lynn’s answer.
I wasn’t. I knew Lynn had gotten it, although I didn’t know the answer. She had started writing immediately and finished before the other two. Lynn had this. She bet $3,000 and won with $15,200, bringing her two-day total to $ 29,200.
Second game winner!.
I was on my feet, wildly waving my arms to try and get Lynn to see me. Alex turned to Lynn and asked, “Is that your husband spazzing out up there?” Alex and the contestants all looked up at me as Lynn laughed.
Staring at "The Spazz."
But believe it or not, there was a problem. We were excited and too naive when we planned our trip out to Hollywood to film Jeopardy! We had assumed that Lynn would be on the first episode they filmed on Tuesday and, if she kept winning, would be done filming that same day, even if she won all five games. That’s why we’d booked the flight home for Tuesday night, so we could leave right from the studio. It never occurred to us that she wouldn’t begin filming until the fourth episode on Tuesday.
Now, it was 7:00 PM on Tuesday, and filming for the week was over. The next show wouldn’t be filmed until the following Monday, 6 days away. We’d checked out of our motel, so we had nowhere to stay, and our flight back home left in less than two hours. Even though Lynn had just won over $29,000, we wouldn’t get the check until the middle of December. We couldn’t afford to stay until Monday, but we couldn’t afford to go back home and fly back out again. So what you would have seen right then was Tom and Lynn standing dazed in a Hollywood parking lot, broke and homeless, with a flight home booked and paid for leaving at 10:00 PM, and driving a stolen Mustang if it wasn’t returned that night.
Walking in L.A.