My So-Called BATG2

Apologies for the late post on last week's Beauty and the Geek finale. Amazingly I actually watched it on time, but then I quit my job on Friday so I was sort of off-duty for the rest of the weekend and didn't get to post about it.

As usual, BATG2 proves the awesomeness of reality television. Any show where someone can say that getting in a hottub "was like a social baptism" and have it be a heartwarming moment of triump over inner devils - now that's a good show. The level of seriousness with which the contestants approached the final challenge was truly impressive. Everyone actually bought into the whole "life-changing" theme the show was going after this season - they actually wanted to change and learn from one another. Like what is that.

Anyway, there were a few good moments. Fittingly since he is the heir to last season's Richard, most of the best one-liners came from uber-geek Josh. To be fair, Josh is waaaayyyy less annoying than Richard and had real awkwardness rather than trumped-up Woody Allen-style bravado. Josh deserved to win this show and that's the only thing that makes me resigned to Cher's triumph.

The best part about Josh, however, is not his earnest attempt to become socially normal, but rather his totally random moments of real-person-ness. Unlike, say, Tyson, who was cute with the Rubik's cubes but otherwise forgettable, Josh is feisty! Two episodes ago the producers had to censor him when he said "motherfucker," and this episode he censored himself but really didn't need to bother since we already knew he was a pottymouth. While making sushi, a frustrating art indeed, he busted out with "Ugh, effing avocado. Stay in there, you bastard!"

I love me a man who curses at inanimate objects. It really brought me closer to Josh and I could forgive him for being on a team with Cher. The other fantastic moment of course was when he was asked the question in the elimination room: "What's the one thing that only you and your partner know?" He came right out and said it: "The size of Wes' penis."

WHAT?! First of all I must be old since I didn't really realize they could say penis during primetime TV. However, what is truly awesome about this is that it means that Cher and Josh were just chatting about SEX. This from the guy who slept in the closet instead of in the same room as a hot girl. Seriously it's not like Cher can be asking him for advice, right? And I can't imagine him settling in for a gossip sesh. How does one come across these things in conversation if you are an awkward museum critic and a close-mouthed SMU premed? I ask you this. When a beauty and a geek can sit around and talk about boning, that's when Ashton Kutcher has really come up with something genius. The look on Mike's (I know from reading blogs that this is the name of the host, but otherwise I would totally forget that he existed) face when he had to read off the correct answer was priceless. He looked like Jerry Seinfeld trying to act.

Besides the penis comment (and the later one about Cher wanting bigger boobs - she probably is envious of Sarah like everyone else in the house), the finale was relatively uneventful. The "big twist" at the end turned out to be a Newlyweds-style elimination, which was approximately EXACLTLY THE SAME as last season except they asked the same question of both partners instead of a bunch of different questions. As usual, the whole "How well do you know your partner?" gimmick failed miserably. The problem is that when "knowing someone well" is defined as "knowing what they would answer to hypothetical questions," everyone is going to bomb. Remember those "surveys" that you used to get sent when you were about 13, and you were supposed to fill out your name, favorite color, Coke/Pepsi preference, and so on? (I do. I once consolidated all the questions from all the surveys I'd gotten and made an uber-survey which I think 1 of my friends filled out besides me.) That's the Beauty and the Geek concept of understanding someone else. About the same time I was filling out internet surveys I remember reading a Seventeen magazine type article (which I think now was a Jane magazine article since it's too bitter for teeny-boppers) which said that the time you know a relationship is truly floundering is when you find yourself asking hypothetical, desert-island questions. That's BATG2 in a nutshell. I'd love to see some kind of psychological thing where the contestants have to describe themselves and their partners and see if their partners can match all their descriptions, etc. That would be a little more interesting and then Joe could get all his "innocent" crap out of his system. Oh yes and Cher could call herself "vivacious" since apparently she thinks that's the first word that Josh-the-geek thought when he saw her. (In all honesty, the first word was probably "bikini" or "boobs" or "weird tan.")

In the end it was a good episode even though it was anti-climactic because Cher and Josh were bound to win. Joe was way too cocky about being the preferred one to win (he actually compared it to the battle between good and evil, way to go Dubya) and overintellectualized things a bit. (Seriously like Brittany was going to say she wanted to be less/more innocent? What did Joe even mean by that comment?) There were some classic reality TV show cliches in the bunch while we were at it. Cher copped out and said, "In the beginning I was scared to invest myself in the process of change," which means "I only cared about the money until I realized people wanted to get rid of me because of it." But she was only succumbing to the BATG2 rule that all this posturing had to mean something about character and humanity and blah blah blah. That's why they played that hackneyed James Blunt song in the closing montage - because we're all beautiful, right? Even the geeks?

I leave you with the closing monologue of the famous "Zit" episode of My so-called Life:
"Sometimes it seems like we're all living in, like, some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up, once in a while. And admit the truth. That when you look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me."

Come to think of it, Josh does remind me a little bit of Brian Krakow...