ABC got into the unscripted summer series fray last night with The Scholar, where ten high school students are vying for a full-ride scholarship to the college of their choice.
The show started by assembling the ten students and giving us a little background, though not enough to really help me keep everyone straight. At times I'd be watching and swear I was seeing kids who we'd not met before. Eventually, the students are brought over to USC to meet with the host (who is mildly toolish) and the "admissions board" that will make decisions during the show as to who makes the final challenge each week. Two of the three admissions reps are listed as being from "Ivy League" schools, which is vague enough to make me wonder if either (a) they are folks who previously worked in an Ivy's admissions office, or (b) their school of employ would rather not be named, in case the show is crap.
Anyway, the first challenge is a matching test to put moments in space exploration history with the year in which they occurred. The top two students (based on number correct and time taken to complete the test) become team captains, and pick students playground-style to fill out their teams.
The teams then face a group challenge, which this week consisted of running around the USC campus to solve brain teasers. The captain of the winning team gets a free pass to the final round, while everyone else has to meet with the admissions board, which will choose two of them for the finals. Those finals are kind of like the final round of The Weakest Link, with each person taking a question on turn in a given subject (19th and 20th century American lit for this week). You miss the question, you're out. Last person standing gets a seat in the finals and $50,000.
Based on last night's viewing, I can't say whether I like the show or not. It's refreshing to see an unscripted show that values intelligence, though the host and admissions folks seem a little overly-impressed at what the kids know (given that the students all have sky-high GPAs and all). The admissions board is way too self-important, bringing a little more gravitas to this than is probably strictly necessary. That and there's an Apprentice-style boardroom vibe that permeates their interviews with the students, which doesn't work at all.
I'd like to get to know the individual students better. Right know I only feel like I know the three finalists reasonably well. One of them, a kid from Memphis named Davis, is being set up as the heel. Many of his interviews paint him in an arrogant light, and most of his fellow scholars seem to have taken a dislike to him (based on things we never get to see).
The show is completely successful as advertising. The University of Southern California is getting a ton of exposure, and looks great. Intel, a major sponsor, had its name or logo mentioned or shown at least a dozen times in the episode. Hardly surprising, of course.
Future episodes promise non-academic challenges (going for the fully-rounded Scholar) and there's a hint of romance in the air between Davis and the one woman in the house who can stand him. I suppose I'll keep watching, in the hopes of this all becoming more interesting.
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