Skins

People look at me like I'm out of my mind when I tell them that the best reality show on television right now is The WB's Beauty and the Geek. Sadly, the current season has just ended, would only that I had started this blog 'ere those 8 weeks ago.

It's the best because it is at heart good-natured without sacrificing stiff competition. It's the best because the cast this year was uniquely compelling. While here and there players become friends in other competition-based reality shows, Beauty and the Geek is the best because it is the only reality show about making a new best friend.

The central conceit of the show is that we put up all sorts of barriers to self-realization based on the defense mechanisms of limited self-image and loaded pre-conceptions about everyone else. For the purposes of this show, the categories these twin projections fall into are hot & dumb vs. not & smart.

It starts with nine couples, each dorkyass dude paired as roommate and teammate with an arguably hot, definitely appearance-oriented babe. The guys are most pathetic at the beginning, although they edit the women to make them look dense or clueless, like Legally Blonde without the SAG card.

Each week there are two challenges, like guys having to go on a blind date and gals having to go into a happening bar without make-up. The winning couple of each challence gets to select one of the two couples that goes into the Q&A elimination round. Which might be, say, questions about computers for the women and fashion for the guys.

The winners walk back to reveal themselves to the other couples while the losers get exit interviews, typically two solo sound bytes and then one together. All brief, of course, really the tag on the show. But goddamn if it isn't a choker-upper every time.

Beauties learn to not give up on their brains. Geeks learn it's actually legal for them to have a conversation with a girl. Everyone learns confidence. Everyone learns they had more internal resources than they thought.

Everyone learns that they came in with a different idea of what the process of making the show would do to them than they do now, as they leave.

Everyone learns that friendship doesn't have to be skin deep.

After just having watched the final episode, I realize that perhaps the most appealing aspect of the show is this fantasy-come-true of teamwork. Think of those movies, romantic adventure comedies, maybe, or slapstick losers-turned-winners comedies. Even an Oscar-type triumph picture like Erin Brockovich. The joy of dramatically "opposite" characters making it past their insurmountable differences to win the big prize.

And what better fantasy for a skinny Jewboy from upstate New York like me than than the beauty and the geek scaling those heights. Here it's not feature scripted, it's f'real.

As to the cast, this season's winners seemed to be the ones most alert, most sentient, ultimately growing into the most adult and interesting couple. (Funny how those last two attributes go together so much more than credited.) Yet how gratifying also to watch the runner-up geek guy's exit interview cum farewell aria and realize it isn't his allergies, he's actually crying.

I'm not going to cover what happened over the course of the eight episode season (there would have to be actual clamor in the comments) but for now I'll just say, with a little shade of SPOILERville, that as this season drew to a close, the winners earned our actual respect; the beauty became human and the geek became, at last, a mensch.