Previewing King of the Nerds

Over the years I have given a lot of grief to The CW for canceling Veronica Mars and made fun of it for managing to get less viewers to watch original episodes of Everybody Hates Chris than TV Land could with repeats of the show. But I do not give them enough credit for ruining, and then canceling one of the great reality shows of the past decade: Beauty and the Geek (introducing male models and gay homosexuals just ruined the social experiment aspect of the show of nerds trying to hook up with hot chicks). Although TBS has not answered my prayers for a Beauty and the Geek reboot by a station not ran and watched by a bunch of morons, they did the next best thing: created King of the Nerds.

King of the Nerds takes eleven nerds and geeks (yes there is a difference) to see who is the best of them all. And who better to host the show than Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong. Yes, Lewis and Booger from Revenge of the Nerds; unfortunately Lamar was apparently unavailable. The show is basically Beauty and the Geek without the beauties (though half the nerds are female. And that is not the only great predecessor it has talked from as it also has taken ideas from Survivor (they start on teams before becoming an individual competition) The Challenge (the losing team gets to pick one person from their team to face elimination in the Nerd Off while the other team picks the other).

Unfortunately it did not rip-off other aspects because the challenges are pretty lame (at least in the first episode). I understand that the first competition is short and sweet as it is every nerds worst nightmare, a school yard pick of teams (if you noticed earlier I said there are eleven contestants, which of course means someone gets left out). But when they mentioned that the Nerd Off would be simple game I thought, there has to be a catch. Nope, no catch. Hopefully future challenges will be a lot more entertaining, if not, they better steal the challenge creator from The Challenge.  (Spoiler Alert: It turns out that the competitions get much more entertaining, at least they are in the second episode.)

But if you liked Beauty and the Geek or really enjoy all The Big Bang Theory repeats that TBS runs (and I am sure will run before King of the Nerds), you will definitely enjoy the show. There are plenty of colorful characters and made up languages spoken. And upcoming guest judges include George Takei from Star Trek; Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes (better known as Jay & Silent Bob), Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci (of the duo as Garfunkel and Oates). I just hope that the challenges get more entertaining. That and Ted McGinley shows up in a second season to lead a group of frat boys to take on the geeks while The Ogre taunts the opposition with a rousing chant of “Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!”

King of the Nerds airs Thursdays at 10:00 on TBS.