Beauty and the Geek

Previously on Beauty and the Geek, the geeks went from drab to "fab," but Joe the former cowboy wasn't happy with his new look. Matt and Leticia won the soap opera challenge, and chose Randi and Greg to take out to dinner. That meant that the four remaining teams had to choose amongst themselves which team would be going to elimination tonight. After an impromptu cross-dressing challenge, they chose Joe and Tara to send to the elimination room.

Tonight's Beauty and the Geek with some scary sound effects. Leticia and Cara describe the spooky things that keep happening in the Beauty and the Geek mansion. Tara is also spooked by the supposedly haunted mansion.

Amanda and some of the other girls decide to dress Tommy up like a vampire and have him sneak up on Tara to scare her. Joe steps in and tries to stop them, getting overly dramatic and all "a pox on your house" to Randi. He and Randi start arguing, which leads Joe to spitting on her. (Luckily for her, his "damn loogie" did not touch her.) Tommy tries to talk to Joe and convince him to apologize to Randi. All the other girls join in on the conversation, and it turns into part two of the Randi versus Joe war. Tara joins the fight and it turns into a Tara-Randi fight. (We get footage of Randi's fight with Amber over a plate of fried chicken earlier in the season. Yay! That might be my favorite moment this season thus far.) Tara finds Joe in bed and tries to support him as he cries.

The next morning, Mike Richards greets everyone in the library to talk about the new challenge. He says that if either Joe or Tara wins a challenge this week, they will be saved from having to go to elimination. For the challenges this week, the beauties will have to study math, and the geeks will be firefighters. Matt, who broke his clavicle in the football game, cannot compete in this challenge, so Leticia will take his place.

That night, the teams are ferried to a Los Angeles County fire department training facility - a burning building with burning barrels and fire trucks everywhere. The beauties plus Matt will be stuck on the top floor of the building, and the geeks plus Leticia will have to don full firefighter gear, grab a hose, attach the hose to the hydrant, extinguish a fire barrel, then climb up a ladder to save his (or her) damsel in distress and encourage her (or him) to jump out of the second-story window onto a big, inflated safety mat. The fastest geek to perform this task will win.

Joe goes first and does it all in 4:40. Not too shabby. Greg has a hard time putting on the outfit and finding the correct hose, and his time is 5:10. Jason is next and I have high hopes for him since he's the buff one. Unfortunately, he blows all his time getting dressed. Then, he has a very difficult time psyching himself up to jump. Jason clocks in at 7:25. Leticia goes next and she has a very difficult time hooking the hose up to the hydrant. She ends up completing the task in 8:04, but they don't show whether they make Matt, who has a broken shoulder, jump out of the building. Now, it's Chris' turn to beat Joe's time, and he does awesomely. His time is 3:29. Tommy is the final geek, and he has trouble locating the part of the hose that connects to the hydrant. He finds it in time, and manages to come in 3:22, just beating out Chris. Sadly, this means that Joe and Tara will have to go to the elimination room, but he should feel proud of how he well he performed.

The next morning, the beauties start studying math. Leticia naps instead of studying and Randi deems the book "stupid."

The beauties are taken to the town dump and recycling center for their challenge. They must dive into a gigantic mountain of trash and dig up recyclable materials. Aluminum cans are worth three cents, plastic bottles seven cents and glass bottles are ten cents. The beauty who collects exactly $5 worth of recyclable material in the shortest amount of time wins the challenge. Yuck, I do not envy them this challenge. Cara, using her "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" philosophy, thinks she gets $5 first. Unfortunately, she only has $2.03. Um, yeah... Randi stops and says that she has it, but she totally overshoots with $6.95. Leticia and Kristina are in a near-tie, with Leticia a nose ahead. Kristina wins because Leticia overshoots by three cents – exactly one aluminum can away.

Back at the mansion, Kristina and Jason, and Tommy and Amanda meet to discuss which other team to send to elimination. Amanda doesn't want Tommy to sugarcoat why they are sending their chosen team to elimination because it sounds like crap. I have to agree with her. At the stair ceremony, Tommy announces that Greg and Randi will be put up in elimination because he thinks that they haven't shown that much improvement. Greg makes an impassioned, tearful speech. But, as Jason says, it's like poetic justice to watch Randi go up against Joe.

In the elimination room, the beauties get questions about math and the geeks get questions about heroes. The first team to get three correct answers wins. Tara knows how to multiply three by four. Joe recognizes a Winston Churchill quote. Randi buzzes in and knows that 21-18 = 3. I can't believe the beauties are getting these questions. They are so condescending! Joe gets the next question about James Bond wrong, but Greg can't answer it either. Finally, Joe gets the next question correct, that James Gandolfini played Tony Soprano.

This means, unfortunately, that Greggie and Randi are eliminated. They have a very cute final interview together, in which Greg thanks Randi for helping him come out of his shell and Randi thanks Greggie for keeping her from killing Joe and going to jail. Aww!



-Debbie Chang, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of the CW)