Pop Culture in Jeopardy

TV Trivia has Become too Generationally-Dependent

I should not know any plot points from Boy Meets World, the name of Chuckie’s stepsister or any other Rugrat, or who was Screech’s favorite among the members of The New Class of Saved by the Bell.

I shouldn’t even be expected to know these bits of trivia if I were competing in a trivia contest generally focused on pop culture. Alas, Pop Culture Jeopardy! seems to have other ideas.

Streaming on Amazon and featuring an amiable Colin Jost as host, the show pits teams of three—each with pun-filled names—against one another in a format that bears more than a passing resemblance to a game show I recall fondly from nearly 20 years ago: VH-1’s World Series of Pop Culture. However, my regard for the earlier show isn’t just sentimentality—it’s because Pop Culture Jeopardy! too often feels less like a test of cultural literacy and more like a cosmic game of “What year were you awake?”

Though movies and recorded music have been around for over a century, pop culture as we know it began sometime after Elvis first swiveled his hips and Dick Clark first flashed his ageless smile. By the time VH-1's World Series of Pop Culture aired, we had roughly 60 years of material to contend with—a manageable haul for devoted enthusiasts. But the intervening two decades haven’t merely added another 20 years of pop culture to the pile. Instead, we’ve witnessed an exponential boom in cultural output. It’s not just that I was younger and 20 years less inundated back then; we’ve experienced what can only be described as a Cambrian Explosion of cultural effluvia, a relentless proliferation of content that no trivia buff—or human being—can reasonably keep pace with.

What was once a manageable stream of cultural flotsam has since become a relentless torrent. We are all Lucy in the chocolate factory of culture, struggling to keep up with an assembly line that never stops.

The year I was born, fewer than 100 scripted TV shows aired nationally, and that count includes the kind of short-lived programs their own creators have likely forgotten. Fast forward to 2022, and according to FX chairman John Landgraf, that number had ballooned to 600 scripted shows. Clearly, some kind of sorting mechanism is needed. I’d suggest that quality should play at least a modest role in the curation process.

If I don’t know the lyrics to a #1 hit or the plot of a blockbuster or Oscar-nominated movie, that’s on me—especially if I want to call myself a cultural aficionado. But when it comes to television, too many trivia questions on Pop Culture Jeopardy! reduce the challenge to a census asking only “year of birth”. PCJ!’s failing is the flattening of cultural merit into mere chronological happenstance.

Consider, if you will, the peculiar placement of beer-promoting bull terrier Spuds MacKenzie in the show’s hierarchy of difficulty. This 1980s quadrupedal pitchman is deemed worthy of the $2,000 slot—the prize reserved for the show’s most challenging question—while questions about Nickelodeon’s Rugrats are lobbed about with the casual ease of a female bailiff tossing off insults on Night Court.

To a Millennial or younger viewer, Spuds MacKenzie is a cultural cipher, utterly meaningless. But to a member of Gen X, a reference to Spuds requires no esoteric knowledge beyond recalling the name of an iconic advertising mascot of today. Think of any contemporary commercial canine—perhaps Snoop Dogg, who shills for brands like Corona, Sketchers, T-Mobile, Chrysler, Adidas, Pepsi, TUMI luggage, and GrubHub. Spuds, it seems, was simply ahead of his time.

In a category about cartoons, Johnny Quest was the hardest question, which would be extremely easy to anyone over 45, but an answer about Angelica Pickles was the easiest though this would have been being the ken of most anyone under 45.

While one might argue that trivia is merely the recollection of obscure facts, good trivia, isn’t just about knowing something; it’s about knowing something worth knowing.

Unlike the scope of Clarissa’s explanations, the remit of a good trivia contest doesn’t have to include it all.

One longs for some quality control in our trivia. The difference between "Cheers" and "ALF" isn't merely temporal; it's the difference between crafting a legacy and simply occupying airtime. My advocacy for trivia questions about M*A*S*H versus That’s So Raven isn’t merely a matter of my being over 50. The difference lies in the fact that one was exceptional, while the other was …not so great (though, I’ll grant, so Raven).

If I were to articulate criteria for what should be considered worthy pop culture trivia—what to leave in and what to leave out, Bob Seger-style—it would be this: pop culture trivia should not concern itself with TV shows whose main achievement was simply existing. All in the Family was significant; The Love Boat was just on. Cheers and The Golden Girls were lapidary perfections; Small Wonder was a show whose primary achievement was managing to stay on the air. You can toss in a question or two about lesser TV, sure, but no one should be rewarded for knowing too much about it. And then there’s the absolute bottom rung of pop culture trivia: children’s and tween programming. These shows may spark nostalgic recollection, but let’s be honest—they were more sugar-cereal delivery mechanisms or surrogate babysitters than actual pieces of culture.

Nostalgia is a pleasant drug—the nitrous oxide of memory—but it cannot serve as the foundation for a respectable trivia program. So, if you find yourself exclaiming, “Oh, I do remember the name of the penguin on The Backyardigans,” cherish that as a delightful personal memory. Just don’t mistake it for trivia of any significance to someone over the age of 25.

I realize, of course, that many of my critiques could themselves be dismissed as the grumblings of an aging man, braying at the culture that postdated him, insisting “The real Uncle Jesse lived in Hazzard County, not San Fransisco!” , But, unlike Fonzie with the word “love,” I can say it: I am capable of self-reflection. Unlike Lizzie McGuire with oyster sauce, I am not allergic to the idea of reconsidering my biases. And with that in mind, I present the following: a list of televised material that no one outside the 50-year-old age bracket should be expected to know. These are fond remembrances for anyone born during the Ford presidency—and even vice presidency—but they have no business masquerading as cultural trivia for a wider audience.

• The species of Thundarr the Barbarian’s sidekick, Ookla.

• The name of The Funky Phantom before dying.

• Anything about Grape Ape beyond the obvious fact that the ape is, indeed, purple.

• Who is Mr. Peebles’ nemesis?

• The name of the proprietor of Eddie Toys.

• Everything about Sid and Marty Krofft—except the answer to “Who’s your friend when things get rough?”

• Anything about The Snorks beyond the show they were clearly ripping off.

• What Knight Rider’s rival,K.A.R.R. stood for (besides evil)

• The real name of The Greatest American Hero.

• The deck names on The Love Boat.

• Any housekeeper’s name on Diff’rent Strokes.

• The relationship between Pinky and Leather Tuscadero

• The four other girls on The Facts of Life who didn’t make it past Season 1.

I carry all of this “knowledge” with me, but I don’t expect you to. These are delightful tidbits to cherish—or perhaps to purge from your memory—not facts to be foisted on unsuspecting trivia contestants. Study up on your good TV show trivia—the true classics—and leave the effluvia to Ziggy, Dr. Theopolis, or Marjory the Trash Heap. And if you’ve never heard of these all-knowing characters, that’s perfectly fine—unless, of course, you were watching at the time.