It wouldn’t be a Saturday Night Live special if there wasn’t a Celebrity Jeopardy sketch. Thankfully, audiences didn’t have to wait long. Thirty minutes into NBC’s three-and-a-half hour live telecast, which celebrated the late-night show’s 40th anniversary, Will Ferrell returned as Alex Trebek and hosted a new game of Celebrity Jeopardy .
It was the first sketch of the night and the nine-minute routine featured Darrel Hammond’s famous Sean Connery impression, newcomer Kate McKinnon as Justin Bieber, and Alec Baldwin as Tony Bennett.
Ferrell as the exasperated Trebek was solid as ever until getting ruffled by the inept stars, especially Connery’s blatant disregard for rules and decorum. The categories included “Letters That Begin With ‘G’,” “Potpourri,” and “Who Reads,” the latter of which Connery misreads, much like he did during a 2001 sketch where he misread the category “Therapists” as “The Rapists.” He also misreads a “Let It Snow” category. (Line up the words together and you’ll soon catch the joke.)
Next to Hammond’s Connery, the celebrity with the most appearances on Celebrity Jeopardy is Norm MacDonald ‘s Burt Reynolds (or his nom de plume Turd Ferguson). Oh, he showed up after Alec Baldwin made a quick departure. Sporting a ridiculous foam hat, Burt asked to solve the puzzle, even though he was on Jeopardy! , not Wheel of Fortune . And he quickly followed that with, “Who is Andre the Giant?”
WWE seemed to be listening as the organization sent out this tweet.
RT if you’d take #AndreTheGiantFor1000 , Alex! #SNL40 #CelebrityJeopardy @normmacdonald pic.twitter.com/VxPay8iYZZ
— WWE Universe (@WWEUniverse) February 16, 2015
Other celebrities that dropped by included Taran Killam (as Christoph Waltz) and Jim Carrey’s Matthew McConaughey (his answers were all voice-overs in the style of his Lincoln Navigator commercials). The special surprise was the Video Daily Double about alcoholic beverages where Kenan Thompson popped up on the screen as Bill Cosby. Yep, Saturday Night Live went there. Time calls it the “most epic game of Celebrity Jeopardy ever.” Watch and see if you agree.
[Image credited to Dana Edelson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via EW ]
