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Sean Connery is the MVP of SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy! parody, but also receiving votes is Norm Macdonald's Burt Reynolds a.k.a. Turd Ferguson. The running joke in the SNL skit was that Alex Trebek was hesitant to call Reynolds by his preferred name ("It's a funny name."), but on Wednesday night's episode of real-life, non-celebrity Jeopardy!, one crafty contestant managed to force the real Trebek into saying it. Why can't we just leave poor Alex Trebek alone?
Talia Lavin, a journalist and fact-checker for The New Yorker, was well out of contention by the time Final Jeopardy! rolled around. The category was Oscar-Nominated Songs and the clue was "This song, from a 1999 animated film about censorship had a word censored from its Oscar performance." With no shot at digging herself out of the third-place hole she was in (she was $7,000 behind second-place and only had $600), she went home with a big-fat $0 by wagering it all on, "What is 'The Love Ballad of Turd Ferguson?' P.S. hi mom :)"
Maybe that postscript was also a nod to Sean Connery's affinity for Trebek's mother? Regardless, Trebek read out the entire answer.
While Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers didn't do it on the actual episode of the show, he also threw a nod to Turd Ferguson during rehearsals:
Despite losing, Talia has become the most talked-about contestant on Jeopardy! since at least Arthur Chu. With the fame of going out in a blaze of glory comes the hate, and Talia herself retweeted some of it last night. Here's a taste:
What is more annoying than Talia and her annoying buzzer style; her long overdrawn bio story.... #jeopardy
— Badri Radhakrishnan 🇺🇸🎥⚾️🥃 (@radbcc) September 16, 2015
"what is toast cut into soldiers" may be the dumbest answer of all time😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 #talia #jeopardy @Jeopardy
— Tommy (@thomasj216) September 16, 2015
This girl Talia on Jeopardy is actually not smart.
— Danielle Kaplan (@jets_NY728) September 16, 2015
How did this Talia chick get on Jeopardy? She is stupid!
— Nick Peroceschi (@therealwhite56) September 16, 2015
Harsh, Andy!
And if you need a refresher, here's Turd Ferguson's appearance on SNL's 40th anniversary episode:
