Beauty and the Geek Australia

So I am going to have a rant right here, right now.  Don’t try to stop me. 

Disclaimer: Being the second series of Beauty and the Geek Australia and the gazillionth season throughout the world, the contestants obviously knew what they were getting themselves into.  They knew they were going to be filmed 24 hours a day over multiple weeks, that editing would occur and all the like.  So please don’t comment on this blog entry highlighting this fact.  Yes, I agree with you.

Now, you hear people come out of reality TV shows saying ‘it was all in the editing and that was not what I was really like’.  I always used to laugh at those people and say ‘Yeah right. You said those things, acted in that way, take responsibility for your actions’. But in all honesty, think of this.  You are filmed 24 hours a day for a week, which gets condensed into a 50 min TV show of which maybe 5 mins max will be footage of you.  So you can see you can take the smartest or rudest or geekiest or funniest 5 mins of all your footage and edit your character into whatever you want.  However, no-one and I mean no-one can fully understand this until it happens to you.

But that is not the reason for my ranting.  I am really sick of reading all of the negative stuff that gets said about Beauty and the Geek contestants.  They are acting, no-one can be that stupid, he is not a real geek, she is not really beautiful blah blah blah.  This season it has happened to Daniel the most with not being a real geek. Most footage of Daniel has only been about pursuing Kara and Ellie.  If any geek had a crush on a girl then they would still give it a shot.  Yes they would be awkward and probably get turned down.  Just because Daniel actually succeeded does not make him any less of a geek.  Are you saying that it is impossible for a geek to ever get a girl? So geeks never get married? So that makes me screwed then doesn’t it?  Lol.  But with the story of Daniel, just remember that you have only seen a small part of what went down.  How long did he pursue Kara for?  Maybe it was only the first night in the mansion that he sat with her under the blanket and maybe the kiss with Ellie was a lot later in episode 3.  That would be acceptable, but we don’t know what really happened.  I don’t even know, but everyone should know not to judge people before knowing the truth.  It may appear that I am defending Daniel but I am not. I am defending all of the contestants about saying hurtful things on forums etc without knowing the truth.  Just enjoy Beauty and the Geek for the fact it is interesting TV.       

The contestants went onto the show to try and improve themselves.  Putting their lives in the public eyes, especially as geeks, is very tough to do.  Then you read all of the horrible and hurtful lies all over the forums about the contestants.  Geeks have been teased a lot before and then to be ridiculed in these forums does not help.  I think that people are entitled to their own opinions, don’t get me wrong, but just remember that you are affecting the contestants lives and it can be really hurtful.  It does no-one any benefit when you write stuff like this on an open forum.  I was lucky last year as the worst I got was ‘Jeremy is boring’ or ‘Jeremy with his spray tan looks like an Oompa-Loompa’. 

So in conclusion to my ranting:

1. People can have their negative opinions, but no-one wants to read about them in forums.  It is only hurtful 
2. No, the show is not fake and neither are any of the contestants.
3. Whilst the show is about self improvement for the contestants, for the audience it is light hearted, fun and heartwarming.  Just enjoy it for that, and don’t overanalyze things.

Ranting over J        

The final week of ratings on Seven sees two very big nights of The X Factor – both the Sunday show and the Monday show will be two hours long (and then will most likely run overtime as well).

The final three acts perform on Sunday November 21, only two of which will go through to the Grand Final on Monday November 22. The winner for The X Factor 2010 will be crowned that night.

The Xtra Factor on 7TWO continues after both shows, with its final show on the Monday night following the X Factor live Grand Final.

With the X Factor finishing around 9.30, that means Bones on Sunday night and Criminal Minds on Monday night will also start around 9.30 on their respective nights. Both are repeats.

At 7.30pm, Tuesday November 23, is the final of Iron Chef Australia.

As Packed to the Rafters has its season finale on Tuesday November 16, the 8.30pm timeslot for Tuesday November 23 is yet to announced. 9.30 that night also is a TBA although I would not be surprised if Parenthood fills at least one of those two vacant hours.

UPDATED: Parenthood will air as a two hour finale, Tue Nov 23, 8.30pm.

Onto Wednesdays, and Seven have decided to finish The Force in a double episode on Wednesday November 17 at 7.30pm. At this stage, Wednesday November 24, 7.30pm – the same night the Block has its final on Nine – remains as a TBA. Going against the Block, I would expect Border Security – which always beats the Block in overall ratings – will end up in that timeslot.

At 8.30, Wednesday November 24, is the two hour finale of City Homicide. The show has not yet been renewd for a 5th season although there is a six part mini series to air in 2011.

Thursday night November 25 sees The Amazing Race continues at 7.30. The fast tracked series will continue throughout summer until it reaches the finale, like it did last year, although it may end up on a different night.

Beauty and the Geek Australia has its season two finale from 8.30pm Thursday November 25, in a special 90 minute episode. Expect an announcement for a third series as it ends.

Meanwhile, on 7TWO, the later start for the Xtra Factor on Monday November 23 means there will be an extra episode of Heartbeat that night, taking the total number of episodes in the week to five. Wedding Planner – currently in the 6pm timeslot has a final on Wednesday Nov 24 and is replaced by Floyd’s American Pie from 6pm Thur Nov 25.

Encores of the X Factor and the Xtra Factor remain on 7TWO at 2.30pm Monday and Tuesday. 7TWO now has at least one movie every night except for Tuesdays.

Over at 7mate, the season final of Caprica is on 9.30 Thur Nov 25, while the final season of Star Gate Atlantis plays from 8.30 Thur Nov 25. The encore of The Event remains at 10.30 Thursday night, that being a repeat of the episode seen on Seven on Monday Nov 22 at 10.30pm.

Please note, all this information is correct at time of posting and is subject to change via network amendments. While times for shows most shows will not change, in the last week of ratings for the year, there is likely to be numerous last minute changes to programming especially on 7TWO and 7mate.

8:30pm – Thursday, November 4 on Seven

This week on BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA, the beauties channel Legally Blonde.

The girls will be brushing up on their legal knowledge and public speaking skills ahead of an important final closing argument before esteemed retired magistrate Barbara Holborrow.

Meanwhile, the geeks have a very confronting calendar challenge. In their first professional photo shoot they’ll need to shed their inhibitions, and their clothes, and get their personalities shining through in the photos. Who will shed it all for a shot at immunity?

The winning teams will be safe from elimination and nominate a team each to go into the eviction room.

BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA is hosted by BERNARD CURRY.

8:30pm – Thursday, November 4 on Seven

This week on BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA, the beauties channel Legally Blonde.

The girls will be brushing up on their legal knowledge and public speaking skills ahead of an important final closing argument before esteemed retired magistrate Barbara Holborrow.

Meanwhile, the geeks have a very confronting calendar challenge. In their first professional photo shoot they’ll need to shed their inhibitions, and their clothes, and get their personalities shining through in the photos. Who will shed it all for a shot at immunity?

The winning teams will be safe from elimination and nominate a team each to go into the eviction room.

BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA is hosted by BERNARD CURRY.

Now that I have spent a couple of days hopefully cooling off, I can blog about the challenges from episode two without getting too angry.  How can the producers get it so totally perfect for one challenge and then so totally wrong for the other challenge, all in the same episode?

The Beauties Challenge – Creepy Crawley Mathematics.

The girls had to collect all sorts of bugs, each worth different points, to make a total of 100 points.  The bugs included stick insects, cockroaches, witchetty grubs and spiders.  I have to admit that I would have struggled with this challenge.  I absolutely hate spiders! But I would have loved to have given it a go to conquer my fear.  But this challenge was perfect! Combining two of the most stereotypical weaknesses of a Beauty, bugs ad mathematics, all into one challenge.  I almost wet myself laughing at the girls all screaming, especially when they were all told to ‘freeze’ and Kara was holding a bug at the time.  Could it get any better?  Well, as a matter of fact, yes! After Tamika won the challenge, a free pass into the next week was presented to the Beauty that could eat a live witchetty grub the quickest.  I was somewhat surprised that they went for it.  Props to Kara again and also Donna for downing their dinner.

The Geeks Challenge – Kabana Boys.

I have to remind myself that I am not allowed to say any curse words while I am typing.  I got some scared looks from a friend as I shouted at the screen last Thursday during this challenge because I was so angry.  All I can say is that I hope there was some serious editing for this challenge for multiple reasons.  (Quick recap in case anyone missed it the guys had to be Kabana Boys at a hotel including massage, toweling off guests and mixing drinks.) 

From what it appeared, each Geek had a separate guest that they had to look after, and their guest gave them a mark for all of their efforts.  Fail Number 1 – this challenge is marked subjectively.  However, without one lone person marking all seven Geeks, there cannot actually be any comparison made between Geeks.  Maybe one judge is a tough marker, or one could be an easy marker.  It’s all about how lucky you are to get the right judge. FAIL!

Some Geeks got young attractive women, one an older lady with calluses on her feet, and another Geek got a man in a Speedo.  Fail Number 2 – There is actually no consistency in the challenge the Geeks are actually facing – they are separate challenges.  Challenge (A) – How well can you flirt and keep you cool with an attractive lady? Challenge (B) – Can you handle having to deal with disgusting feet? And challenge (C) – Are you comfortable enough to stretch/massage a guy in a Speedo.  So, the guys were all facing different challenges, some obviously harder than others.  FAIL!

So unless I hear word someone from the inside telling me that all of the guests got rotated through all of the Geeks and all guests gave a mark to all Geeks, then I am sorry but this is FAIL all around.  Hopefully this was the case, and it was just good editing for TV?  I know that the producers read this blog to keep me in check but this observation of ‘TOTAL FAIL’ is from me, a longtime watcher of reality TV, as a complete outside observer of this challenge, and nothing more.  Does anyone want to set the records straight?

So anyways…enough of my rambling.  What do other people think? Maybe I am too obsessed with reality TV (Beauty and the Geek in particular) to have a less critical view.

PS This takes nothing away from Marlon winning the challenge J I was happy because I’m am Ellynie-May fan, but more on my opinions of the cast in the next blog.           

8:30pm – Thursday, October 28 on Seven

This week on BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA, the beauties come face-to-face with two of their greatest fears – maths and bugs!

It’s an unusual combination of creepy crawlies and mathematics that has them all terrified, but who will keep their cool while counting?

Meanwhile, the geeks have a very hands on challenge ahead that requires some serious help from their pampered beauties to succeed. They’ll be filling in as cabana boys at a 5-star luxurious hotel pool bar and will have a bevy of beauties wanting to be massaged and towelled down and judging their cocktail-making abilities. Who has the magic touch?

The winning teams will be safe from elimination and nominate a team each to go into the eviction room.

BEAUTY AND THE GEEK AUSTRALIA is hosted by BERNARD CURRY.

What did everyone think of the challenges in the first episode? I actually think that they was a little bit unfair.  Well, maybe unfair is not the correct term to use.  But I am not good with words so I will leave it like that and try to explain.

Challenge 1 : Geeks design a swimsuits.  The Geeks were given a box of materials that reflected their personality and they had do design a swimsuit for their Beauty.  Now there appeared to be only 1 item that could be used as the bra cup (think of the Spiderman masks or the large shells).  As that is the main component of the swimwear, it really does not give the Geek a chance to be creative.  The Geek could be more creative with the smaller items, but I don’t think that would really affect the final judging.  Also if the swimwear fell apart, then that would be the fault of the Geek too, but that would be unlikely.  So, in my opinion, how well the Geek could be creative and the Geeks ability to design and construct a swimsuit was extremely limited, and some of them had no chance what so ever (think of the graduation hats on Ellynie-may).  This was a similar challenge to the dress and fascinator challenge from last year, but back then we could all choose any dress and any materials to use on the fascinator.  So I feel the challenge worked last year, but missed the mark this year.

Challenge 2 : Beauties make a bird man rally flying contraption.  The Beauties randomly chose a contraption to build.  Yes, it was random. All Beauties appeared to build their contraption no problem.  So where is the skill involved in the challenge? Is it in the ability of the Geek to jump far off the peer? And some of those contraption (well most of them) were doomed to sink straight down.  So again, I don’t think that the challenge really showed which Beauty was the strongest in aeronautical engineering design and construction.

So both challenges, I guess, were just for a bit of a laugh and potentially make both Beauties and Geeks look stupid.  But I have to say, it makes totally awesome TV!  But in terms of a serious competition with $100,000 on the line, I hope the future challenges are based more on skill and also the ability of the Beauties and Geeks to learn off each others.

I did brag a little bit about my prediction of Stuart to be out first. Well…technically I did not make the prediction, but I just said that I was not sure how long he would last. So I thought that it was time I do a full rundown on what I think of the teams, who I reckon will win and who will be out next week. These are based solely on what I have seen on TV. Now I won’t necessarily include all of my justifications for my rankings, because unless you have watched the show in great detail, rewinding and replaying, those ‘justifications’ will be spoilers

Kara/Tim: They look to be a strong couple all around. They won’t be nominated early because everyone appears to love Kara, and Tim appears to be really sweet. Tipped as runner-up

Jessie/Michael. Appear to be a weaker couple. Probably won’t win many challenges. People will like them as they both appear to have big hearts, so they won’t get sent to the elimination room early on. But once they are there they are out.

Linette/David. Appear to be a weaker couple. Probably won’t win many challenges, people may feel like they need to be in the house and not nominate them. Once they get sent to the elimination room they are out.

Tamika/Thomas appear to be a weaker couple. Probably won’t win many challenges, may get on peoples nerves a little bit as they are both such outgoing/strong/different personalities. My tip to be the second couple eliminated.

Donna/Daniel. Probably the strongest couple. May be nominated whenever they do not win a challenge, but will probably win a number of challenges. My tip to win.

Ellynie/Marlon: Looks like they are already viewed as a big threat. Will probably get sent to the elimination room on multiple occasions, but I reckon they will fall in their third visit after cracking under the pressure.

George/Ellie/Brook: Really not certain about this couple. With three on a team, there are more possibilities to form strong relationships and avoid the elimination room. But people may nominate them regularly because of this advantage. Probably will fall just short of the final showdown.

What do other people think?

PS room allocations look like: 1. Stuart/Nicola-Kara/Tim, 2.Jessie/Michael-Linette/David, 3.Tamika/Thomas-George/Ellie/Brook and 4. Donna/Daniel-Ellynie/Marlon but I could be wrong

When I first decided to start blogging about Beauty and the Geek Australia I had a few blog topics in mind.  One in particular was how important room selection was going to be for the contestants.  Spending late nights chatting to the other couple in your bedroom really forces you to become closer to them than with any of the other couple in the house.  Even if you have a better friendship with another couple, the bedroom relationship probably trumps that every time.  Everyone always asked me ‘Why did you never nominate Corin when he was winning all of the challenges?’ Two words: Bedroom relationship. 

I had all of these awesome plans to study the first Beauty and the Geek episodes to figure out exactly which couples were sharing a room.  Knowing the house layout from last year and watching the little interviews with the cast I could be sneaky and figure it out.  I was then going to come up with all of these insightful views about who may be aligning with whom and then the likely chance of people being nominated.

Bu all of these meticulous plans got blown out of the water in episode 1. I thought that it was weird that they actually showed the scene when Ellynie-May/Marlon and Donna/Daniel became roomies.  It was not until the nomination announcement where the point of that scene became apparent. My jaw dropped when Donna/Daniel nominated Ellynie-May/Marlon. The sacred roommate relationship was broken! There must be something going on behind the scenes, and there must be some other strong alliances that have formed.  From the look on Ellynie-May’s face, she was not expecting it.  I do agree that they are a strong couple (they are one of my tips to win but more on that in a later post) and that they may have less growing to do on the show, but I thought the bedroom relationship was unbreakable.

So my tip to viewers is to try and see what has really been going on during this first week.  But all I can say is that I would not want to be living in that bedroom from then on.  It is no doubt going to be very awkward for the two couples.  And I can’t wait to see the look on Donna and Daniels face when Ellynie-May and Marlon return next week.

EPIC.  That’s the only way I can describe the premier episode of Beauty and the Geek Australia.

I was going to write a full episode recap, but I realized that if you missed the first episode you can view it on the official website http://au.tv.yahoo.com/beauty-and-the-geek-australia/video/  Plus writing a full episode recap takes forever, and I am a busy man.  So I will try and just write juicy inside gossip which will hopefully add to the Beauty and Geek experience.

I have to say that I have fallen in love with every single Beauty and Geek for different reasons.  Maybe it’s because I know what they are going through.  But I do have favourites.  I think that Ellynie-May is just really switched on and I think that she will be able to help a lot of Geeks.  There is just something so cool and laidback about her.  I was really surprised when she got both her questions wrong in the elimination quiz.  I picked her as the most intelligent of the Beauties.  Maybe the nerves just got to her.  Because of nerves, I could barely stand up when I was in the elimination room for the first time last year against Toby and Jenna.  Emma literally had to hold on to me for dear life to stop me falling over.  I think that everyone in Australia have totally warmed to George as well.  His country boy, Aussie accent just makes you smile and everything that comes out of his mouth is just Golden.  Plus he likes rocks. Well said.  

But we had to say farewell to Nicola and Stuart last night.  I was really disappointed because I thought that Nicola was going to be really funny to watch.  After seeing her work in some of the commercials I thought that Australia was going to be in for a treat.  She just does what she does, enjoys it, and does not care what anyone thinks of her.  It’s a great attitude to have.  And Stuart, I was completely wrong about.  He was also really sweet too.  I have been in email contact with Stuart and he is a top bloke!  But I have to took my own horn and say that before the first episode went to air, and before the partners were selected, I picked Stuart to be the first one out.

 I am glad that they showed the tie-breaker question this year.  I may get in trouble for saying this, but the finale last year of Emma and I against Corin and Lisa actually went to two tie breaker questions! I think that the pressure of the situation got to Stuart.  The number of songs mentioned in the Madonna song Vogue.  I thought in one 3-4 minute song you could not fit that many names in.  After Marlon say 30 (from memory) the smart thing for Stuart to say would have been 29 as surely 30 is too many, and then Stuart would be the closest.  But no point dwelling on the past.  What was meant to be was meant to be.    

But I think that there must be some internal house politics which I am looking forward to discuss in a later blog.