Consensus: Harvard Guy Way Too Cool for Geek
We’d like to say we stumbled upon Beauty and the Geek accidentally. Flipping channels before last week’s Bush speech, maybe, or stepping on the remote when we got up from a marathon session with The Nichomachean Ethics. But the truth is, we consciously blocked out a chunk of our Wednesday to watch this program. And it has been the most rewarding decision of our lives.
If you haven’t yet tasted the nectar, all you need to know is: seven knockouts, seven dweebs, zero flaws. The purported goal is to have everyone change by the end of the show, be it from hot ditz to sensitive hot ditz or from brainy shut-in to brainy shut-in with gelled hair. Whoever changes most — and displays a few token skills along the way — wins. But the real point, of course, is to exaggerate the guys’ social decrepitude while getting the girls to say the dumbest shit imaginable.
The latter quest: victory. As for the former, we’re not so sure, largely because of one Nate Dern, Havard ’07. Dern, as far as we can tell, has no business being on the show. One geek’s claim to fame is he “got a 1600 on his SAT.” Another “owns 25,000 comic books.” Dern started a Star Wars band. Oh, and he never wears deoderant. Which is gross, obvs, but the point is that he does original stuff assertively. And that’s exactly the problem. Everything “uncool” about him — and we can’t believe we’re saying this — is actually cool.
So cool, in fact, that everything he does feels a little calculated, like he’s out-smarting the producers. When the geeks had to paint a nude woman in last week’s episode, the art he produced was frighteningly creative. When he suggests cutting his hair into a mullet, you know he’d pull it off. Not to mention he’s a total extrovert. A friend of ours put it this way: “He’s nerdy, but in that hipster way so all the girls would do him anyway.” In other words, Nate Dern is a fraud.
Our prediction: Dern will make it far on charm, good looks and trucker hats. But he has way too many Facebook friends to win.
