I hate to admit it, but Beauty and the Geek is becoming one of my favorite shows.  I’m really happy that the show made it on for another year, and right now I’m in the middle of the two-hour first episode.

For the uninitiated, BATG takes geeky guys and matches them up with ditzy pretty girls.  Generally it goes like this:  a geek and a beauty form a team, and they compete in tasks that test the social abilities of the geeks and the intellectual abilities of the beauties.  Teams that lose get eliminated and the winning team gets a quarter million $.

This is one reality show in which casting means everything.  The show works best when the geeks progress socially and superficially, and the beauties are able to learn and overcome their egos.

It’s hard for the geeks, because they look and dress pretty badly, and really don’t know too much about social graces.  And the beauties are usually very very stupid, sometimes pretty arrogant and without a foundation of book knowledge, it’s hard for them to learn pretty simple things.

It’s also important to ensure that the contestants are real…it’s pretty easy for a girl to act really ditzy, but really be decently smart, and that girl will have a huge advantage over genuinely dumb girls.  There’s also a difference between girls that are actually not very smart, and girls that are smart, but just don’t know about ‘geeky’ topics like science and politics and math.

BATG is so great because you really get to like some of the characters…and hate others.  And although it’s kind of cheesy, you actually do get to see these people grow.

What’s interesting is that for the most part, the geeks are pretty civil to each other, even though they’re really competing.  A lot of the geeks approach the game as a learning experience rather than a money winning opportunity, and that makes the show more genuine, I think.

The story with the beauties is a bit different.  Girls are usually pretty competitive with each other and there is a lot of backstabbing going on.  Last season, the deal with the girls was blondes versus the rest, and the blondes quickly eliminated all the non-blondes.

The show is pretty funny…and true, a lot of it is ‘watch the dumb girl and geeky guy.’  But the show remains relatively fresh with different tasks that force the geeks to learn social skills and the beauties to learn intellectual activities.

And of course, the beauties are all pretty hot.  Like, hooters waitress and playboy model type hot.  That makes the show fun to watch as well.

The guy’s this year?  One guy is a LARPER, which stands for Live Action Role Player, i.e. dungeons and dragons live with fake swords and stuff.  Another guy runs a rubber band club, and shot a cup off a girl’s head, which was actually pretty impressive.  The geeks are also very very smart - like, the guy who won last year was MIT smart.

Anyway, this year looks pretty good.  The show is on CW on tuesdays.  Check it out!

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