Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today I thought we'd do another You Should Laugh More post.

Research has shown that laughter is good for us. It has all kinds of health benefits. Despite most of us knowing this, none of us laugh enough. Yeah, I know, being an adult is tough, and furthermore there is a lot of grim stuff happening in the world. These things may be true, but that just is all the more reason for trying to get a little laughter into our lives.

This week I thought we'd look at one of the most beloved reoccurring skit of the modern SNL, the Celebrity Jeopardy skit. Many of the Americans reading this may be familiar, but others may never have seen it before. They made a dozen or so of the skits over the years, and surprisingly all of them are great. Usually a skit that reoccurs too many times will get stale and unfunny fairly quickly, but this skit stayed fresh.

Let's check it out.

I'm sure most of you know Jeopardy. It is a gameshow where the contestants are presented with an answer on a topic and they have to supply the correct question. It's one of the most popular gameshows in America, having been run since the 1960s, first with Art Fleming, then with Alex Trebek from 1984 until his death in 2021, and with a rotating cast of hosts since.

What you may not know unless you grew up in America is that every now and again they have a special episode of the show called "Celebrity Jeopardy" that features three celebrities who donate their winnings to a charity of their choice.

Perhaps not unexpectedly given that success at Jeopardy relies on a lot of general knowledge, many of the celebrities who have played over the years have been absolutely terrible at the game. This despite the fact that the questions are always much easier than usual.

Enter SNL. in 1996 Norm Macdonald came up with an idea for a skit making fun of these clueless celebrates who sign up for the special gameshow. The skit was so successful that it ran for a number of years, until 2015, for a total of 15 episodes. In each skit, Will Ferrell plays the straight man, doing a passable impression of Alex Trebek, Darrell Hammond usually appears as a very childish Sean Connery who seems to go out of his way to frustrate Ferrell, and the other two contestant spots are played by random cast members making fun of random celebrities.

Frankly I'd recommend all of them. They are all hilarious. But for the sake of keeping this post from going too long, I will pick my top four.

Episode 8

Let's start with this one to give you an idea of the skit. This one features Hilary Swank (Jimmy Fallon), Keanu Reeves (Tobey Maguire), and Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond). Swank and Reeves are just clueless, while Connery goes out of his way to frustrate Trebek. This would be the basic format for most episodes of the skit.

Episode 4

Next we will go to one featuring Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Jeff Goldblum (David Duchovny), and Minnie Driver (Molly Shannon). I pick this because Duchovny's impression of Jeff Goldblum is so perfect. Goldblum himself would later say he loved this impression.

Episode 7

This one features French Stewart (Jimmy Fallon), Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), and Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald). Honestly I've never been a Fallon fan, but he does do a good French Stewart impression and is ok in this sketch. Hammond and Macdonald go so well together.

40th Anniversary

Let's end with the episode they did for the special 40th anniversary of SNL show. Since this was a special episode, it featured more than usual, staring Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Justin Bieber (Kate McKinnon), Tony Bennett (Alec Baldwin), Christoph Waltz (Taran Killam), Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald) and Matthew McConaughey (Jim Carrey). They saved the best for last—this is really fun.

So what do you think? Did any of them make you laugh or were they just stupid? If you did enjoy these, you can find every episode on YouTube, so go watch all of them.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.