| Bob Barker has retired. Chuck Woolery has moved on. Bob Eubanks doesn’t do much these days. Jim Lange settled into a job as a radio DJ. Gene Rayburn is dead. So as the news hits that “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek has suffered a heart attack, you have to wonder if he’s the last of a dying breed: the well-groomed, gentlemanly game show host.
Game shows, you see, are so much different nowadays. Gone is the thrill of simply advancing to the next segment of the pyramid. Very few classics, such as “Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price is Right,” remain. The flavor of game shows has changed, and with so much focus on reality TV these days, the good old-fashioned thrill of the correct answer has fallen by the wayside. Instead of giggling through the boudoir humor of “The Newlywed Game,” we need it downer-and-dirtier these days, only satisfied by raunchier reality fare like “The Surreal Life” and “Big Brother.” We used to want to ask Bachelor No. 2, behind the partition, what kind of restaurant he likes. Now we just screw him and get it over with.
(Ahhhh … but there I go again, sounding like an old geezer. You don’t have to be advanced in age to be advanced in a sense of right and wrong! C’mon, now – anybody can do it!)
Trebek’s heart attack was a minor one, thankfully. The 67-year-old was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center late Monday night and was expected to remain there about two days for tests and observation, show spokesman Jeff Ritter said. Let’s hope this well-spoken gentleman helps keep the genre alive for a long time to come.
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