King of the Nerds

When I saw the first teaser for the TBS reality show "King of the Nerds" I was a little excited. Here, at last, was a reality show that would have an edge of intelligence, include challenges I would be able to fairly judge, contestants I could identify with and subject matter I could geek out on. I was so looking forward to it that I set my DVR up to series record so that I would never miss a moment, and then I watched the first episode.

So let's start now with the cast of characters of this show:
9 specialized nerds that fit the stereotypes: 3 Science/Math nerds, Girl Gamers (an Asian descent and a bubble gum pink hair), A real life Sheldon Cooper with slightly less self-enthusiasm,  2 Female comic book fanatics(a novelist and an annoying girl), A "superhacker"

and two actual relate-able and likable Ivan, a game developer and Moogega (Moo-ja-gay) a Planetary Protection Engineer who went to college when she was 16.

Oh, and the hosts: Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong, both from Revenge of the Nerds. So far, the only thing the show got right. 

I was expecting a more well-rounded case, with less specialized nerds and more what I would call, successful/ everyday nerds that were relate-able and not so annoying. Really, knowing reality TV, I should have known better. But hey, I'm optimistic sometimes.

The first challenge,  was every loser-nerd-not-so-popular kids worst moments in high school: Time to choose the teams.

Oh wait, there are 11 contestants. That means SOMEBODY ISN'T GETTING PICKED.  There definitely won't be a twist there, right? And it certainly won't escape the notice of 11 really smart nerds, right? Wrong. Of course there was a twist, and of course, everybody was surprised. My faith in these people is now pretty much completely gone.  Predictably, the so far most annoying and least qualified contestant, Alana(one of the comic book fanatics), was not chosen. She was then asked to choose which team was the strongest, she chose orange, so they placed her on Blue. Yeah, she hasn't been set up to fail.

So, the climax, who is going home? Well, each team chooses someone to go into the"Nerd War",  which was a giant , outdoor game of chess. The pieces were moved around by a harajuku girl in a slutty lolita outfit, which would be awesome except that the camera only followed her and we had NO IDEA what was actually going on in the all-important game of chess. That is until, Alana gave some really bad advice to Hendrik(the real-life sheldon cooper who has never played chess apparently) and he lost. Not exactly sure how he lost, since we never got to see the board, but there you go.

So all-in-all, it doesn't really matter how awesome the hosts are, how nerdy the challenges are, or how many amazing guest judges this show throws at us. It is, first and foremost, "Reality TV", produced not for its feigned target audience of nerds, but instead for its actual audience of shut-in tv addicts that don't really care at all about the content.

3 stars of 10. A generous mark for such a disappointing debut