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Series / Beauty and the Geek

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Beauty and the Geek is a Reality TV show that has British, American and Australian versions. The premise of the show is to get together a group of beautiful women and a group of geeks, and to pair them off with each other. The groups then have to complete challenges outside of their typical comfort zone, for example the beauties may have to visit a Comic Book convention. If a team wins the challenge, they become safe from elimination, and have to choose one of the other teams to send to the elimination room. Elimination is a run-off between two teams, is decided in eight questions, 2 for each person. The beauties have to answer questions on typical geek topics, and the geeks have to answer questions on dating and fashion.

The American version of the show ran for five seasons, and each show has had a slightly different format. The British version lasted only one season but the Australian version has been much more successful, with 6 seasons finished under their belt.


Tropes present in the show:

  • Brainless Beauty: Most of the beauties, although there are a few who are fairly intelligent and come across as Book Dumb but otherwise savvy.
  • Dumb Blonde: Many of the beauties fit this trope. In fact this trope is part of the point of the series. BUT, part of the point is also that most of them are not dumb, and have brains that they can use if given incentive.
  • Elimination Catchphrase: “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the mansion”.
  • Eliminated from the Race: Generally, the teams are eliminated by a quiz.
  • Fanservice Faux Fight: A promo for the Australian version featured a pillow fight between the beauties and the geeks. The beauties, of course, were clad in lingerie.
  • Gender-Inverted Trope: In Season 4, there was one male beauty and one female geek. The Australian show has also tried this spin.
  • Greedy Jew: Inverted. While the American/British opening song is about getting lots of money, the Israeli version is about two people working up the courage to come together from different worlds. Although one of the contestants on the second season was ridiculously stingy for no apparent reason, partially playing straight the All Jews Are Cheapskates trope.
  • Nice Guy: Most of the contestants are pretty pleasant, to the point that it's genuinely surprising when someone turns out to be a jerk.
  • No Social Skills: Many of the geeks.
  • Reality TV Show Mansion: They live in a mansion for the duration of the show.
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: In the finale of Season 3, the winner was determined by the final two teams Megan & Scooter and Cecille & Nate) garnering jury votes note  to win. Instead of telling the jury to vote for his team, Nate tells people to vote for Megan & Scooter in order to teach his partner Cecile a lesson about humility, thus giving up the grand prize of $250,000.
  • Strip Poker: US On a Season 2 road trip to Las Vegas, a challenge had the Beautys playing poker but the Geeks doing the stripping.
  • Transatlantic Equivalent: There are both British and American versions of this show, though there was only one season in Britain. There is also a successful Australian version.
  • Wedgie: The Australian version has the geeks put hooks and cranks in their underpants and gives them increasingly severe wedgies every time they get a trivia question wrong.

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