King of the Nerds 2x08 "One Nerd to Rule Them All"

Well, this short and sweet season has come to a quick end. Eight episodes really isn't very many at all! It feels like we only just got started. But here we are at the end, when the King of the Nerds takes his or her crown, and wins $100,000. You know, some pocket change. Not useful at all.

The contestant pool was down to just four, and things got serious right off the bat. In the final Nerd War of the season, only two nerds would make it to the final round of battle, with two others getting eliminated in the dastardly quiz bowl. Jack rather handily took first place, which sent him straight through to the finals. The other three were all tied up, and whoever took the final point would join him. It was Xander's choice of question for the last one, and I think he kind of made a bit of a bonehead move if he wanted to make it to the finals and chose the hardest question in the math and logic section. Did he forget Kayla is a rocket scientist? Perhaps he should've picked the hardest question in video games if he wanted to win. But I think he was just trying to be fair, which is noble and actually I respect that as you know certain others would not want to be quite so fair. In the end, Kayla got that last question right, sending both her and Jack into the finals.

Unlike last year, though, and thank goodness for it, the final battle between the two nerds would not be something of a popularity contest where the other nerds would all come back and vote for who they think should win. Rather, it would be one final nerd off battle - the Nerdliminator. To help them in this final battle, all of the other nerds did come back, though, and each of them got to choose which person they wanted to help. It was fairly even in that respect, with Kelsey, Josh, Mary Kate and Zack working with Jack, and Brian, Xander, Chris, Nicole, and Katie joining Kayla. But first, they got to all drink some booze and generally have a good time together the night before the final competition, which was fun to see.

The Nerdliminator itself had eight different puzzles for Kayla and Jack to solve. They could call on three of their fellow nerds to help them throughout the twenty-minute timed challenge, but they could only help them on one puzzle per person. Let's see if I remember all of the different puzzles they could complete - sudoku, word find, a math problem, pac man, word cypher, some funky rope thing, a periodic table puzzle slider, and something with color blocks that you had to fit together in a certain pattern. Whoever completed the most puzzles in the time limit would be victorious. It was sort of hilarious to see Zack's many faces as he got annoyed that Jack wasn't calling on him for help, too, though eventually he did. In the end, it was rather close, but Jack kind of shot himself in the foot when he worked on the sudoku for too long without solving it.

Because, yes, the one nerd to rule them all is... Kayla!

In my opinion, the right two people were in the final competition in terms of who was left, and I was content with whichever of them won. Kayla certainly has more pop culture knowledge than Jack, which makes her more of a well-rounded winner. It's also kind of cool that a girl has won both seasons so far. It's also kind of funny because I said way back in my review of the premiere episode that I thought Kayla was a dark horse. Psychic, obvs!

And as one final sidenote, I loved that the bit where Kelsey was going to join Jack's side and he said something in Chinese and the editor put in the subtitles: "Something in Chinese. I don't know, I'm just the editor." That gave me a good laugh.

But what do YOU think? Are you happy with Kayla winning? Were you as relieved as I was that it didn't end up being a vote situation? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!

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