NO JEOPARDY IN "JEOPARDY!"

I enjoy the game show "Jeopardy!" but lets be honest. No one's ever in jeopardy.

I understand that if you answer a question wrong you lose the amount that question was worth. That sucks, but hardly constitutes jeopardy. They even use an exclamation point in the title: JEOPARDY! What for? To trick us to watch? Make it sound exciting? As soon as the show starts and someone answers questions about the periodic table, Mongolian history or the Peer Gynt Suite, we know no one's in danger.

Maybe when Merv Griffin created the show he had each contestant stand on trap doors that plunged them straight into a pool of abused alligators if they lost. Or had them launched through the air by catapults or slid through a tube into a gladiatorial ring where they had to wrestle tigers. Now that would be JEOPARDY! But the studio over-ruled him and the advertising was already done so the title stuck.

(Alligators! Tigers! Trebeks! Oh my!)

P.S. - Why is it that people on Jeopardy! are super smart and know things like how many times the Czar of Russia pooped in a day, and yet they leave the show with winnings in the low thousands while complete idiots on other game shows where you just jump up and down screaming and pick brief-cases at random (Deal or No Deal) or stack a few apples on top of each other (Minute to Win It) allow you to win a MILLION?

Maybe when Jeopardy! started the values were a lot of money for that time, and they've stayed the same all these years and inflation has made them seem silly now. Hmmmm..... Have to investigate that.

If at present they made each question worth $10,000, $50,000, $250,000, and you LOST that much if you got it wrong? NOW THAT WOULD BE JEOPARDY! 

MJW