King of the Nerds 2/27/15--"Murder at Nerdvana!?" summary

Previously on “King of the Nerds”: we had party games that were actually kind of fun. Hooloovoo won, which seemed lame but whatever. The secret alliance knew someone would have to be in the Nerd-Off because there are not enough other people left, but then Heather was all “Oh, I could never choose between Amanda and Jonathan! You guys choose!” And then she went right over to the other team to tell them to vote for Jonathan. When he found out he flipped on his alliance (along with Raychelle) and brought Kaitlin into his plans. Kaitlin got her team to vote for Heather, meaning she got Lily and Ben to ignore the girls. Heather went up against Colby (of course he got voted in because he could win this whole thing) and then Heather lost so now she’s gone! Yay! (click for more)

Amanda both irritates me by saying Heather is a “once-in-a-lifetime” friend and then makes me smile with “just because she’s eliminated doesn’t mean she’s dead”. It’s true. Jonathan seems to feel that he could have beaten Colby, so if he hadn’t tried to save himself Heather would still be here, plus Colby would be gone. Pff. Whatever. I guess you liked Heather but you need to be playing to win. She turned on you. Colby knows no one wanted him to win except for Kaitlin, so when people tell him good job he says (respectfully) that he’s in a bad place and needs some time to process. Lily says she totally understands. It looks like everyone respected that decision. Jonathan declares he wants to go up in the next Nerd-Off if Team SMASH loses. You idiot. Well, it’s your funeral.

Kaitlin says she’s going to check on Colby “for the harmony of the house” or whatever. Mainly because she wants to reassure him she’s on his side. He respects that she broke up the Amanda-Heather power couple. Everyone else has decided to play “Improv Star Wars” which seems to mostly involve everyone yelling at each other. When Colby comes in, he’s like “um, pass” with a barely-concealed eye roll, and Raychelle goes to talk to him since he’s by himself, to “teach Colby all about how Friendship Is Magic!” Jesus, seriously? Team Colby. Colby interviews that he doesn’t know what the hell he is going to do there, at “drunken improv Star Wars”. Because he’s not laughing at this buffoonery. Hee. Raychelle grills him about how he is totally bad at social stuff, and is he bad at it or does he not want it? Shut up, Raychelle. Harassing someone about how they don’t want friends badly enough is never going to turn out well. She tries to spin it like they don’t want to exclude him, except that I’m pretty sure he excluded himself from your shenanigans and doesn’t care if you ignore him from then on. At some point they stop the dumb Star Wars game and like, Ben bugs him about how they all know what it’s like to be on the outside. Jonathan asks him to please tell them if he feels excluded, which I think is sincere. Not that Ben isn’t sincere, but you just tried to get rid of the guy twice, so he’s not particularly excited to hang out with you and I don’t blame him. He came in from the other room so I think you have to be content with that. Colby interviews that he appreciates the effort, but he’s not about to join the improv Star Wars any time soon. Hee.

Bobby and Curtis are in deerstalkers. Lily is willing to say “Cumberbitches” but Raychelle is not. Pom-Pom Kitty died. Suuuure. Bobby has a French accent so I think he is supposed to be Poirot and not Sherlock. They will all be detectives to find Kitty’s murderer! Then there is a “Nerds & Murder” screen like “Law & Order” which is always fun to mock.

There are three sections? Parts of the challenge? At least one of them is a CSI deal with blood spatter and DNA and stuff like that. Actually I think that the blood spatter is one challenge, and hair is another. The teams have study materials. Colby is going to do whatever it takes to win, because he doesn’t want to be in the Nerd-Off again. Jonathan tells the room that with Heather gone there are a lot of feelings but they’re here to win. You aren’t going to confront Amanda with her betrayal? Just don’t bring it up then.

There’s a room with a window and blinds, and Curtis pulls up the blinds to reveal the five suspects: vampire, mummy, werewolf, Frankenstein’s monster (THANK YOU for not calling him “Frankenstein”), and the invisible man (hilariously a hat and sunglasses hanging from the ceiling with fishing line). There are two rooms, one for each team. First to figure out who did it and how wins. There are four stations, DNA, hair, blood spatter, and fingerprints. I mean I guess we’re ignoring the part where the invisible man has invisible hair, and the mummy won’t leave fingerprints, and so forth. Jonathan whines that Amanda is useful but not a leader, and Colby is angry so he is not helpful. You shouldn’t miss Heather. Both these labs are dark which seems stupid. SMASH wastes a ton of time because they didn’t read the directions that said the fingerprints are next to the dots on the evidence. So once this test is done correctly, you tie each suspect to a weapon/item at the scene. SMASH finishes but then didn’t keep track of where they got the fingerprints from? They are disorganized? Sounds about right. Bobby is telling each team where the other team is. If you’re going to whine about being the leader, Jonathan, maybe actually be a decent leader.

Blood spatter involves dropping blood from a height to measure the size of the spots and figuring out who is lying about what. Ben compares himself to Jerry Orbach which is false. Get out of here with that. So two people are telling the truth and are eliminated as suspects. If you put in the wrong answer you have to wait two minutes before you can try again, as SMASH discovers. Hair analysis removes one more suspect, and DNA analysis is finding which weapon has Kitty’s DNA on it using DNA fingerprints. Nice. SMASH fails again. Meanwhile Hooloovoo is two stations ahead and wins easily. Colby knows if he is going to avoid the Nerd-Off he will have to “Jedi mind-trick” team Hooloovoo into voting for Amanda, since Jonathan already declared he would go to the Nerd-Off like a big dummy. Bobby brings the werewolf into the lab and it was Pom-Pom Kitty all along! But she doesn’t say “I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!” which is a fail. So it is NOT “just like Scooby-Doo”, LILY. Hooloovoo wins robotics kits.

Kaitlin is excited about her new Roomba. Jonathan says he will still honor his dumb promise. You know what, if he is a poor enough player to put himself in danger like that then fine. Go for it. Lily tells Amanda that she thinks the Nerd-Off will be about “classic horror fiction” because of all the suspects and how the Nerd War and the Nerd-Off are always related. Except for Rube Goldberg machines and anime. And nerd anthems and Indiana Jones. This would mean Amanda might be in the best spot to win, since she has a book blog and is a “bookworm” or whatever and loves horror. Lily wants Amanda to go up against Colby, because she might win, but Amanda points out they aren’t that sure that’s what it’ll be about. Plus Jonathan already offered to sacrifice himself so why would Amanda say or do anything to change that? I wouldn’t. “But what if it’s a horror character Nerd-Off and Jonathan goes home?” Then Jonathan goes home and you DON’T GO HOME. It’s not hard to understand. Since this doesn’t work, Lily goes to Jonathan to tell him this theory and I guess help him start studying now? Jonathan is like “I thought someone here knew a lot about horror? Whatever never mind.” Lily is so quiet during this statement that I think she makes her motives clear. Jonathan doesn’t know shit about classic horror. But you know Amanda does. But instead of telling that to Jonathan and trying to get him to convince Amanda to go up so they can beat Colby, instead Lily is helping Jonathan study and not saying a word about Amanda. I think Lily has decided to get rid of Amanda and this is her master plan for all of this. If so, she’s doing pretty well. Ben blows up her spot though and says Amanda really likes horror.

Amanda and Jonathan talk about Lily’s idea and Amanda says she’s not 100% confident in this idea. Jonathan knows also he’ll take a big pride hit if he ends up not going. Amanda says if she beat Colby it would be one of the proudest moments of her life. “And I’ve had kids and like, gotten married and stuff.” Yeah I’m sure your husband and kids feel really great about that. Jonathan would feel like a wuss if Amanda beats Colby, and a total jackass if Colby beats Amanda. But in either situation he survives another week.

So the next morning the completely insane plan is revealed. Hooloovoo is voting for Colby. Amanda and Jonathan are currently discussing which one of them is going to be in the Nerd-Off. So clearly Lily got to them with her idea last night, and now what was going to be an easy vote of Jonathan vs. Colby is now needlessly complicated. I mean I would love to see Jonathan vs. Amanda, but we all knew it wasn’t happening. Jonathan is going to lose a lot of points for going back on his word if he doesn’t end up going into this Nerd-Off. Not that I think he should have promised in the first place, or that he should do it at all, but you can’t say stuff like that and then not follow through. Just don’t say dumb stuff at all. Hooloovoo votes for Colby, as we assumed. Colby says in confessional that he’d like to get on with it, and how Jonathan has volunteered himself, so I guess he has no clue they all spent all of last night coming up with this possibly terrible idea. SMASH has put up Amanda. Sigh. Now I really hope it’s not what they thought. Colby thinks kudos are in order for Jonathan for getting Amanda to take his place. Amanda admits there’s some strategy here. Curtis says today’s Nerd-Off will be a game called “Statistical Analysis and Applied Mathematics”. HA! Please don’t let that be a joke. NNNOOOOOO it was a joke! I mean, I’m all for messing with Amanda and Lily’s hubris but don’t do that to me. I was excited. The actual Nerd-Off IS about horror movies. UGH. Fuck you guys. I want Colby to win the whole thing. Amanda pretends to be terrified because Colby is a trivia powerhouse, except for the part where she basically volunteered herself because she assumed she could beat him.

Lily gloats about being right which is annoying. Amanda knows a lot about horror movies, but Colby can learn trivia and knows trivia. Amanda asks Lily to go spy on Colby, who is hanging out with Kaitlin. Kaitlin is rolling her eyes about how dumb people in horror movies are, playing tapes you find in archeological digs and whatnot. It’s true. Colby doesn’t already know horror, so he’s hoping his powers of retention will hook him up. Lily oh-so-casually comes in to sit by Colby, and the editors put a flashing “SPYING” tag next to her. Hee. She sits there and says nothing and then leaves without saying anything. While she’s there Kaitlin doesn’t really say anything either so I guess no one will know she’s helping. Lily reports back that Colby knows his stuff, and then it sounds like Amanda asks how he is doing it he hasn’t seen the movies? Um, he’s learning things on the internet like you are? What a dumb question. Amanda interviews again about how nervous she is. Blah blah blah. You had your chance not to do it so quit whining about it.

Jonathan says Amanda needs to win, partially because he’d feel terrible about letting her take his place. That’s why you don’t say dumb things, you dummy. Everyone is outside at night with zombies and gravestones and stuff. Each contestant gets a movie quote. If they can correctly identify the movie, they can bash zombies with a cricket bat. Each zombie has a different hidden point value, randomized I guess. You can bash more zombies for answering harder questions. This seems…questionable. Like, it’s not a straight-forward “answering more questions gets you more points” set-up. It’s “answering more questions gets you more chances”. I feel like they skewed it to help Colby out more. Right? Because he might not answer as many questions but he might luck into the big point values? After three rounds, the highest point value wins.

Colby asks for a medium question and gets “One of us!”. He knows it for sure. Amanda also wants medium, and is right. The answers are multiple choice anyway. The zombies squirt stage blood which is gross. Once they count up points, Amanda has 400 to Colby’s 300. See, this is dumb. They both answered the same difficulty level and one of them got more points. Amanda takes another medium question, which seems weird for someone who thought she was so great at this that she volunteered to be up for elimination. Colby takes medium too, but he gets his wrong while Amanda gets it right. All this time there is weird “creepy” voiceover action that is supposed to be the zombie voices, but it’s less “creepy” and more “lameass attempt at humor”. Amanda now has 600 points to Colby’s 300.

Last round. Colby has to get this question right to have any chance. He takes a hard question, and is right! Colby interviews a bunch of stuff that sounds threatening about people coming for him, and I really hope that’s not foreshadowing his loss. Zombie bashing nets him 700 points for a total of 1000 points. Amanda has to get 400 more points just to tie, so she has to take a hard question. I mean she could try to get by with medium but she’d have to hope for finding zombies with big point values. She’s right, sadly. Also she interviews about avenging Heather which is stupid. Heather lost because she was too chickenshit to admit she wanted to vote for Jonathan, so she left the decision to others and they picked her. She doesn’t need avenging. Then Amanda wins by 100 points. BOOOO. Colby is the best. Now everyone will be insufferable and smug. I mean even worse than usual. Raychelle is all, well no one wanted to get here and see someone who’s won Jeopardy, but he helped his team and we’re sad to see him go. First of all, Jeopardy winners are nerds, or don’t you think so? Are you a snob who thinks nerds are into gaming and pop culture so smart people don’t count? Secondly, your obnoxious harassment where you told Colby he didn’t want to be good at anything social was out of line. Also don’t be so relieved you don’t have to go up against him because I haven’t seen one bit of evidence that you are good at ANYTHING. Curtis says the teams are now dissolved and it’s all individual now. Colby is proud that he didn’t lie or cut deals; he played the game how he wanted to play and he didn’t win. Nice. I was rooting for you, Colby. Now I’m rooting for Kaitlin.

Next week: I think aliens? And a double elimination.