Remember Katie Nolan? She's Cleaning Up On Celebrity Jeopardy
Sports television's Katie Nolan is trying her hand at the fickle mistress that is Celebrity Jeopardy and, to her credit, it's going swimmingly.
In fact, Nolan — who has worked pretty much everywhere: ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, Apple TV+, etc. — is on her way to the finals of the current Celebrity Jeopardy tournament.
Celebrity Jeopardy can be dangerous. Not only was it one of the most iconic Norm MacDonald sketches from back when Saturday Night Live wasn't god-awful, but it's also a version of the iconic game show that can prove whether or not a celebrity has any brains at all.
Sure, it's a watered-down version of the game for eggheads, but that's why it's imperative that you do well. Otherwise, you're in for a public pantsing the likes of which you don't see from any other game shows.
Take for instance Wolf Blitzer, who was once obliterated by comedian Andy Richter and actress Dana Delany.
Yeah... fortunately, for Katie Nolan, the opposite was true.
Katie Nolan Executes Text Book Final Jeopardy Strategy After Terrible 'Beatlemania' Guess
On Tuesday night's episode the TV personality defeated Psych actor Dulé Hill and Steven Weber of Wings fame (he was also in The Shining miniseries that Stephen King made because for some reason he thought he was a better filmmaker than Stanley Kubrick. He's not).
Of course, it certainly helped Nolan's cause that Weber failed to stick the dismount in Final Jeopardy.
“According to the BBC, this 1953 event ‘did more than any other to make television a mainstream medium.’”
The correct answer was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I didn't know that. You probably didn't know that, but at least we knew damn well the answer wasn't Beatlemania, which is what Nolan guessed.
I mean, it makes sense why she'd go that route. It was a seminal moment in TV history. But the clue gave a year more than a decade before the Fab Four appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
However, this is why we play the game, and clearly, Katie Nolan knows how to play Jeopardy. She must have realized she had no clue what the answer was because she smartly opted not to wager everything she had. Weber, on the other hand, did not do that and finished with a score of $0 (which is still more than $4,000 better than Wolf Blitzer) to Katie Nolan's more than $17,000.
Nolan chalked her success up to a prep strategy that involves incessant googling.
“Anytime I didn’t know something that happened in my day-to-day, I googled it,” she said. “I don’t know that I retained any of it. I feel like I tried so hard to learn everything over the last two weeks that I think I may have just gotten in the way of things I already knew. So we’re going to see if it pays off.”
So far it has. In the finals, Nolan will square off with Rachel Dratch of SNL fame (again, back when it didn't suck) and Abbott Elementary star Lisa Ann Walter.
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