Comedy Central has quietly snuck Beat the Geeks back onto its schedule. (How quiet? Is 5:30 AM PST quiet enough for you?) Still, if you're any sort of geek, you know how to set your VCR or TiVo, which is what I've done. I didn't care for this game show the first few times I saw it but last year, when we did a panel with some of its putative "geeks" at the San Diego Con, I started watching again so I could get up to speed…and I really enjoyed what I saw. The show had a new host but, more important, its squadron of trivia experts had developed a certain sparkle. I don't like the robes, I don't like the mocking attitude towards expertise in a subject, I don't even like the use of the word "geek" — but I like watching the three guys depicted above ("Movie Geek" Marc Edward Heuck, "Music Geek" Andy Zax, and "TV Geek" Paul Goebel) and certain "Guest Geeks."
This is not just because, having some capacity to retain similar data, I identify with these gents. Lord, I could name dozens of fans who know as much about TV, comics, movies, whatever as any of us — but who you wouldn't watch for ten seconds. The thing of it is, the "Geeks" really aren't geeks; not in the sense that a geek has no perspective on the info he amasses in lieu of having a life. They're just smart, sharp guys and I think what drove me from the show in the first place was that it seemed to treat them not as geeks but as freaks.
There was also the matter of how limp the game itself seemed. Win Ben Stein's Money worked…well, it worked mostly because of the banter between Jimmy Kimmel and Ben. But to the extent it worked as a game, it worked because the contestants were very intelligent guys competing against another intelligent guy — a very basic, primal kind of competition. Beat the Geeks is more a matter of, "Can a non-expert answer more non-expert questions than our experts can answer of expert questions?" Not as basic, not as interesting. Would you watch Jeopardy! if some contestants were handicapped with easier or more difficult questions than their competition? Well, trivia questions are what Jeopardy! is all about. They just cover a wider range of categories.
I suspect there's a wonderful show implied that no one is doing, which is to pit guys like Heuck, Zax and Goebel against folks who stand a chance of beating them at their own game. But it would have to involve giving both sides their dignity — i.e., no robes left over from Trekkie masquerades, no trying to make a joke out of the very knowledge on which the show is based. Someone's going to produce that show someday and if done right, it could be a monster hit. In the meantime, given its time slot, one does assume that Beat the Geeks does not figure into Comedy Central's future, especially since they have to make room for more of those wonderful Chevy Chase Roasts. So you might want to catch the current airings while you still can.