Things We Saw Today: We All Need To Watch Alex Trebek’s Thanksgiving Message

Legendary Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek passed away on November 8th, 2020 at the age of 80 after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. While we continue to miss and mourn Trebek, the host’s “reassuring presence,” as CTV’s Richard Crouse puts it, will still be with us in new episodes of Jeopardy! until December 25th. Trebek filmed episodes of the show in advance that will run through Christmas Day. So on Thanksgiving, we had a new show and a message from Trebek to his viewers.

In the clip above, Trebek addresses the audience:

“Happy Thanksgiving, ladies and gentlemen. You know, in spite of what America and the rest of the world are experiencing right now, there are many reasons to be thankful. There are more and more people extending helpful hands to do a kindness to their neighbors, and that’s a good thing. Keep the faith—we are going to get through all of this, and we are going to be a better society because of it.”

To see and hear Trebek extending such a message of hope and optimism—especially when he was facing such a dire condition himself—is incredibly moving. It’s tempting, in the trash fire that is the year 2020, to find ourselves constantly veering into pessimism and fatalistic thinking.

Alex Trebek is urging the opposite of this, telling viewers to focus on the positives, even—especially—at the local level of people helping each other, and suggesting that we will be “a better society” on the other side of these experiences. This is the sort of uplifting message that’s in short supply these days—and it’s all the more moving and vital to hear it from Alex Trebek.

(image: screengrab)

Here are a few more things that we saw today:

• Actor Vincent D’Onofrio, who played the villainous Kingpin, encouraged fans to sign a petition to “save Daredevil.” While it’s unlikely the Netflix superhero show will see another incarnation, almost 400k people have signed, and these days, you never know! Here’s the petition if you want to add your support. (via Comic Book Movie)
• Parler explained, if you really want to know. (via Vox)
• What teaching in a pandemic looks like. (via NYT)
• Amazon Studios’ Utopia has been canceled after one season. (via io9)
• The 100 best movies on Netflix right now, per Vulture. (via Vulture)
• “Video Games Sure Do Have a Lot of Bad Dads” podcast (via Kotaku)
• The New York Times asks, then tries to answer: do Britain’s Royals watch The Crown? (via NYT)

Me & my only fan for now pic.twitter.com/sMzl1mpTCl

— Michael B. Jordan (@michaelb4jordan) November 28, 2020

What did you see out there today?

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