The only really successful reality/competition shows involve a lot of sexual tension between attractive people.
The biggest loser is maybe the only exception. But it involves a supposedly unattractive person becoming a supposedly attractive person, so there's that.
All the other ones involve attractive people. Their intelligence is irrelevant. If this show doesn't include that, it's doomed.
Coincidentally I am watching Dara O Briain's show "School of Hard Sums", in which brainiac Irish comic O Briain and his otherwise-gifted fellow comic solve problems abstractly and practically, given to them by a mathematician.
It is improbable the US could come up with a similar edition in quality, but I doubt American audiences would care. Money has been spent on more stupid and futile efforts.
I understand @1 is being cynical, but to provide one counter example: America's Next Top Model. Or Project Runway. Or Face Off, which is apparently successful enough for SyFy that in Jan they're running the 4th season in 2 years.
Competitive reality TV shows are like drawn out game shows. And I love game shows. I'll give this a shot, but I'm out if it's all misogynistic reddit types.
@6,
Yeah, but Top Model and Project Runway both revolve around attractive people and making people look attractive/glamorous. I'd never heard of Face Off before so I googled it, and after scrolling past that terrible, terrible Nicolas Cage fiasco, I saw that it's also a show featuring attractive people.
I just think the networks and cable channels believe, probably rightly so, that most audiences want to see hot people all the time.
So they better have some competition where the nerds have to calculate the weight displacement of models swimming in pudding or something.
I believe this shows a profound misunderstanding of the word "nerd", but seems like an otherwise acceptable product that will most likely go largely unwatched by me.
@7 As opposed to non-reality shows, which never feature attractive people? I don't disagree with your assessment that it's tiresome to see the same type of faces in media, but it's not a reality-specific thing.
Who knows? If I catch any of it, I'll judge it then. It could turn out to be something kinda cool, or it could be patently offensive nerdsploitation bullshit like Big Bang Theory. Like @12 said, that show is horseshit and if this is a spiritual follow-on, then fuck it entirely.
@16,
No, it's definitely not specific to reality tv. I think it's just more obvious in reality tv... where you can tell some of the shows "stars" are there ONLY because they're attractive and have zero talent.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's an interesting concept and I'd probably check it out. But I also know I'm not the standard demographic tv execs look for in choosing programming (e.g., I despise both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars... still the two most popular shows, yes?)
I'm interested in what, if anything, they'll do to try to make it gender-equal... I'm guessing nothing much, given the title of the show, but I'm wondering if they'll even let any women compete. I think we're all more or less aware by now of the misogyny in nerd culture (h/t @3 and @6!), but I'm curious to see how much of it TBS will allow/perpetuate.
@19, the episodes I've seen, entirely apart from just not being particularly funny, relied pretty heavily on jokes about stereotypes of women, various races (holy shit, the treatment of the Indian guy's parents was so fucking racist), academics generally, and, of course, people on the autistic spectrum. You can enjoy all that if you want. It doesn't mean you're not a nerd. It just means you're an asshole.
The biggest loser is maybe the only exception. But it involves a supposedly unattractive person becoming a supposedly attractive person, so there's that.
All the other ones involve attractive people. Their intelligence is irrelevant. If this show doesn't include that, it's doomed.
It is improbable the US could come up with a similar edition in quality, but I doubt American audiences would care. Money has been spent on more stupid and futile efforts.
Hey, I heard a good one recently: What did the nurse say to the Puerto Rican quadriplegic in the rape crisis center?
Competitive reality TV shows are like drawn out game shows. And I love game shows. I'll give this a shot, but I'm out if it's all misogynistic reddit types.
Yeah, but Top Model and Project Runway both revolve around attractive people and making people look attractive/glamorous. I'd never heard of Face Off before so I googled it, and after scrolling past that terrible, terrible Nicolas Cage fiasco, I saw that it's also a show featuring attractive people.
I just think the networks and cable channels believe, probably rightly so, that most audiences want to see hot people all the time.
So they better have some competition where the nerds have to calculate the weight displacement of models swimming in pudding or something.
Or rather, I would, if I gave a damn.
No, it's definitely not specific to reality tv. I think it's just more obvious in reality tv... where you can tell some of the shows "stars" are there ONLY because they're attractive and have zero talent.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's an interesting concept and I'd probably check it out. But I also know I'm not the standard demographic tv execs look for in choosing programming (e.g., I despise both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars... still the two most popular shows, yes?)
And oddly, no fat ones. Ballparking it based on PAX attendees, that reduced the size of their nerd pool by at least 80%.
So I'm an asshole how?