Episode 2

Beauty and the Geek 3, Episode 2: She Could Spit in the Eyes of Fools... by Dale Sherman -- 01/11/2007 The geeks find that concentrating on the body isn’t the right tact in a somewhat bogus challenge, while the beauties navigate a tour-group through an air and space museum. In the end, it appears that maybe it’s the beauties that need to learn more about socializing than the geeks here. This, rating news, pieces left over from last week and our “Geek Peek of the Week” is just a click away! Last week saw us get hit with a two-hour premiere and a ton of information that naturally led to us – okay, me – being unable to add all the details that should have been noted. So, before we jump into this week’s show, let us turn back the clock for a moment to review some items pertaining to the premiere: Watched the premiere again with my wife over the weekend. As a librarian, she was amazed to see the perpetuation of the cliché that most libraries still use a card-catalogue, which was considered outdated even back in the 1990s. She then pushed up her granny glasses, stuck her pencil in her hair and silenced me with a finger to her lips. Oh, and then punched me in the stomach for perpetuating in the paragraph above the clichés of how librarians look. Seriously, she was a bit puzzled that the library had a card catalogue. Her first assumption was that it may have been a very small library used for the challenge, although the size of the place looked fairly large. I’m assuming that it possibly is a medical library, as a search on the web did not locate a McFaddin Library in Westwood, CA (although admittedly I was short for time on that search). It would explain why the two willing women who smeared suntan lotion on the geeks’ backs were wearing shirts that looked like common nurse apparel. Just a guess, however. Got some last names for a couple of beauties we couldn’t locate the first time around: Nadia Underwood and Erin Gibson. They both appeared with Drew and Megan on the WGN morning show last week. Thanks to Amanda for the assist on this! In watching the premiere again, I now realize that Sanjay bombed with his joke, instead of what I wrote. Well, I thought his gag was funny. What can I tell you? Forgot to mention that many of the beauties stumbled over the word "enigmatic" in the teleprompter intro they had to give. Then again, I don't know anyone that doesn't hesitate or stumble over that word when reading it out-loud. CW was no doubt happy over how well the January 3rd premiere did in the ratings. Sure, it may have come in at 88th place for the week, but a 2.2 and 6 share in the ratings with 4.9 million watching, was very nice to hear. Moreso, demographics were the highest ever for the show in the women from 18-49 category, with a 3.5 and a 9 share. Variety noted earlier this week that the number watching increased into the second hour, which also was a very good sign for the series. And to round things off, we have a new feature here for those geeks out there reading. It’s our Geek Peek of the Week, where we’ll be taking a moment each week to make a recommendation of some great item from a variety of fandoms that is definitive for said geek to own. For those who can’t stomach geek-talk, then I suggest averting your eyes for the next two paragraphs. This week in Geek Peek of the Week: If you’re a serious fan of Doctor Who that also knows enough to not take any fandom too seriously, then I suggest the About Time series of books from Mad Norwegian press (of which you can see the first five of the series released here). Authors Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood have done an excellent job in breaking down each story in the television history of the show from “An Unearthly Child” up through Colin Baker’s first adventure, “Twin Dilemma” (with promises of a sixth volume soon that will cover the rest of the original series up to and including the ’97 US movie). They do so with a quite satisfying layer of wit and information, looking at historical aspects of the time when stories were made to explain what the thinking process was of the creators, as well as trying to fit into canon (if I may be so bold as to use a term commonly reserved for Star Trek) things that “don’t make sense.” They also avoid unnecessarily dumping (well, for the most part) on stories typically seen as “bad” by some in fandom – thus, a fair and balanced look at the program. I bought one book in the spring of 2006 and have gobbled these up as soon as I could get a new one. Fascinating and fun; I learned things about the show I had never known, laughed at jokes that no one outside of fandom would get, and found interpretations of stories discussed that got me looking at some episodes in a new light. I really can’t recommend this series of book enough, and this is from a die-hard researcher who loves to read about details. Don’t expect pictures; just expect to learn something about the show you never knew before. While I’m at it, kudos to Mad Norwegian for getting Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons to do a sequel to The Completely Useless Encyclopedia with the brand-new Doctor Who: The Completely Unofficial Encyclopedia! I haven’t laughed so hard while reading in quite a while, and then have to just shake my head and explain to my wife that she wouldn’t understand, not being a fan of the show. I only wish they would get around to updating that Star Trek encyclopedia now. Anyway, everyone can stop staring away from the computer screen, as we’re about to move on to this week’s show! Last week we saw a stand-up comedy challenge for the geeks that had Nate easily winning, some like Mario doing swimmingly, and some like Piao just horribly bombing. Piao was lucky, however, as his partner Sheree won the television interview challenge for the beauties. In the end, it was Sanjay & Tori – a couple which had a huge amount of friction build between them, thanks to Tori’s actions in her television interview challenge – who were the first beauty and geek to leave, while Drew & Erin survived the Elimination Room and headed back upstairs to the others. Drew & Erin both felt happy with their time in the Elimination Room, as they believed they proved themselves to have more on the ball than the others may have suspected. Later in the evening, the camera shows Scooter playing chess in one of the room and then going upstairs. Once there, he finds himself being attacked by Megan and Cecille on a bed. Scooter is intimidated by their actions, and with good reason, as Cecille admits later in an interview that she “was never going to do anything to him.” Except toy with him like a sadist would with a starved, wounded puppy. Oh, wait – she left that last part out in the interview. Scooter, feeling something is very wrong with the whole picture, mentions that he has no plans to make-out with them as long as the cameras were filming them. Which is a good call, as you really don’t want to see a Scooter video peeking out on the video-store’s shelf next to Paris and Pamela, y’know? Cecille tries to remedy this by messing with the wall camera. Is there NOTHING she won’t toy with?! Heh. Couldn’t help saying that one. Cecille has trouble reaching the camera and trips, finding herself loudly crashing to the floor in a lump. It is loud enough for others to come running in to see what happened, while Scooter stumbles out in a daze, not ready to have his boundaries messed with at the time. Yet, y’know, I think Cecille learned something about herself today – that you must always be careful when you play with things as you might get hurt. Yeah, that was pretty much BS on my part, wasn’t it? Well, I like to see a moral every so often on the show. It’s clearly not here for Cecille, but you can’t blame me for trying. I believe all she may have learned is to get a ladder the next time. The next day, Mike Richards, Private Eye, arrives to tell the beauties that they are to learn about aeronautics for their challenge, while the guys have to get their heads out of the clouds and learn about appreciating women. The beauties don’t like the idea of learning about space and air, and are alarmed at the size of the research material they get. Megan jokingly offers up in an interview that the only thing she knows about space and air is that she is a member of the Mile-High Club, which is an unbelievably dangerous thing to do. I mean, it is nature’s number one way of getting bitten by a snake after all! (See Snakes on a Plane if you don’t believe me.) Drew can’t believe the girls’ magazines, wishing that he had a Star Trek magazine to use. Some audience members may be wishing that Drew got a smack in the mouth at this point to draw some sense into the guy. Meanwhile, Jennylee is worried that she’ll be forced behind the wheel of an airplane or out on the wing. I would think that the producers aren’t quite ready for massive lawsuit territory yet, however. As the girls go to the pool to study, the guys are inside cracking wise about the girls going to the pool to study. Now class, what’s wrong with this picture? Yes, that’s right, Susie – the PARTNERS aren’t studying together. They’ve all gone their separate ways. That doesn’t seem to be quite setting up the social experiment that the show should be about there. At least Andrea and Sheree are studying. Or, rather, gossiping, while Andrea explains how distasteful and unattractive Cecille’s actions were with Scooter and the camera the night before. The geeks decide that they’ll start the ball rolling on their challenge by cooking a barbeque dinner for the beauties. Most of them don’t really seem to know how to actually cook such a meal, but it comes off well enough that the women seemed flattered from all the work that the guys put into the meal. During dinner, Nate leads off a series of toasts from the guys by complimenting Cecille on her passion and “following her heart.” Cecille thinks it is sweet. She admits to not understanding anything Nate is saying, but thinks it is sweet anyway. After all the toasts are done, Nate tells a story about a school dance that charms most of the beauties, with many really enjoying their time with him. His partner, Cecille, on the other hand, looks completely bored with everything Nate is saying. Later in the evening, the blondes go to the hot tub, the geeks are somewhere else, and Matt is with Sheree and Andrea. They have covered the wall-camera and – no, sorry, nothing like that happened. Matt is instead studying with Sheree and Andrea for the challenge. Where is Sheree’s partner, Pi? It is never mentioned. The thing noted by all three in the room, however, is that it seems as if there are two vastly different groups of people clashing in the house and it’s the blonde beauties vs. the brunette beauties! Another day comes to pass and the geeks go into a room to find a series of easels arranged around a small platform. Mike Richards, attorney at law, arrives to tell the guys that they have twenty minutes to draw Sophia, a nude model who enters the room and drops her robe. The guys smile, mug at each other and mention her huge chest, but soon show frustration when the model won’t shut up talking and keeps fidgeting around. In essence, she is a poor art model and the guys cannot get any work done on their drawings, but are afraid to tell the woman to stop talking as they want to show their appreciation. They find themselves thinking more about getting the art done than just eyeing her, ironically enough. Twenty minutes later and the model leaves. The guys turn around their drawings and Nate’s is rather clever, with a series of “snapshots” drawings, showing a variety of images about the model. Meanwhile, Pi’s is obviously trying to go for some type of avant-garde status, with a drawing of a giant boob and stick-figures of men around it. It’s just odd, but credit for the attempt has to be given – at least he could say he was trying to appreciate part of a woman’s form. It’s not the best excuse, but I’ve seen worse excuses for such things hanging in art galleries. The rest are not very good, but with the thrashing about that the model made, that is understandable. After the model leaves, Richards returns to tell them that the challenge was not the drawings, but rather listening to what the model was talking about. Frankly, I have to come out and say that this was an incredibly bad challenge for the men. The guys are concentrating on their drawings of a model that refuses to sit still for them; WHY should they be listening to her? If you’re concentrating on doing anything at any time, do you really pay attention to the static noise in the background? No, you drown it out so you can get on with the chore at hand. It’s like if the beauties were to bake a cake while a guy keeps moving the cake-pans around on them as he talks about Star Trek. Would being able to talk about Star Trek show their appreciation of men? No, they would be angry that some nut is messing up their challenge. The challenge doesn’t really show anything about appreciation of women; it just shows that someone can do two things at once in a frustrating situation. Now if the challenge had been them actually TALKING to the nude woman and, without having taken notes, be able to win a quiz about what she had said – now THERE’S your challenge that makes sense of the whole “appreciating women” concept. Richard asks the geeks questions that are related to things the model talked about. The winner after two questions is Mario, as he figured out that the drawings were a trick and that all the talking by the model must mean something. Hence, he won because he knew the fix was in. In other words, there was no lesson learned about being appreciative of women, only to keep an eye out for tricks in the challenges. Thus, proving my point that this challenge didn’t work at all. Nice to see Mario win, however. Pi takes his drawing back to his room where Sheree sits. He explains what the drawing is and Sheree gets upset with him over glamorizing one body part instead of listening to the model to win the challenge. That is rather unfair to Piao, to be honest. Yeah, the drawing wasn’t a great idea in the making, but he didn’t know until afterwards that he was supposed to be listening to the model. The one thing that comes clear from what we see here is that Pi has problems communicating with Sheree and that Sheree is probably getting fed up with Piao as a partner. Mario takes his drawing of the model to his room and shows it to Nadia. Nadia at first thinks the drawing is of her and is creeped out a bit. Mario explains the nude model, relieving Nadia, and then tells her that he won the challenge because he had been listening to what the model said. It is not stated if he also mentioned that he knew that they were trying to trick the geeks there, but by that point it probably didn’t matter. Meanwhile, Andrea is upset because Matt lost and now she will have to win the next challenge because “it’s now blondes vs. Sheree and I.” Speaking of the beauties’ challenge, Nate asks Cecille how studying is going. She tells him that she is feeling confident … as long as they don’t have to do a museum tour based on the information. Cue the dramatic “Duh-Duh-Duhhhhh!” musical climax here. At the California Science Center Air & Space Museum, Mike Richards, soldier-at-arms, introduces Ken Phillips, the curator of the museum, to the con-*test*-('")ants. He then informs the beauties that they will be taking a small group of real tourists, along with Phillips, through the museum and presenting certain pieces to the group. Phillips will judge the beauties on how they do and then pick the best of the group as the winner of the challenge. Since her partner Mario won the geeks’ challenge, Nadia isn’t worried about her performance at the museum. Because of that, she does a very polished job and nails everything, making Mario feel secure that they will win the challenge. Andrea starts off well, but then blows it when she gets to the Viking Lander, and she knows it. Sheree impresses at first, but when talking about Sputnik, she points to a large satellite, ignoring the tiny metal ball hanging next to it that presented Sputnik. At that point, Pi figures that Sheree might as well pack, because they are sure to go to the Elimination Room. Cecille does a brilliant job… in getting everything wrong. She points to a helicopter as Yeager’s X-1 and talks about M*A*S*H as a learning point about the X-1 as well. She also has trouble spotting the Mercury Redstone Capsule, even though it is the big capsule in front of her in the room. Some of the others don’t do much better, with Jennylee pointing at a model of a supersonic jet as one used by the Wright Brothers, and calls the Mercury Red Star Capsule a satellite. Her worst mistake was with the Viking Lander that she says went to the Moon… or rather Mercury… or actually Mars… where there’s plant life. Her partner Niels states in an interview that at that point he knew they “were screwed.” Megan does okay until asked about how the Wright Brothers controlled their plane and gets more confused as the curator asks her more questions. She at least tries some gobblygook about “air foils,” which is still better than Erin’s guess at brakes being what controlled the plane. In the end, most of the beauties feel pretty bad about their chances as they group together to hear the curator’s vote. He picks Nadia, which thrills her and Mario. Andrea is seen giving her a look that could kill, on the other hand. No matter what anyone is thinking, Nadia and Mario now have to pick two teams to go to the Elimination Room. Back at the mansion, Nadia is seen getting pressured by the blondes on who she is going to send to the Elimination Room. Nadia is upset over it and Mario isn’t happy about the situation. He sits Nadia down and tells her that the blondes are people she met only a few days before and really shouldn’t be considered friends. In fact, Mario tells her that Megan and Cecille are the ones that should go to the room, as they have no interest in learning from their experience there and are only interested in being in the pool or the hot tub. In the next scene, we see Mario and Nadia in front of the others. Mario tells the others that they have decided to send Sheree & Piao to the room, while Nadia tells them that Andrea & Matt is the other team chosen. A camera-shot is inserted as Nadia names Andrea & Matt, showing Nate shutting his eyes in pain, while Cecille looks like a cat having just eaten a mouse. Upstairs after the vote, Sheree tells Nadia in front of the other women how upset she is that Nadia feel for peer-pressure. Sheree now sees it as not being about “beauties” learning from “geeks” and vice-versa, but rather about being in a clique and “looking cool.” As the women get dressed down by Sheree, Niels talks in an interview about the irony in how all the geeks get along while the women can’t communicate with each other and are fighting. The way Niels sees it, it is the beauties who seems to have the problem with socializing, not the geeks. In the Elimination Room, Sheree and Andrea answer their first questions about air and space without any hesitation and get the answers right. When Mike Richards, carbonate of soda, mentions their speed, Andrea slips in the comment that it was because “we’re the best two!” Richards is momentarily lost for words at that, while the camera in the other room shows some of the blondes looking at each other in surprise. Sheree and Andrea get their other questions correct and so the score is tied at 2 each. Pi misses his first question, but gets the second. Matt, however, gets both of his questions correct. Thus, Sheree & Piao have to leave the house. In the after-elimination interview, Sheree & Piao appear to have even more communication problems than Sanjay & Tori did in the first episode. At least Sanjay & Tori were socialable enough to hug. Here, Sheree & Piao argue with each other while staring at the interviewer; acting as if the other isn’t really there. Sheree feels that Pi didn’t show any willingness to change. Pi feels that Sheree thought it was all about “geek school” and kept lecturing him when they should have been helping each other. Sheree points out that Pi was rarely there for her to help study for anything (which looked to be the case when one notes Sheree studying by herself for the television interview in the first episode and then studying with Andrea and Matt in this episode). Moreso, when he did try to help, Sheree comments that Pi was giving her incorrect information on the planets. Sheree try to put a brave face on the situation, although Pi felt they were acting like a divorced couple. The idea of them being together in wedlock in order to cause a divorce was probably not something Sheree wanted to even think about, but she tried to be nice in saying that they were still friends. Yet Pi wouldn't let things go as they were and stated that "friends" was a very loose term for the two of them. Overall, it appears that Sheree would have benefited from a different partner – having won one challenge and showing herself ready to pull her weight to learn something and win – while Pi never much applied himself to the challenges in the show. Ironically, Pi turned out to be more like how Sheree and Andrea were referring to the blondes than the blondes were themselves. Next week, the geeks get makeovers.

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