King of the Nerds 2/20/15--"Nuclear Nerd Games" summary

Previously on “King of the Nerds”: the teams had to make up songs about being nerds. This season actually wasn’t as painful as previous seasons have been. Colby knows how to rap and I thought Team SMASH did really well. However when guest judge Moby was obnoxious Heather yelled at him which was probably a stupid move. Or they wanted to keep the teams even. Team Hooloovoo won.  Kaitlin approached Jonathan about having a cross-teams alliance, because Amanda, Ben, and Lily suck ass at keeping their secret alliance a secret. Jonathan told Kaitlin that she and Raychelle could team up with him and Colby, and then he would have an alliance with every single person playing this game. No one mentioned how Raychelle reacted to being put in this situation, or if Kaitlin even mentioned to her that she was apparently double crossing the secret alliance. SMASH voted for Ori, and Hooloovoo voted for Colby. Ori even voted for himself which was weird. The Nerd-Off involved putting busts of scientists in order by birthdate so of course Colby won. Bye Ori. (click for more)

Colby is better for the team but also more of a threat than Ori so feelings are mixed. Colby knows he’s a threat and everyone thinks so. Raychelle thinks everyone is all friends. Sure you can think that. But I don’t think it’s true. Curtis and Bobby call everyone out and tell them that before the internet, nerds still existed. Someone brings a huge box and Bobby says he ordered some nerds for the challenge. The Nerd War is to battle in nerdy party games. What does that mean exactly? Each team gets a “celebrity nerd” to help them. Curtis tells them to study but no one opens the box which irritates everyone.

Amanda takes control and asks everyone to list their holes in their “nerd vision”, like for example she doesn’t know anything about video games. Hooloovoo is goofing off. I mean Lily is flying a drone around. The teams realize they can go hang out because they have no idea what the games are about, so they don’t know what makes an advantage. Ben realizes five of the six people in their alliance are now together, since the teams are mixing, so they have a business meeting. Jonathan knows someone from their alliance has to go to the Nerd-Off, because only Colby and Kaitlin are left outside the alliance and they are on different teams. They’ll have to really think about who can beat either Colby or Kaitlin and keep the alliance intact.

Hooloovoo gets to pick a box, but they can’t see who is in it yet. They end up with Penn Jillette, who busts out of the box and orders everyone to shove over on the couch. Heh. This means SMASH ends up with Rachelle Lefevre who was in “Twilight” and I guess “Under the Dome”? I really really was hoping it was Teller. There will be three “classic” party games. Most points wins. Clearly.

Round One: Name That Nerd. Each team picks a captain, and then everyone else is shown a famous nerd and they have to use single words to get their captain to guess. Hooloovoo immediately looks at Ben, which is dumb but then again, if it’s pop culture stuff he probably knows it. 10 points for each correct answer you can get in two minutes. Penn says he’ll be blinking out the name in Morse code. Heh. Ben is actually really good at this, but when you have Bill Nye and one person says “science” and someone says “guy” you should get it. But he only seems to need two or three words per person. They get Shatner and Raychelle tries to say nipples. Instead of finishing the “star” that Lily started. Come on. But then it takes like, three more words for someone to say “Kirk”! That would be the first thing I said! Ben ends up with 14 names for 140 points. Nice. Colby goes up for SMASH. Penn tries to send bad vibes over. So I guess you have to have each person on the couch say their words in order, because when Anne Rice comes up Jonathan flails and Colby flails back that he should pass. Someone says “Eureka” for Isaac Newton. I think it’s Amanda. Come on Amanda. Colby is super serious and people make fun of him but he got the job done and also earned 140 points. So now there’s a tie.

Round Two: Pic-So-Nerdy. Hee. Another two minutes, this time to hope someone has artistic skills and can draw things. They’re taking turns drawing which is interesting. Guest Rachelle gets stuck with “invisible jet” which is mean. Jonathan says he’s worried about Colby, for good reason because he gets “bow tie” and completely fails. He can’t even draw a proper bow tie. Then it says time’s up so I guess you only get a maximum amount of time per person? He says that’s why he went last so he might only have to go once or twice. Good idea. They get up to 280 total points, with seven correct answers so I guess each answer is worth 20 points this time. Lily thinks her whole team is good at drawing. Raychelle is up first and gets “batarang” and fails. She draws the cowl but they think it’s a cat and eventually Penn gets Batman but time is up. Lily gets “Delorean”. Ha! She starts going “oh God” and Penn casually responds “there is no God.” Hee. She draws a terrible car and then a clock and I think Ben goes clock-clock tower-“Back to the Future”-Delorean. OK that was good. They get 8 answers so they are leading by 20 points.

Round Three: Panto-Nerd. Acting! 30 points per correct answer. Colby is really impressed with how great guest Rachelle is at participating and everything. “Harry Potter” is easy but then Jonathan gets “Back to the Future”. Ugh. Somehow he pantomimes driving and like, a watch, and Colby makes the jump. Colby has to lie down on the floor and do the chestburster so someone can get “Alien”. Hee. Rachelle gets “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. Ha! I love that show and I don’t even know what you would do for it that other people would get. She passes. Heather gets “The Neverending Story” which is another hard one. She mimes a baby? And a book? The book I get. She tries to explain in confessional that you have a baby and you name it after the book. What in the hell are you talking about Heather? Turns out all of that was aimed at Amanda, who named one of her children Atreyu. First of all, Amanda, don’t name your children dumb things. And second, those things don’t work when you can’t explain what you are talking about. Also Heather refers to Amanda’s child as her “loin product”. Final score for SMASH: 490 points. Hooloovoo needs seven correct answers. Kaitlin gets “Walking Dead” and doesn’t act out zombies, but they get it eventually. Kaitlin has to pass on what could have been the winning thing and then Lily gets My Little Pony and so Hooloovoo wins. They do the whole thing in slo-mo which is obnoxious. They win “an ultimate tabletop pack” but Penn gets nothing. “When do I get a bedroom?” The girls laugh that he can share their pods and then they’re all flipping their hair which is weird. I mean I like Penn but weird. Rachelle volunteers as tribute for SMASH. Hee.

There is a HUGE pile of games for Hooloovoo. Amanda is already crying about voting someone out or being up or whatever. Interestingly the boys go to comfort her and somehow Heather ends up excluded from the group hug. She says it always sucks but I know you aren’t always sad. Also she says that if Hooloovoo votes for Colby then she has to choose between Amanda and Jonathan. Does she have all the power? At dinner (or lunch, it’s not clear) someone says good job and one of the girls is like “Don’t talk to us about it”. Come on now. I know you lost and it’s the end of the world apparently but don’t sulk and be bratty when someone tries to say something nice. Lily asks if they’re doing “improvisational Star Wars” tonight and Ben says they’re doing what all normal American families do: repressing their feelings and eating a nice lukewarm meal. Ha!

After dinner the alliance of six (minus Ben for some reason) meets to figure out what to do. Amanda says she, Heather, and Jonathan are going to vote for Colby and they want the other three to pick one of them to get the vote. Heather complains again that she can’t choose between Amanda and Jonathan. Jonathan hates this strategy,  I guess in the sense of how “I can’t pick so I will allow myself to be in danger of getting the vote because that is how strongly I feel about not picking” isn’t a particularly safe strategy. But as Lily quickly points out, they don’t know what the Nerd-Off will be and they need to pick someone who can beat Colby, which is nearly impossible when no one knows what skills they’ll need. So it’s a crap shoot anyway. Lily is asking everyone’s opinions. Jonathan has no idea, but suspiciously the girls both think Jonathan can do it. Oh, I see, HEATHER, “I can’t possibly pick, except I totally can.” Will you just own your shit? I am all for backstabbing and betraying people, except when you cry and tell everyone you love them all and you can’t choose and they have to be nice to everyone all the time. Then you’re a hypocrite. Amanda isn’t much better, with her protests of “I’m not being humble or conniving but Jonathan is better than me” and then when Ben is like yeah sounds good she goes “Well make it happen”. Meanwhile Jonathan is talking to Raychelle, who says she won’t vote for him, but that being said everyone else IS voting for him. Jonathan thought he had Kaitlin, but Raychelle says Lily is doing it for sure so therefore Ben is going with Lily. Jonathan has the same reaction to Heather and Amanda that I did. He goes right to Kaitlin and tells her all about the secret alliance that she half-knew about. He actually draws her a diagram which is hilarious. But the advantage of the diagram is to provide a visual to show that if Jonathan and Raychelle bail on the alliance they will be four and four. Even distribution. Seriously, to say “I can’t possibly decide” but then have no problem saying “Jonathan should get the vote” isn’t the worst thing, but when you’re going around acting like everyone’s mom and that you are the morality police? How exactly do you justify that lie? Just backstab him and accept that’s the cost of doing business.

At breakfast everyone is awkward and silent. Heather would be sad to go home, but I wouldn’t be sad if she went home. SMASH holds hands again at the thing, which is dumb but I guess if it makes them feel better. I’m sure it’s all Heather’s idea. Team SMASH votes for Colby, even Jonathan. Colby’s kind of annoyed but I think he recognizes it’s smart game play. Hooloovoo…by unanimous decision…votes for Heather. Nice! Kaitlin says Jonathan owes her, and he smirks but I think he deserves to. Heather cries and then has the balls to say she couldn’t pick between Jonathan and Amanda so she opened herself to being voted for. PLEASE. You chose. You didn’t want to ADMIT you chose, so instead of telling Jonathan that you and Amanda were voting for him you tried to make the other team do your dirty work for you and it backfired. In confessional she’s crying that she generally doesn’t care about people this much so it’s weird that she came here to sling her morals around. At least she knows she’s doing it. The Nerd-Off is something about going into the future and saving the last party game: “Nuclear Nerd-Off”. That is the vaguest statement ever. Colby says if you can beat him then you deserve to stay anyway. He believes the other team would have voted for him, if his own team didn’t, so he’s not that mad.

Heather says the Nerd-Off is puzzles, which is pretty vague. Sadly all of Hooloovoo is over with Heather, except for Kaitlin. Colby’s own team is helping Heather? Boo. Hilariously Kaitlin told her team she was going to mess with Colby so they wouldn’t be mad at her. She runs to tell everyone that he’s really slow with Sudoku, I guess so they’ll be fooled? Kaitlin wants Colby to win to break up the Heather-Amanda duo. No matter what, whoever comes back will think Kaitlin is with them. She asks Colby if he comes back, to tell her team she was useless and distracting. Hee. I would love a Colby-Kaitlin final two.

There is a bizzaro Double Dare obstacle course set up outside, and Bobby is dressed as someone from Mad Max. Colby quotes, because Colby is awesome. So it’s a hockey mask, with glasses over it, and Bobby gets tired of it so he flips it up and he’s got his own glasses on his face underneath. I don’t know why but I thought that was hilarious. Inside the tubs and “nuclear waste” are 28 letters for a word jumble. Not Sudoku? Hmm. Heather looks smug. First to finish wins. Colby is looking at the puzzle to start thinking of words as he’s looking for letters. Not every word is blank, so for example it says “Send ____” which is a four letter word. So you can probably guess a bunch of it before you find letters. In the tubs and stuff are like, feet, and gears, and random trash. Heather says something about how you need all your letters, so there’s no point in starting until you have them all. I guess, but I think Colby’s strategy of thinking of words is good because then when you get all your letters, you will be able to throw them up there really quickly. Heather decides she’s too short for the barrel so she physically climbs into the barrel to try to get the pieces at the bottom. I have to give her props for that.

Colby’s assembling already, and Jonathan thinks this is the best way to solve the puzzle. The more time your brain can work on the puzzle the better. Colby quickly figures out the words, but doesn’t have the pieces. Heather seems to have the pieces, but hasn’t started putting anything in place. Colby is missing one letter, and he’s looking for it and then I’m HORRIFIED because it’s in the pile of body parts and trash he’s discarded. Nooo! Thankfully for my sanity he quickly decides it’s not in a barrel and maybe it’s in the pile of trash. And he already knows the answer is “Manhattan”, because the Manhattan project and radiation and mutants. But then he hits the buzzer and he’s spelled it wrong! And then unlike the last game he has to wait thirty seconds. WHAT. What is this stupid penalty?! This is bullshit. Amanda tries to encourage Heather and Heather tells her to be quiet. Because everyone has to be nice and never hurt anyone’s feelings, except for Heather. The bell rings for Colby to get back in and Heather still isn’t done, so she fails. Yay! Colby is like, keep coming at me bro. Group hugs all around except Colby does not participate at all. Jonathan says that if he had been as loyal to Heather as she was to him, she wouldn’t be gone? What? She wasn’t loyal to you, she threw you under the bus. Amanda’s going to win for Heather, or whatever. Also she’s out to get Colby but she’s been out to get Colby so whatever to that also. Bye Heather. I will not miss your moral superiority.

Next week: something about horror movies.