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Culture Feature

Bean Dad Redemption? The Sad, Strange Saga of John Roderick

John Roderick came under fire for a story that sounded like child abuse, but maybe his worst crime is being awful at Twitter.

The saga of Bean Dad is a tale as old as time.

First, a random psychopath goes viral for bragging about making his daughter go hungry. Then people uncover his homophobic, ableist, and horrifying white supremacist tweets of yore.

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TV Features

RIP Alex Trebek: 6 of the "Jeopardy!" Host's Best Moments

The iconic TV host passed away over the weekend after spending nearly four decades as the host of "Jeopardy!"

Celebrity Rock 'N Roll Jeopardy - SNL

Over the weekend, as people across the country celebrated the long-delayed results of the presidential election, the entertainment world also faced the loss of Alex Trebek.

The long-running TV host, best known as the face of Jeopardy!, announced last year that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. After several rounds of chemotherapy over the course of 18 months, Trebek died in his Los Angeles home Sunday, November 8. He was 80 years old.

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TV Features

This Haunts Me: Wolf Blitzer Crashing and Burning on Celebrity Jeopardy

Because sometimes the people in charge of keeping us informed are morons.

CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer introduces CNN Republican presidential debate at the RNC

Photo by Joseph Sohm (Shutterstock)

Celebrity Jeopardy has been a source of comedy since Will Ferrell first donned a fake mustache on SNL in the 1990s.

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TV

A Love Letter to "Jeopardy!," the World's Best Game Show

It's just the right blend of mind-numbing leisure with thought-provoking clues.

Jeopardy!

Hold your buzzers—Netflix recently added even more Jeopardy! episodes.

For my fellow introverts who don't care for sports but still love to yell profanities at their TV, this is fantastic news. Now, you can watch educators face off in the Teacher's Tournament. You can play along with Buzzy Cohen, the charming nine-game streaker dubbed "Mr. Personality" by host Alex Trebek. You can recall your own brace-faced awkwardness during the Teens Tournament, and feel an extra confidence boost when you actually know more correct answers than usual (until you remember these clues are written for literal children and you are in your mid-20s). The long-running trivia show has held a similarly ceaseless presence in my young life, from my mom watching new episodes after picking me up from elementary school, to the bartenders I worked with in college playing episodes on the restaurant television mounted between shelves of tequila. Now, I'm a full-fledged adult with a full-time job and a dwindling attention span. Jeopardy! hits the spot for the short bursts of entertainment my mind craves at the end of a long day of making content for the internet.

If Twitter is any indication, I'm not alone. "You guys very old episodes of Jeopardy is on Netflix so there goes my weekend," tweetedMy Favorite Murder co-host Georgia Hardstark. "Petition for Netflix to remove Friends and upload every single season of Jeopardy," @gabrielledrolet proposed. User @smileandconquer announced "I'm 'watching Jeopardy on Netflix' years old," to which I say, I think we're all "watching Jeopardy! on Netflix" years old if we want to be.

The older I get, however, the more anxious I become, and the more often existential dread looms over my head. But, thankfully, Jeopardy! serves as a great distraction from all the things that make the world feel big and scary to me, serving up just the right blend of mind-numbing leisure with thought-provoking clues that make me say "I have no idea what that is." The show's rigid structure keeps each episode feeling familiar and easy-to-follow—which is to say, it's one of the few things in life I can depend on to be predictable—but with its constant rotation of categories and contestants, I never get bored: there's always the potential to unearth a topic I'm unusually well-versed in, such as, say, "America's Got Talent Season 5 Contestants" (I made that one up). Anyway, Jeopardy! is the best game show in the world, and even amid the countless streaming services available now, I would be totally happy with one dedicated entirely to Jeopardy!'s 8,000-plus episodes. For now, though, Netflix's allocation should suffice.