Beauty and the Geek 3, The "Reunion"
Beauty and the Geek 3, The "Reunion" by Dale Sherman -- 02/22/2007 The contest may be over, but there’s still enough juice left in the season to give us a reunion special. A lot of clips we’ve already seen, but some interesting tidbits that are worth looking at, including audition tapes and comments six months later from many of the contestants. Plus, the answer to why Nadia was in Drew’s shirt in the opening credits, who got married after the show was filmed, who got a puppy and who is still fuming (as if you don’t already know). Before we begin, fans of the show should check out our induction of Cecille to the Hall of Shame that we posted earlier this week, discussing how Cecille nearly tanked the season before being booted off. In fact, check it out first before reading this, as we’ll be coming back to that article in a few paragraphs here. Surprisingly, this reunion special did not have the contestants getting together in a big room to talk about things like many reunion shows. Instead, at most we got individual interviews with some of the contestants after the fact, with the exception of the many-times-promised-in-the-ads reunion of Nate and Jennylee. To kick off the program, however, was a look back at the audition tapes that got the beauties and geeks their spots on the third season: Cecille: Says she uses her looks to her advantage, “especially as a model.” So far, so good and sensible. “If I didn’t, then… what would I do?” Well, we can already see Cecille’s mind at work here and why she was picked. Nate: Talks about not using deodorant. Glad they didn’t show this clip before, because after it came up again in the show it may have looked like he saw this as a strong point about himself. Maybe he does. Jennylee: Mentions that she always has geeks coming on to her. So nothing new happened to her on the program, I would take it. Niels: Displays his “Love Light” while looking like he just escaped from the WonkaVision Room. The device is to use in the window of his place when romancing a girl there so that his roommate would know not to come in. He admits to never getting a chance to use it and good thing to – the thing is a freakin’ highway warning light! Why not just set off some roadside flares while you’re at it, Niels? Sanjay: Shows off his Computer Tech Championship Belt, which he usually wins every year for “fastest programming on the fly.” Of course, soon a young’un will come along, gunnin’ for him. Because that’s the way of the Oooooooold West! He also is fascinated by cloning as he would love to be in two places at once. But how can you do that when you’re nowhere at all! (Thanks, Fireside Theater!) Tori: When asked if she was traveling south and turned left twice, what direction would she face, her response is “Who?” Admits she had a boob-job to maker her “one size bigger.” Why do they call it A boob-job when we’re talking about two anyway? And what about these little packages of peanuts you get on airplanes… Piao: Turns out he wrestled in school, with a record of 5 and 30. He did beat a girl, but on points and not with a pin. Says he eats, sleeps, breathes and “maybe even dreams” about accounting. I doubt this is what Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is about, however. Sheree: When asked about the pi – the mathematical term, not Piao – she says she doesn’t understand all that algebra stuff. Nadia: Says she, like, loves shopping. Mario: Doesn’t know what Jimmy Choos is or are. How could he not know a great Chinese Restaurant like that? Estimates that he spent $25,000 on his comic book collection of 25,000 comics. Again, all US 1 #9, but --! (Aw, a great joke from the first recap; I couldn’t help repeating it.) He admits that it’s not really a great way to met women. Megan: Talks about flirting with a guy to get the last copy of video she wanted to rent at a video store. I could try the same thing, but you don’t want to flirt with people who’ve grabbed the only copy of Battle Royale in the store. Scooter: Does pi. Matt: Knows how to do pi a little longer. (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more) Andrea: Says she gets hit on a lot. Can’t name what Mr. Spock’s race is. That’s okay as anyone who has watched the British version of The Office knows, it’s a trick question. Erin: Doesn’t know who Mr. Spock is when asked the same question. When told he is a character from Star Trek, she says, “Oh! I hate that show!” Drew: Then talks about Star Trek, of course. The show flashes back to the moment where the contestants had their backs to the doorway of their respective rooms as one of the opposite contestants came in to tell a little about themselves. We see Sheree looking a little sick as she has to listen to Scooter talk about himself. Bet she’s kicking herself now over deciding to pass him up for Piao. The “Top Five Funniest Moments” on the show as picked by the cast appears next. They are: 5) The women trying to prepare their partners for the Auction Challenge. 4) Sanjay not understanding what “booty” meant. 3) The television interview challenge, including the girls messing up on the word “enigmatic” and rehashing Tori’s flubbed attempts (which she told us in an interview was edited to make it appear worse than it actually was). 2) Drawing the nude girl and Sheree’s reaction to Pi’s drawing. 1) Niels and Scooter hosing off at the farm. Wait. They thought that was the funniest thing on the show? Huh. Guess you can’t tell what people will think. Another flashback from the teaming-up segment in the first episode shows Sanjay trying to impress the girls by joking about how big his (bleep) is and how he always carries two-ply toilet paper with him. He them screams, “Boom-sha-ka-la-ka!” But he doesn’t do the dinosaur, sadly. For some reason in the first episode many of the women were scared of the guy after his introduction. Now we see why. Never-before-seen footage has the girls throwing kumquats at Scooter because “he’s so throw-food-at-him-able.” It’s cute because Scooter is laughing it off and seems to be enjoying it. Then Nate comes in and tells everyone in a serious voice to “calm down!” Not sure if he was just acting or if he really was a bit upset over the food-throwing, however. Viewers then see footage of several contestants dancing to some music on one of the rooms. Drew jumps in with some glow-sticks he has and it is joked that it turned into a rave. I could have joked here about ecstasy, but the heck with that – it did look like everyone there was having a good time, so why make fun of it? Clips are shown from the confessionals with Nadia and Erin trying their model poses, while Megan and Cecille talk about their big boobs. As for the geeks, they try doing impressions of the others. Niels does Piao by grinning insanely and it’s a bit spooky, really. Pi does Sanjay by saying “Yo” a lot. Sanjay does Niels with a wide-eyed stare and quick flashes of a grin. Nate imitates Drew by doing a hard-sale for an investors club like how Drew no doubt had already done with most of them by that point. Finally, Sanjay tries to imitate Nate and it looks exactly like Niels. In more footage that hadn’t been shown in complete form before, we see why Nadia appeared in Drew’s Star Trek shirt and doing the Vulcan salute in the opening credits. Turns out that she was so curious about the costume that she wanted to try it on. She was surprised to find there were shoulder-pads inside the shirt-top, but even more surprised to see that she actually didn’t think it looked that bad. It was still a costume, of course, but she enjoyed wearing it and runs off to find some of the others to show it off. She then asks out-loud what she was doing and Mario replies, “You guys are now the geeks and we’re the sheiks.” He makes it sound like they’re going to have a gang-war or something. A montage follows showing the women learning to succeed at studying and completing challenges, while the geeks get comfortable with being around others. It is a showcase of how the program helped the contestants grow and learn about themselves. This all leads into a review of the one contestant that the announcer states “refused to change”: Cecille. I could go into detail, but everything stated in our Hall of Shame award article that was online here at RNO long before the reunion special aired states pretty much exactly what is said and shown on the program this week. Just goes to show that it wasn’t just one reviewer’s opinion about how Cecille interacted with others and affected the show. A new clip has a bit with Nate and Mario talking about Cecille by themselves, where Mario says, “…We were eating dinner and she’s like, ‘I’m glad I’m not Indian because I hate Indian food.’ To which I thought, ‘Well, you should maybe try some dumb, crazy bitch food, because you’ll probably really like that!’” After Mario says this, Nate looks at him like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or defend Cecille. He finally tells Mario that he wasn’t happy with how Cecille handled being around the dog (again, see our Hall of Shame article), but doesn’t know what to say to her as “I’m not good at confrontations.” Which explains perhaps a bit more why he went behind her back to ask people not to vote for them instead of just telling her himself that they should not win the money. As one would expect, a segment of the program was turned over to the budding romance of Nate and Jennylee. Mixed in the footage is more of Nate sneaking out to say goodbye to Jennylee after she was eliminated and it really is a rather “awww, shucks” moment that is sweet. Uh… sweet in a masculine way, of course. Harumph. Of course, everyone – including myself – couldn’t figure out why they were acting like they weren’t going to ever see each other again once Jennylee was booted from the show. “It wasn’t like one of them is leaving the country or anything,” we would all gag. Then it revealed that Nate had to leave the country for two months to do some research for school. So he really WAS leaving the country for a while. Turns out we were right in the first place. Fortunately, it appears that the summer-camp romance may still be in swing as they meet up in-person again after six month. They hug and seem a bit awkward with each other, only to then head off to see some friends after talking about how they plan to stay close and see what happens as they are both “still single” for now. Could things still move on to something bigger for the two over time? Only time will tell. To wrap-up the show, several contestants are interviewed after six months to discuss what they’ve been doing and how they left the show. I was actually curious to see what Drew had to say, but unfortunately, he wasn’t one of the ones shown. Instead, we had the following contestants with their comments: Megan: Only remembers the hot-tub and realizes how terrible that sounds. Niels: Feels pretty different and found that he is more interested in how he looks while working hard to socially improve. Nate: Was shocked the most over the makeover challenge as he felt he put a lot of thought into how he dressed before appearing on the show, only to come out of it looking like a person he would make fun of in the past. Overall, he enjoyed the experience but felt he was still pretty much the same person he was when going into the program. Erin: Says she went into the show with the ideal that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” and came out of the show feeling even stronger about that ideal after being with the geeks. Jennylee: Feels she gained some awesome friends, “and hopefully no enemies.” Nadia: Says that Erin is one of her best friends now, talks to Megan and Mario a lot, and is still friends with “nearly everyone.” One of the names she doesn’t mention as still being friends with is – Cecille: The first comment heard from her is, “I have zero desire to see anybody.” In reflection, she felt that all the others were “scared of me.” So, as we all assumed about Cecille, she really didn’t learn anything from the experience and just got really paranoid about the whole situation. Instead, she ends her interview with a twisted comment that made it sound like she was the only one there to have fun while everyone else was so serious and nasty. As footage is shown of her seething in rage over not being picked by the others, she is heard saying the following nearly-incoherent, final response about how everyone needed to “Chill out a little bit and just have fun with it instead of being, like, ‘We need to teach them,’ like, who are we to teach anybody, like, right?” Sometimes it’s nice to see people go away, isn’t it? But the biggest change from appearing on the show came to Mario, who said the experience make him think about himself and realize that a girl back home was the one he truly loved. With a wedding photo appearing on-camera, Mario discussed about getting married to a good friend that he has known for ten years, who is a brunette and “smarter than I am.” As fellow writer Mike DeGeorge joked after seeing this segment, “Big congrats to Mario. Were they registered at DC or Marvel?” I would suspect Marvel because they could then do a seven–part series called Civil Unions! Ha. You see, Marvel is doing a series called Civil War and it’s a… cough… and what about these packages of peanuts you get on airplanes, huh? Seriously, congrats to Mario and his princess. The reunion special then ends with the winners of the show talking about what they did with the money the won. Scooter said that he put some of it into Drew’s investment club (so something did pan out for Drew there after all) and pay off some bills, while Megan said that she using the money to not work and bought herself a puppy. Well, $250,000 split two ways and then with taxes taken out can only get you so far, after all.