King of the Nerds - S2E8 - Crowning the King
Previously, on King of the Nerds: “Angry Nerds”
The final four. We’ve come down to Xander, Jack, Kayla, and Brian.
Xander dresses himself in something called a doublet. He should be crowned king simply for his outfit. He says if he’s going to win, he wants to win “Xander Style”. He does look adorable. Brian does a great Gollum impression, even though he’s clearly a hobbit. Though, wasn’t Gollum a hobbit of some type at some point?
Today’s nerd war involves nerd-related questions. The first two who answer enough questions to move up into the winner circles go into the final two. There’s no chance to go back inside Nerdvana and brush up on their knowledge. The game immediately starts. They choose a level of difficulty and a category for that difficulty. I won’t go through all the questions and answers, but there’s Justice League questions; science questions; plant farts; and oddly enough, a question about Zack.
Jack is the first into the winner’s circle to the surprise of everyone else. I think I’d like to be friends with Jack. But anyway, Kayla is the second one into the winner’s circle. Brian and Xander are not immediately banished from the grounds as the losers typically are. And on top of that, the others are back. Kayla freaks the fuck out, but I can’t remember half their names anymore.
The Nerdliminator is the name of the final nerd-off that will crown us our king. The banished nerds that have returned are to petition their allegiance to Jack or Kayla, so they can choose them as teammates. But before that, the nerds party. Party to them means drinking what looks like Tang out of wine glasses, trying to stand on their heads, and shooting Nerf guns at each other. Oh, these people are fun.
They gather outside where the banished nerds announce their allegiance. Some to Jack, some to Kayla. Kayla gets herself 5 back-up nerds and Jack only 4. Fair enough, I guess, considering there is an odd number by design.
So, the Nerdliminator consists of 8 different puzzles. Pop culture math, Sudoku, logic, spatial problem solving, Pac-Man, and so on. Zack and Kayla have 20 minutes to complete the Nerdliminator, and they may call on 3 of the other nerds for help. The one who completes the most correctly wins. This is exhausting just looking at it. It also looks fun. I love me some puzzles.
Kayla is baffled by a few of the puzzles and just skips ahead to the word finder. So does Jack. Good method. Solve the ones you can first, then go on to the ones you struggle with. Kayla calls in helpers, but Jack seems to want to solve things on his own, even though he’s struggling with all of them, except for Pac-Man. But who can’t defeat a level of Pac-Man?
They both call on all of their teammates to help them. They finish, the scores are tallied up, and the winner is… Someone that apparently shocks Xander…
… Kayla!!
Kayla is certainly super nerdy. However, she did very little to make it to this point. People are typically voted into nerd-offs based on their threat level to everyone else. Kayla was never voted in because she was never seen as much of a threat. I think the process of narrowing down a king is faulty, and I had hoped they’d change it before this season, but alas, they have not. Kayla is not undeserving; I just feel others probably worked harder and/or had more opportunities to prove themselves. But as things turned out, not a bad choice for nerd king. Everyone claps and cheers and hugs and is genuinely happy for her. I like this.
