I wouldn't have been upset with any of them winning. Ivan, Celeste, Genevieve, and Danielle are the final four with three Nerd War challenges for them.
Ivan's lack of coordination has him finish last in the maze race, so he's out. No Chicken Panda celebration.
Danielle lagged behind Genevieve and Celeste in trivia. Genevieve & Celeste both reach 5 points to advance to the final challenge.
The 9 losing Nerds reunite to vote for the winner. Danielle was NOT going to vote for Genevieve. I think Celeste's humility won her the 5 votes. She's earned it. Danielle's crushed about losing and Genevieve took being second in stride.
Celeste Wins the $100K (& Royal Regalia)!
The 2nd season starts in 2014! I hope I don't forget.
Live blog recap. Hopefully I'll send questions to both Genevieve and Celeste soon.
I was pretty disappointed with the finale events. Segways through a fully visible maze, a (statistically insignificant) handful of trivia questions, & then a popularity contest vote? Blech.
The academic brainiacs didn't need to be there at all, did they? The TBS catchphrase promised "challenges that test their intellect, ingenuity, skills and pop-culture prowess", but the intellect & ingenuity was sorely lacking. There was a lot of early voting emphasizing getting rid of the "really smart" people, but that never became a topic. Granted, Team Differential Equation Solving wouldn't make for an engaging TV game. However, some MacGuyver / Mythbusters / Zombie Apocalypse Survival sorts of problem solving would have been useful. They had that whole Radio Shack tech lab -- did they use that for anything other than costume decoration? No point in recruiting sci/tech/eng/math nerds if it's all going to be comics & thumb-eye coordination. :-)
So, overall, it was cute, but needs more nerdiness.
Originally posted by emmaI was pretty disappointed with the finale events. Segways through a fully visible maze, a (statistically insignificant) handful of trivia questions, & then a popularity contest vote? Blech.
Yeah, i was hoping for something like a decathlon of nerd challenges for the final, not a vote. Weak.
Moog and Danielle were out so i really didn't care who won, but i'll take Celeste over Genvieve
Originally posted by emmaI was pretty disappointed with the finale events. Segways through a fully visible maze, a (statistically insignificant) handful of trivia questions, & then a popularity contest vote? Blech.
THIS.
No way Celeste should have won. When it came down to Celeste and Genevieve, the ending immediately became ant-climatic for me. Genevieve and Danielle was the matchup everyone was wanting when it came down to choose from the final 3.
Celeste was the only one to not participate in a Nerd-off challenge, and when it looked like she might actually get picked for one, she begs and cries to weasel out of it.
So once it gets down to Genevieve vs. Celeste, it's a no brainer. Genevieve is the clear winner on how she performed throughout the shows. Shouldn't even be close.
But no...the winner becomes a popularity contest. Celeste was nicer so she is deemed the winner by the majority vote.
The show is called "King of the Nerds", not "King of the Nicest Nerds".
Bad ending to a show I really enjoyed watching.
(edited by Kevintripod on 15.3.13 0350)
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill
Okay. As far as the final episode is concerned, I have a few thought to pass along:
To begin with, seriously, thanks for your input. One thing I won't do is discuss the final vote, because some people haven't seen it yet but also because I won't express my personal opinion about who deserved what for which reasons. That is a luxury fans and viewers can enjoy. As an exec. producer and co-host, I think my opinions are best kept to myself and are irrelevant, anyway.
I confess when this approach for the final episode was first proposed, I had no issue with it. While I cannot speak for anyone else, my understanding was that the final episode would be a kind of mirror image of the first episode. The show began, remember, with two names picked, literally,out of a hat. The nerds then, as a group, had to lobby the two team captains as to why they should not be banished, with the understanding that one nerd would not be picked. The nerds had to pick who would stay---essentially, a popularity contest.
So we come to the end, we have the nerds again gathering at the fountain and being told that this time, instead of them as a group petitioning the two team leaders, it would now be the two remaining nerds petitioning them. In the first episode, two nerds remained, one of whom would be banished. In the last episode, two nerds remained, one of whom would win.
Of course, in the first episode, viewers had no stake in who stayed and who didn't. By the last episode, when we were down to the final four, viewers were polarized, with each of the final four nerds having their own partisans. Emotions would run high no matter who won. And after all those weeks together under those circumstances, there were bound to be some emotional decisions among the nerds themselves, as proved to be the case. But voting was not something thrown into the last episode because we were stuck for an ending. Voting was a part of the show from the first minutes of the first episode and had been part of every episode thereafter.
The question of whether the vote was the best way to crown our King is a good one. After all, Kings traditionally aren't crowned in a democracy. Clearly, some people were bitterly disappointed. But it did have the sentimental value of reuniting the nerds (a plus, in my view) and of ending the show, in a sense, where it began. I'm not defending this way of choosing the King of the Nerds, merely explaining it. Season 2, to mix a metaphor, will be a whole new nerd-ball game!
While voting as a deciding method isn't ideal, I'm fine with it. KotN isn't a sport and as a part of the reality genre, I lower my expectations for the show a bit. I'd like to see the final challenges in 2014. Somebody's going to cry, "Rigged!" no matter what.
(e.g. Best-of-X and it's tied before the final challenge. I've seen it happen over and over on Hell's Kitchen. On the other hand, would one Nerd sweeping the challenges be more exciting?)
I accepted the voting process since canvassing was already part of the show. I know that the Nerd-Off process didn't actually decide the loser, but I wasn't thrown off by the popular vote. I'd have more of an issue with the five voters who weren't convinced of Genevieve's skill after winning three Nerd-Offs. Or even Genevieve herself if she lacked the people skills to curry the Nerds' favor.
I'm thinking of the penultimate episode. Moogega volunteered herself to the Nerd-Off. Otherwise, Celeste would've been pitted against Genevieve. If I were in Danielle's, the Nerd with immunity, position, I would've considered sending Ivan instead. There's no way that Genevieve, already won two Nerd-Offs and is Danielle's object of revenge, vs. Moogega be a "fair" matchup.
Only in theory would Moogega have an advantage, and she wasn't exactly acing the physics quiz.
If there has to be a decathlon-like series of events at the end, TBS should spare the producers an extra episode or two for the next season.
Originally posted by JALmanTBS should spare the producers an extra episode or two for the next season.
Yeah...the show seemed to end very abruptly. I was very surprised when I read on the television guide it was the last episode. Just felt like there should have been at least a couple more episodes.
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill
I have my issues with Jeph Loeb's original plot, the dialogue and characterizations, but overall I liked the movie, especially the second action-packed half.