Has anyone else seen this? It aired last Thursday on TBS. It's a reality TV competition with a nerd theme. I usually stay away from the genre (alright, Hell's Kitchen is sometimes a guilty pleasure…), but I'm interested in how the show plays out.
Two teams battle in a series of games. Before that, there is the picking of team players with one contestant left out. There's a Throne of Games (har, har) involved and the big prize is $100K. The first game's chess with life-size pieces.
Spoiler Below: Highlight text to read
The player not picked, Alana, got to choose who she felt is the better team. She picked the Orange Team. The other team, Blue, had two contestants to play chess for elimination. Alana is then moved to the Blue team.
Hendrik, the most awkward and nerdy guy there, thankfully loses the chess match to metalhead Jon. It would've been cruel watching him struggle.
There may have well been a checklist for competition cliches/tropes:
Hosts whose heyday is long gone. (Revenge of the Nerds stars, Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong)
Smug "villain" (Virgil, the highly-skilled hacker)
At least the two team captains, Ivan and Genevieve, seem to be the most level-headed. Will the KOTN powers-that-be include an athletic contest as a "shocking swerve?"
Hosts whose heyday is long gone. (Revenge of the Nerds stars, Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong)
Armstrong hasn't done much live action work in a while (his whole part in Shanghai Noon was cut), he has been doing voice work on American Dad for the last 7 years or so. Not high profile, obviously, but it's not like he was doing it because he was not working.
Thanks for the write-up because I'm going to check it out now just because he is a host. I've been a long time fan of his and I thought he was better as Charles in Better Off Dead than as Booger in RotN.
-- 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year -- -- July 2009 Ordained Reverend --
The commercials gave me a bad feeling about it (that it was just going to be "Let's make fun of these nerds"), but the reviews I've read seem to indicate that this isn't the case. I might give it a chance.
"I'm pretty sure [Andre Caldwell]'ll do a lot more with Manning than he did with Andy Dalton." - StaggerLee
Hosts whose heyday is long gone. (Revenge of the Nerds stars, Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong)
Armstrong hasn't done much live action work in a while (his whole part in Shanghai Noon was cut), he has been doing voice work on American Dad for the last 7 years or so. Not high profile, obviously, but it's not like he was doing it because he was not working.
He's also the title character on Dan vs. on the Hub.
Originally posted by LlakorMaybe I misread it, but what you say in the spoiler and what you say on the larger review about which team Alana picked seem to be contradictory.
Thanks for checking that. After rewatching, I edited the erroneous OP spoiler above; I had a fuzzy memory about the confusing Nerd-Off rules.
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