All spring and summer long, Alex Trebek was restless.

He was, like the rest of us, mostly at home, or else running errands nearby: In May, he was caught on camera by paparazzi taking out the trash, wearing a Jeopardy! T-shirt tucked casually into his jeans.

But the longtime Jeopardy! host didn’t want to be home: He wanted to be at work, making more Jeopardy!

In March, the coronavirus pandemic forced production of the show to grind to a sudden halt, a month ahead of its planned season finale. Now, in the middle of the show’s usual summer break, Trebek had a sense of urgency. Nearing his 80th birthday and nearly a year and a half into treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer, he wanted to work.

“His frustration was, we should be in there taping,” says Mike Richards, who this summer became Jeopardy!’s first new executive producer in nearly 25 years. “We should be shooting. Even though it was during our hiatus, he wanted to get back in there and shoot more Jeopardy!s. So I was definitely hearing him on my shoulder going, ‘Let’s go. Figure it out. We’re Jeopardy! We’re smart enough to figure this out.’”

[Read Claire McNear's piece about Jeopardy! coming back during COVID-19.]