King of the Nerds season three! Let’s go! So King Kayla has gone to Mars, but space madness has taken over her mind and wanting to maintain her reign, she attacks Nerdvana, BUT… The elder nerds have stepped in to save the throne enabling a new batch of nerds to compete for the crown as Kayla succumbs to space madness on Mars. And what a lovely group of nerds they are! After assembling on the lawn of Nerdvana, it’s time to pick teams, BUT FIRST… Future Curtis and Bobby have a message – The players absolutely cannot be allowed to pick their own teams this year; they have decided the teams and Present Curtis and Bobby must use the lists given to them by their future selves. So!
On the GREEN team: Amanda, Colby, Heather, Jonathan, Ori and Jacob; on the BLUE team: Ben, Kaitlin, Lily, Raychelle, Thomas and Todd. And it’s time for our first Nerd War of the season and it’s a GREAT one! Each team must build a steampunk inspired Rube Goldberg Machine!!! I freaking LOVE these things. Did you ever see the show Chain Reaction hosted by the Mythbusters or have you played Mousetrap? If you have, you know what a Rube Goldberg Machine is and each team must build one that will raise their team flag and announce their team name. Each machine will be judged on functionality, engineering and creativity and they have 24 hours to build them, but as soon as they enter Nerdvana all thoughts of the pending Nerd War are abandoned on the lawn because #nerdgasm, they are all in Nerdvana!
Rube Goldberg machines are long forgotten, by most, because of the glory that is Nerdvana and as they tour the house, people are mingling. In one of the bedrooms, Amanda, Heather, Colby and Jacob are hanging out and Amanda has a question for Colby: Is he going keep his Jeopardy champ fame under wraps? Nooope! It’s not really a secret that he’s been on 11 episodes and won $375,000… Finally the group settles in the living room and does an official meet-n-greet, Ben is pretty sweet on Lily by the way, and all the chatter chatter chatter is starting to get to Nasa engineer, Kaitlin. They can talk about ponies and comic books later – they have machines to build. Taking matters into her own hands, Kaitlin asks the group if they can get started on the challenge and everyone gets to work.
In their separate War Rooms, (and staging areas), the teams go over the list of items available to them and discuss the building of their machines. On the blue side, Kaitlin has taken the reigns as task manager and while Raychelle is a little put off by the iron fist attitude, she doesn’t seem to be letting it bother her too much. On the green side, Ori isn’t as helpful as everyone thought he would be since he’s a mechanical engineer and the ladies on his team are less than impressed with his sense of humor. A joke about not hearing Heather because she’s a woman did not go over well; the women aren’t too offended, they don’t think Ori is a misogynist, but they now consider him to be their weak link. Away from Ori and under a table, Amanda is with Heather, Jonathan and Jacob and suggests they all put him in the Nerd Off if it comes down to that. Back to blue at 3 am… Everyone is a little worried about the progress they are making. Some of the elements of their machine sorta work, but some of them are not working at all. And Todd is getting too old for this stuff… At twenty six… Really, Todd? Really? We’ll have a chat about that LATER… In the morning, Jonathan lets us know that he’s feeling pretty good about the green machine, but he has no idea what to expect from the blue team. About that… They’ve burned out the motor in the fan they planned to use to raise the flag so Kaitlin has to figure out a whole new element to their machine with only an hour to go until the deadline. Using a mousetrap, she rigs up a new trigger to raise the flag and really hopes it will work because it’s on her if it doesn’t.
Time for the Nerd War! Let’s meet our judges. First up: Adam Sadowsky the man responsible for the Rube Goldberg machine used in the Ok Go video “This Too Shall Pass. Next up, actress and genius Danica McKellar and finally, much to Raychelle’s pleasure,True Blood actor and comic book author, Michael McMillian. After the judges are introduced, Curtis reiterates what the machines will be judged on and states that each team my reset elements that fail up to three times, but only have one minute to do it. The green team is first to set off their machine. After a little background story from Jacob, Heather sets off the first element and right away – A fail. They reset and it’s smooth sailing to raise the flag. The green team name? S.M.A.S.H – Supersonic Masters And Slayers of Hordes… I’ll be calling them SMASH. And yes, green team, the watermelon smash was very cute and clever AND it’s green, you’re the green team, the HULK is green and we all know what the Hulk does…
Now… I think SMASH had a very fine machine and a great presentation, but the blue team, I’m sorry, BLEW them out of the water presentation wise, pun intended. Lily is an old-timey reporter and Todd is dressed up as the typical old-timey villain complete with trench coat and moustache. It’s very theatrical and it’s GREAT. I love it. Their machine fails once – because of THE MOUSETRAP, but they don’t skip a beat with the story. Their team name? House Hooloovoo… Todd can explain the meaning of the name – it’s from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now it’s up to the judges to decide on the winner and they are all impressed with the efforts by both teams. Michael’s vote is for Hooloovoo and Danica’s is for SMASH so it’s all left to the hands of the expert, Adam and he’s feeling particularly smurfy – Hooloovoo has won the first Nerd War. In addition they have each won a comic con survival kit from Think Geek!
So SMASH has lost and two of their members will go head-to-head in the Nerd Off. In their bedroom, the team has a little pow wow about the fact that one of them will be leaving Nerdvana. Ori doesn’t think his team will vote him in; people don’t usually have a problem with him unless he’s incompetent… Or if he tells really bad jokes… Jacob feels safe also because Colby has a big ol’ Jeopardy Champion target on his back and he’s pretty sure the blue team will vote for him to go to the Nerd Off. While they are talking, Hooloovoo is checking out their awesome gear from Think Geek and the topic of who to vote into the Nerd Off is quickly tossed aside – they can talk about that tomorrow. Tonight is reserved for fun! They’ve got drinks and slushies and cool nerd toys to play with so all that game talk can be saved for later… Ben’s mind is still in the game, though. He suggests to Ori that maybe the cosplay girls should be targeted. The next day; however, Amanda assembles the ladies. One of her goals is to create an alliance between the girls on both teams. It’s already looking like it is boys against girls so it is in all of their best interest to get their teams to put up guys; preferably Ori and Colby. Back with their team, Lily and Raychelle get to work on their men. Ori is already a target for SMASH and they want to keep the green team unstable. Ben pushes for Heather, one of the cosplay girls, but Raychelle suggest Colby instead. Not a bad idea, but it’s too obvious…
To the Throne Room! Since Nerdvana is in distress, the Throne of Games has been hidden away in an underground bunker and after letting the nerds get a good look at it, Curtis and Bobby reveal the votes. In a vote of five to one against Colby, Ori has been voted into the Nerd Off by his team. He’s a little confused, but he’s going to do his best. Hooloovoo choice is revealed next and it is unanimous – Jacob is going to the Nerd Off and he’s completely shocked. On the blue team, Lily is visibly upset. Curtis asks her to share her feelings: She’s with her team and they feel they made the best decision for their team. SMASH needs a little more of an explanation than that, and Thomas begins to speak, but Lily quickly advises him to not say anything and he doesn’t. House Hooloovoo has accomplished their mission of causing chaos within the green team. The boys bend a knee and we learn that this week’s Nerd Off is called Nerdzilla. Curtis suggests that the boys study up on anime, manga and some other kind of Japanese graphic novel/animation form that I am not familiar with then the nerds are released.
Back in Nerdvana, Kaitlin doesn’t understand why everyone is so upset – there are so many bleeding hearts on her team. They made the right choice; picking Jacob left the green team totally dismayed. They are playing a game, duh, and this is part of it. Meanwhile, SMASH is busy advising their team mates. Ori feels very confident. He knows the material very well. Jacob, on the other hand, is very worried. He works in a comic book store, but he’s not very familiar with what’s popular and what’s not in the anime/manga category. Raychelle, Jonathan and Colby have his back, though. Colby doesn’t know a lot about the material, but he’s very good at retaining information and he’s ready to help Jacob as much as he can.
Nerdzilla approaches! For this Nerd Off, Jacob and Ori will be quizzed and for each correct answer they can destroy a section of very, very Little Tokyo. The first one to answer four questions correctly will earn the right to destroy the factory and the loser, as always, will be banished immediately. Both boys get the first question right and commence with the destruction of their first section of the city. The second question yields the same results and the second section of both cities is toast. Question three, though, puts Ori one up on Jacob, leaving him one question away from destroying the factory and after Ori pulls a Leroy Jenkins on his third city section, Curtis reads the next question. Both boys give the same answer and Jacob is really hoping they are both wrong, buuut… they are both correct and Ori has won this Nerd Off.
So Jacob has left the game and House Hooloovoo’s plan of keeping Ori in Nerdvana to cause friction within team SMASH was totally successful. Raychelle says their dastardly plan makes her a bad person, but it also makes her good at playing this game. And she is exactly right! I think we’re going to see a lot more social game this year and I think the blue team has a leg up on their competition. And these ladies!!! The boys better watch out and so should Kaitlin. It’s okay if she’s not a people person, but no matter what anyone says about King of the Nerds – it’s not all about testing intelligence and quizzes and games about Nerd Culture – there is a social aspect to this game and her stoic attitude about this experience is probably going to hurt her. I hope she opens up to it a little more. Yes, it’s a game, but the experience is worth far more than $100,000… And if she doesn’t lighten up and have some fun, she’s going to put a HUGE target on her back.
King of the Nerds airs on TBS on Friday nights at 9/8c and check out Knights of Nerdvana! There is also lots of other content here at Your Reality Recaps for you reality TV nerds like me. We’ve got plenty of Bachelor coverage from Dana, blogs & recap videos, Bravo shows and Survivor: Whatever They Are Calling It… (Worlds Apart – that’s what they are calling it) starts in a month (I’ll be posting about that cast in the next few days)! Until then… Please do all of your Valentines Day Amazon shopping by clicking here – it doesn’t cost you any more and it really helps support what we do here. Thanks, loves!
