King of the Nerds 3/6/15--"Invasion of the Nerd Snatchers" summary

Previously on “King of the Nerds”: Jonathan missed Heather so much he decided to volunteer as tribute if Team SMASH lost the Nerd War, which ended up being about forensics and crime scene science. SMASH lost, partially due to a failure to read directions which is sad. The “suspects” in this crime were all classic horror movie monsters, so Lily got the idea that the Nerd-Off would be about classic horror movies. Amanda knows classic horror, so then Lily took it upon herself to get Amanda to volunteer instead of Jonathan. I’m a little suspicious of Lily’s motives here, because it seemed like a lot of work on her part just to get rid of Colby. Everyone listened to her, which is dumb, but it worked in their favor because they DID have to know classic horror movies for the Nerd-Off. And then Colby was eliminated and it was a sad time. (click for more)

Everyone jumps up and down with Amanda because she won. Humph. She brags that now she has confidence. Everyone discusses how to do the sleeping arrangements since they had been sleeping in teams. Ben interviews that it’s every man for himself, because you can’t trust the alliance anymore. Sure, I guess. He promises he’s a threat.

Lily tells us she’s sick, and no one cares. Before her team would be nice to her, but now that it’s all individuals they won’t coddle her. Amanda says maybe she got bitten by a zombie. Ben is annoying about it, I guess because he’s still trying to get in Lily’s pants. Curtis and Bobby call them outside and they’re wearing “astronaut” outfits. Not real outfits but sci-fi outfits. Curtis says Bobby lost the keys to the spaceship. Hee. Aliens have overrun the spaceship and so they’ll have to battle. The team banners drop, since there are no more teams. Jonathan says it’s kind of sad, since they put a lot of effort into Team SMASH, but they lost a lot and weren’t a very good team so, eh. Winner gets immunity. You have two hours to study “everything remotely nerdy ever.” Yeah that’s not helpful.

Jonathan thinks the fact that he has a doctorate is helpful, because he knows how to study. Lily, Raychelle, and Amanda don’t have that same experience. Yeah but Amanda is a “bookworm” which still hasn’t been clearly defined but I’m going to assume she at least reads quickly. Ben and Kaitlin have doctorates too. Amanda is still confident, even though she has the same opinion as Jonathan, that the people with doctorates have an advantage.

The challenge begins and…everyone is standing in coffin-type deals made up to look like alien eggs. So there are tall piles of green balls and probably slime, with everyone’s heads sticking out of the top. Bobby and Curtis will pick categories, and then the contestants will take turns naming things in that category. If you lose you get blasted in the face with “alien queen acid”. See I told you there was slime. Two blasts and you’re out. The winner not only gets immunity but will pick one of the people to go to the Nerd-Off. Not sure how many people in the Nerd-Off since it’s a double elimination.

The first category is “Top 100 highest grossing superhero movie titles”. They don’t even get down the whole line before Lily says “The Hulk” and loses. That movie was terrible. “Drivers in Mario Kart 8”. Jeez. They actually make it around more than once, but once all the big names are gone Kaitlin can’t name anyone else. Aww. “Constellations”. Amanda says “Orion’s Belt” and gets hit. Was she the first one? Come on, Amanda. Well then Raychelle gets hit right away on the next one so I think maybe they’re editing this down so we’re not here all day. Jonathan misses on “’King of the Nerds’ contestants” which is mean. After five categories Ben hasn’t been hit once, while everyone else has. Ben says he feels dry. Heh. Category six is “Plays of William Shakespeare”. Nice. They get pretty far, until Lily says “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. Lily. Whatever. Bye Lily. “First generation Pokemon”. Amanda knows her only chance is to beat Kaitlin at this, because the other three are all fans. Jonathan makes a Pokemon joke in confessional and then has to say it’s funny because no one gets it. This round seems to go on forever, until Amanda finally fails, blaming her parents for not letting her play Pokemon. “Spells in ‘Harry Potter’”. Nice. Jonathan can’t even name anything even though only one person was in front of him. “100 best sci-fi and fantasy films”. Kaitlin says “Event Horizon” which makes no sense and she’s out. There is a montage of everyone else in confessional, listing movies that Kaitlin could have said. Yeah OK “Orion’s Belt is totally a constellation”. Now we’re down to Raychelle and Ben. Not who I wanted to have immunity. The final category is Weird Al songs. Ha! Ben fails finally, so it’s not the final category since this is Ben’s first loss. Actual final category: “Great Houses of Westeros from ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’”. Jeez again. Ben comes up with something, but Raychelle has nothing. Come on Raychelle. I could come up with one House, which is not the one Ben said, and I’ve never read the books or watched the show. So Ben wins immunity. Yay. He also gets a “robot sculpture”.

Then! Bobby and Curtis tell Lily and Amanda that since they were the first two people out, they run the risk of being eliminated right now. DUN! So that’s how they are doing the Nerd-Off with a double elimination: they get rid of someone now and someone else in the Nerd-Off. I didn’t particularly want Ben to get immunity but I’m perfectly fine with either Lily or Amanda going home. One last category: “Elements on the Periodic Table”. HA! Amanda says that in Nerdvana there was a whole table with the periodic table on it…and she covered it with a puzzle. Oops. They get pretty far but then Amanda says “sulfate” instead of “sulfur”. Lily hates to send her home, she says. Bye Amanda.

Ben will pick one person for the Nerd-Off, and the other four will vote for the second person. The robot sculpture is just a little figure but it’s cute. Kaitlin says if she was Ben, she’d put herself in. But she’s pretty sure he has no idea what he’s doing yet. Kaitlin points out she’s the only person left in the house who has survived a Nerd-Off. Jonathan tells Ben he’d put in the biggest threat. He has no control over Ben, but he seems confident that he has control over the girls. Kaitlin is still convinced Ben’s voting for her. Jonathan interviews that if he’s going in, he wants to go against the weakest person. But he doesn’t say who he thinks that is. I guess he tells the girls this idea, because Lily tells the others that they’re going to vote for her because they all think they can beat her. Oh, I get it. No one knows what Ben is doing. Therefore it’s in your best interest to vote for the weakest person. That way if Ben votes for you, you have a better chance of winning. Jonathan reassures Lily that there are several topics she could do really well in. Lily interviews that it makes good strategic sense even if it’s not “honorable”. No one cares about honor, Lily. It’s a game. And you are supposed to be a cosplayer and you failed the cosplay challenge, which makes you a weak player. Raychelle says she has no trouble sending in a strong player (assuming Ben does the same) and getting rid of a strong player, but once Lily leaves the room, Jonathan is like “We’re voting for her right?” and everyone agrees.

In the morning Jonathan is still talking about voting for Lily, but Kaitlin says that since Jonathan has shown more than once that he’ll do anything to save himself, she’s not convinced he’s still sticking with this plan. Oo. So because Jonathan flipped on his alliance, then went back on his word that he would go to the last Nerd-Off, now his word isn’t any good with Kaitlin. Interesting. Also I love you Kaitlin for making this observation in terms of gameplay and NOT honor. Kaitlin goes to Raychelle, who also seems to be questioning the Lily plan, and says that if Raychelle wants to vote Jonathan, Kaitlin’s sure she can get Lily to also vote Jonathan. Raychelle can only trust Jonathan as long as it strategically works for him. Raychelle doesn’t know who to trust. I only see Raychelle as slightly stronger than Lily, so it’s not like Kaitlin’s situation where she feels this is a smokescreen Jonathan’s put up so he can get rid of her. That makes sense. Who is voting for Raychelle? I don’t particularly see her as a threat. Maybe she’ll surprise me. The girls go to Lily, who thinks she’s getting the vote. Kaitlin says she doesn’t know, as does Raychelle, and then Kaitlin tells Lily she’s “more OK than [she] think[s]”.

Jonathan tells us that right now he is pretty sure Kaitlin and Raychelle are voting for Lily. Oh, he has no idea. Ben votes for Raychelle. Interesting. Raychelle just finished telling everyone she thinks she has a target on her back for coming in second. Ben says that he knows everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses, but Raychelle keeps pulling information out of her ass which is a problem. OK I can see that. She’s an unknown, and if you feel confident you can beat the other three you want to be sure about things. The other vote is really weird. Lily gets a vote, then Kaitlin, then two more votes for Lily. So what was all that from Kaitlin and Raychelle about Jonathan? Didn’t they tell Lily to vote for Jonathan? Why did Kaitlin tell Lily she would be OK? That was a low move. I mean, I don’t like ideas of “honor” and whatever but that was so unnecessary. That whole conversation was unnecessary if you two were going to vote for Lily anyway. Lily knows she’s the weakest player currently. Raychelle says Lily’s the only one on her level and she doesn’t want to go up against anyone else right now because they’ll cream her. The Nerd-Off is to play “Pocket Nerds” which sounds like a strategy card game.

Lily says “Pocket Nerds” looks like Stratego. You get 16 cards with different characters and different point values. You move the pieces and then if you end up on a square that has one of your opponent’s pieces, you fight and the highest point value wins. So sort of like chess, without the pieces having different rules for how they can move. Ben is playing Lily, and Jonathan is helping Raychelle. Not sure where Kaitlin went. Jonathan promises to help Raychelle decide on how she’s going to set up her board at the beginning, as Lily is interviewing that she plays Stratego a lot.

Of course the real Nerd-Off involves a life-size board. Lily is planning to use sort of low-point-value pieces to scout out where things are, and Raychelle sounds like she’s trying to take as many of Lily’s pieces as possible. Kaitlin points out that all the pieces can move except the flag and two “containment spheres”. So after a while you can narrow down where the flag has to be, because it won’t move. Lily loses a piece, but now she knows what piece that is since they tell you. On the next move Lily removes that piece (also we find out if you have two pieces with the same point value, the one that attacked is the one that wins). Lily thinks she is knocking out a good piece of Raychelle’s, but she was wrong. Now Raychelle knows where her highest-point-value piece is, because Lily wasted it. I mean it’s still there but she didn’t have to reveal her best piece. The three people not playing are discussing the game which is fun. Raychelle is carefully moving two pieces: her best piece and one of her worst pieces. She’s using a shield so if Lily takes her worst piece, she can attack with the best and take out Lily’s best piece. She’s also pretty sure she knows where Lily’s piece is. Raychelle makes a move and then says out loud that she made a mistake. She can’t take it back, though, and loses her worst piece that I think she was using as a shield. Then she forgot where Lily’s best piece was, because she was so flustered, and lost another piece. Lily goes on a rampage and takes a bunch of Raychelle’s pieces. So I think your lowest-point-value piece can beat the best piece, which is why Raychelle had one moving around, but then she moved it to take out the wrong thing because she forgot where she needed it to go. So now there is nothing around Lily’s best piece. It looks grim for Raychelle until she realizes the only two pieces she has left are decent pieces, and the only pieces Lily has to defeat them are nowhere near her flag. So if she runs for Lily’s flag she has a chance. Lily is confused, and decides to just run for Raychelle’s flag. So now they’re racing for each other’s flags. Lily says she has to decide if Raychelle is playing like every player ever and put her flag on the back line with shields around it, or did she do something crazy and put her flag randomly in the middle? She guesses right and wins.

Raychelle made a big mistake, and I don’t particularly like Lily, but I also don’t know what Raychelle brings to the table. Curtis tells her that while she’s eliminated, she is staying here with all the rest of the eliminated contestants, who all come out right now. There are hugs. Blah. So there are four people left: Lily, Ben, Jonathan, and Kaitlin. Each eliminated contestant will pledge allegiance to one of these four, someone they want to help move forward into the Final Two. Jonathan knows he backstabbed some people which could hurt him. I dislike making this a popularity contest. Hopefully it’s not terrible.

Next week: the finale!