‘King of the Nerds’ season 2, episode 3 review: Zachary Storch’s nerd speech heard around the world

Last week’s episode of “King of the Nerds” brought us great drama in many forms; whether it was from Bill Nye dashing out of Nerdvana like Batman, the purple team’s science project presentation that introduced us to Xander’s British secret identity or from Zack’s epic nerd rage moment when he found out he was going into the Nerd Off. This week we’ve been promised even more drama, but this time it’s going to be in the form of a LARPing challenge! (and maybe another nerd rage moment from Zack). Warning for those who have not watched tonight’s episode: Spoilers ahead.

The challenge: Each team has to create a story, costumes and then perform their LARP in front of the judges. Both teams seem to have a pretty equal number of LARPing/creative types on their teams so we expect the battle to be epic.

The gold team has Zack in charge of writing the LARP since he is a fantasy writer, but when Zack starts to feel pushed out of his team he pushes back at them, telling them that if they don’t want to include him on the team then he won’t help. Nicole is able to calm Zack down a bit and he ends up writing their story. Also Jack decided to go bald for the LARP!

One person on the purple team has to sit the challenge out so they decide that it was going to be Kayla – which is a total bummer because we liked her performance last week and thought she was totally going to rock this out (seeing Chris LARP was so great though – he didn’t disappoint). The one thing that they haven’t revealed on the show (but we learned through the power of the internet) is that Xander is part of a theater production called “Dungeon Master” and we feel has an edge because of this experience (not to mention his LARPing  too).

At the challenge we were really impressed with everyone’s LARPing skills (the ocarina playing… so good). Kevin Sorbo, Yaya Han, and Jon Heder are the guest judges and after watching their performances the winner ended up being the purple team. Since the gold team lost and Zack was in charge of the storyline, we weren’t surprised to see the team try to get Zack out. The purple team is sure that Zack will be put up, but instead of wanting to help Zack stay and destroy the team from within, the purple team is now split and half the team wants Zack out and half want to keep put in someone that Zack can beat.

So who ended up going to the Nerd Off? In a unanimous vote, Zack was voted in from the Gold team (yes, Zack voted for himself). The purple team chose Mary Kate thinking that Zack can beat her in a turned based game of “Battlehammer”. Each person gets to have one person as an adviser and while Mary Kate has no problem getting someone to be on her team (she picks Jack), no one wants to be Zack’s adviser. He gives an incredibly emotional speech when he realizes no one wants to be on his team all about how every nerd has found themselves in that very same position where no one wants you on their team and we found ourselves jumping up and down screaming at our TV’s that we want to be his adviser! But since he can’t hear us, Chris stepped up to help. This speech was touching and it filled our little nerd hearts because we’ve so been where he is. That being said though, some of the things he’s said to his teammates haven’t been the nicest and we hope that this will be the end of that.

Zack has made it no secret that he plays a warrior in World of Warcraft (which is not a turned base game for those who don’t play) and as a warrior he attacked like crazy, but didn’t use Chris much (or defense for that matter). Because Mary Kate knows that Zack was likely going to just attack over and over, she and Jack used that to their advantage, but since part of this game is based on the luck of the roll of the dice, Zack was able to pull out a win sending Mary Kate home well before her time.

We aren’t exactly sure that the challenges should have suck a “luck” component, because Mary Kate had the better strategy and should’ve won. This is the same issue we had when Kelsey went home in the first episode, where the person who answered the most questions correctly went home. We are totally bummed to see Mary Kate leave so early and we didn’t get to see nearly enough of her. One last thing we have to mention because it’s being forced down our throats: The product placement. We understand a need for product placement on the show, but we are already tired of the show turning this into a commercial for Little Caesars Pizza and Radio Shack. Episode Grade: A.

Were you surprised to see Mary Kate go home tonight? If you are looking for more news on “King of the Nerds” just head over to the link here (or here if you want to hear some of our “King of the Nerds” podcasts… there will be a new one up tomorrow!) Also if you are hoping to get some more great TV updates from us then make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter and we’ll hook you up.

Photo: TBS