The combination of executive producer Ashton Kutcher and the WB television network is unlikely to win any Peabody Awards (come to think of it, neither is either component on its own), but it has come up with a reasonably inoffensive summer unscripted show in Beauty and the Geek.
Seven geeky guys, ranging from a medical student with a penchant for nosebleeds to the vice president of The Dukes of Hazzard fan club to a guy described by one woman (not inaccurately) as "a white Urkel," pair up with seven attractive but non-scholarly women. The pairs will compete over the coming weeks in a series of challenges to see what each person can learn from the other. The pair that seems to do the best job of this wins a quarter million dollars, according to host Bryan McFayden.
The first set of challenges are relatively straightforward: the women will go back to fifth grade for a little quizzing, while the men have to learn how to dance. The winning individual wins for his team the right to choose a couple to send to the Elimination Room. What this means isn't readily apparent.
The women are quizzed spelling bee style in front of an audience gathered, I imagine, under some sort of false pretense. Most of the questions for the women are in geography, which only serves to underscore the woeful state of geographic education in America. The winner took the competition by knowing that 'IA' is the postal abbreviation for Iowa.
For the dancing, each man comes out with their partner and cuts a rug. Remember that guy with the penchant for nosebleeds? Lets just say he could have used a hazmat team during his performance. The winner here, the partner of the woman who won the quiz, takes the crown by following his partner's advice by aiming for comedy rather than proficency. Shades of Napoleon Dynamite abound.
The winning pair engage in some strategery and pick two couples to send into the Elimination Room. Turns out that the elimination process pits the individuals of the same gender against each other in quizzes on politics and history (for the ladies) and popular music (the guys). Total number of right answers wins. One of the women predicts that they'll be sent packing thanks to her geek's complete lack of musical knowledge. If you've ever watched an unscripted TV program, you know what that means.
Outside of the competitions, we also have the first blossoming of romance, as one of the women gets a case of the hots for a geek - who is not her partner. While it's not a dating show, you can imagine that the guys probably feel a little particular about their partner (she being the closest they've been to a woman in some time, by the guys' own admissions). In this case, the cuckolded guy keeps it together, a good thing given that they are one of the couples involved in the elimination. This love connection gets explored next week in more detail, which has me brimming with apathy. Too soon for the hanky panky.
Even so, the show is a model of restraint given the sorts of night-visioned scenarios Fox would have come up with for this. Though some of the couples do have to share a bed, so perhaps the natural inhibitions of the men (and the inbred prejudices of the women against geeks) are playing a role here, too.
The show has all the usual flourishes of a low-grade unscripted show, from the overly-dramatic music to the attempts at dramatic commercial breaks to contestants whose names I cannot remember for the life of me (though I do remember that one woman, Caitilin, pronounces her name "KITE-ah-lynn").
I can't say that Beauty and the Geek is a good show, but I can say that I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't a train wreck or produced in such a way to embarass the contestants (at least any moreso than their sometimes painfully frank descriptions of themselves). Future episodes seem to promise lessons learned by both beauties and geeks, and isn't this what we've been looking for ever since Gilbert Lowell argued for the end of nerd persecution?
As they've got nothing else to show this summer, the WB will be re-running the first episode tomorrow (Thursday) night. While I'd not say it's appointment TV, if you've got an hour and are by a TV when it's on, you could do worse things than tuning in.
2 comments:
Did you get a chance to catch Dancing with the Stars? I won't say it was great, but it wasn't as bad as I expected, and I think they need to give Evander extra points for not falling down, it seems hard to do spins when you're that top heavy.
OTC
I'd also have to think that Evander may have some balance issues after a 20 year career of getting hit in the head repeatedly.
I didn't get to see the show, as we were watching back-to-back travel shows on England and southern Wales. I'm not much of a ballroom fan, though I half-expected that the missus would want to tune in.
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