‘King of the Nerds’ season 2 spotlight: Will Katie Correll be the puppetmaster?
“King of the Nerds” is a show that is all about celebrating the nerd within us all, but another part of their mission statement has been to show that there is more than one kind of nerd. There are literary nerds, science nerds, comic-book nerds, and of course guys and girls who play a ton of video games.
So where does Katie Correll fit in to all this? In this new edition of our “King of the Nerds” spotlight series, we are trying to figure it out. This is someone who, from the standards created for our Nerd Scale, only meets a few of our tried-and-true criteria. The criteria that she does meet, she meets strongly. It just all comes down to whether or not you want a more fashion-minded person concerned about her looks as your supreme ruler rather than someone who is supremely awesome at “Skyrim” … and we’re not sure about this one.
Nerd pros – Puppets! She works for “Sesame Street,” which we like to think of as a very happy place where people sing goofy parodies to each other and fear is represented only by a fake background made of darkly-colored felt. Katie’s obviously different from the other contestants in that she has a more artistic pursuit, but she has a few other major qualifications still in that she’s working on a Masters and is also a mechanical engineer / roboticist. If the robots ever take over, is she one of the people you can blame? (Then again, if the robots take over, will she be able to save us?)
When it comes to her bio on the official site, we appreciate the consideration to give fun answers, inventing creative ways to get out of either / or scenarios (a part of the Nerd Scale criteria), puns, references, and an appreciation of both comics and “Game of Thrones.”
Nerd cons – Katie doesn’t play video games, doesn’t watch “Doctor Who,” and also hasn’t even seen the show before! That’s what we cannot wrap our head around and we wonder why she would try out for a show like this if she’s never actually seen it? If we were going through casting of something in its second season, we would almost for-sure advise someone to at least watch part of the previous season to get a sense as to what is happening.
As a hardcore gamer, it’s easy for us to get on our high Chocobo horse and start proclaiming that loving games is an absolute MUST. But, we recognize that you can be nerd without that, and at least she is being honest about it rather than trying to fake answers. The biggest issue instead that we have calling Katie a “nerd” is her pursuit (as laid out in the video) to be the Best-Dressed one of the group and her goal to be a good-looking nerd since that’s not really a nerd characteristic. You can be nerdy about clothes, and we firmly support that; but turning the way you look into a competition? Unless you are in a Commander Shepard costume contest, we cannot really see nerds really fighting for something so aesthetic and superficial. She’s just too edgy for this show and edgy is cool… not nerdy.
Nerd Scale – 5 out of 10. In reading over Katie’s biography and watching her video, a question dawned on us: Is Katie really more of a hipster than she is a nerd? There’s not anything wrong with being a hipster since being geeky has become the “cool” thing these days (as strange as that is), but some of her artistic interests, coupled with her not really being interested in typical nerdy activities (gaming, D&D, LARPing, etc.) and her interest in fashion, fit that classification better then “nerd”. Her qualifications, education, love of comics / sci-fi TV, and her job working with puppets are what still give her some of those nerdy qualities. In a nutshell (or a Koopa shell, to make a video-game reference that Katie won’t get), she’s probably the least-nerdy of the cast upon first glance, but comes across as very likeable. We envision her leaving pretty early, but don’t rule out a run into in the top 4 or 5. We have a hard time thinking that she’ll win since she’s just not a well-rounded nerd in the way you need to be to be “King”, but stranger things have happened.