CliqueClackWas King of the Nerds good for the nerds?
The first season of ‘King of the Nerds’, a reality competition just ended — but should nerds be happy with it or angry?
The final contestants of the show were Ivan (the video game designer), Danielle (the popular World of Warcraft vlogger), Genevieve (the young-adult fantasy writer) and Celeste (the professional gamer). Those are all pretty nerdy descriptions of vocations and/or hobbies. The final three and two (Celeste and Genevieve) were girls — was it coincidence or intention? If it’s coincidence, it’s a decent thing for nerds, showing the unwashed masses that nerds come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders. If it’s intentional and the show tried to have all girls or boy vs girl, it’s problematic. But there isn’t enough evidence to know whether or not that really happened.
Genevieve seemed to be the more “classically nerdy” (in the words of contestant and computer hacker Virgil) of the final two, with both the casual arrogance and overall trivia knowledge I’d expect from a “king” of the nerds. Celeste presented herself more as someone on a journey, learning and growing throughout the competition, overcoming her fears to get to the end. The other contestants voted for Celeste in a close race, leading to a lot of anger online — some calling for a boycott of TBS on the TBS.com message boards. In retrospect, I should have realized the ending when Celeste was on the Conan O’Brian show a few weeks ago. In retrospect, it is exceptionally bizarre that only one person from the show was cross promoting on Conan, and it was the eventual winner. Spoilers much?
In the end, I liked the argument of a “journey,” despite the votes from bitter contestants angry at Genevieve for her actions in the game. I probably would’ve voted for Celeste too, at least in this particular circumstance. So the show has shown the positive and negative sides of nerds — in a mostly realistic fashion — with some manufactured and real drama alike. Good for nerds? I’m going to say provisionally; if they improve in the second season, I’ll give the show a “better than The Big Bang Theory used to be,” which is high praise indeed.
7 Comments on “Was King of the Nerds good for the nerds?”
I only watched the last couple episodes of the show and in a year where the internet has been up at arms about the epidemic that is the “fake nerd girl” with their scheming and their fakeness and their having breasts, it’s very telling that four of the final five contestants were women. And they all seemed genuinely “nerdy”… but that’s not exactly perfectly definable.
That being said, there were aspects of just absolute ridiculousness leaning towards stupid. But I did like that the enthusiasm of the contestants seemed genuine… even if I wanted to throw something at the hosts’ heads every time they made a bad joke.
I really wanted Panzer/tradechat/Danelle to win. I only watched towards the end and was really shocked when they played her as kinda the bad guy. Seeing her emotions on screen so much in the finale was rough. I was glad to hear though that her fathers’ cancer went into remission after the show.
Back to the show. It was just meh. I don’t really get this “Mansion of nerddom” or “Throne of Games” junk. If anything, send the people to SpaceCamp. That campus rocks and is like DisneyWorld for nerd kids. I’d bet something could be worked out. The show just had a superficial feeling that felt like it was just a bit askew. It never came from the nerds. It just had a thing that made it just a little odd. Maybe it was the hosts, maybe it was the competitions. I’m not sure.
One major issue I had with it is that TBS had Celeste appear on Conan a few weeks before the finale. This kind of forecast her win since she was the only contestant to appear on Conan (or any talk show, as far as I know). I think the next season might benefit by having at least two weeks where no one is voted off and the contestants get to live and interact with each other. The show wasn’t perfect by any means and had a lot of the usual reality show tropes but overall I think it was more good than bad.
I’m pretty sure most of the “nerd” have been on Conan during the season, showing outtakes and their original audition tapes, not just Celeste.
I think they had some promos for the show and some of the contestants but no one else was actually a seated guest.
Oh, seated guest. That I don’t know about since I don’t watch Conan. I just know I always saw previews for one of the contestants doing something on the upcoming Conan episode. If she’s the only one to sit for an interview before the finale, then that is pretty stupid on TBS’ part.
I had a lot of problems with the game design. They needed better tasks and they needed better challenges. The drama and stuff doesn’t work so well on this show: I wanted to see them doing cool problem solving stuff. And the people who left seemed bizarre too.
I’m sorry it wasn’t better designed. As mentioned i don’t really care who’s feelings were hurt, this isn’t big brother based on simply surviving together. These are smart people and they should have been doing a lot cooler and tougher challenges.
Is it surprising that the winner won? No I would have voted for that person too.