Geeks Who Drink

As someone who regularly goes to Geeks Who Drink trivia, I was disappointed to see the broad range of questions usually asked at those trivia nights reduced to only "geeky" topics like superheroes, television shows, movies, and pop culture. How about history, science, geography, current events? The "geek" in Geeks Who Drink is about knowing a lot of stuff, not just about being the king (or queen) of Comic-con.

I know they have to make the show more TV-worthy, but discarding the GWD format played at bars (which includes audio and visual rounds) and adding out-of-place physical challenges renders this program inert, just another mildly entertaining game show. And not particularly fun. The host, Zachery Levi - whom I was a big fan of in "Chuck" - does his best to hold the show together with funny remarks, but it really isn't enough. Of course, I've only seen one episode so far so there's always the possibility that this show will get better.

The Syfy Channel is intent on expanding its original content into new areas. Time for a game show! Zachary Levi hosts this trivia show with a set that looks like the interior of a bar. Two teams of three geeks each compete to win some mostly irrelevant prizes and insignificant money. The real object of this contest is to display one's geekdom and to dominate the other team. The action is punctuated by the host's exhortations to throw back a shot.

There's a speed round, a toss-up question, a game about finding the common element in four pictures, some geeky math, a bar game that has nothing to do with trivia, and a final challenge. You might ask what is considered geek-worthy? The answer is anything (even remotely) related to superheroes, videogames, and science fiction, in general. I was expecting at least one question relating to The Syfy Channel's own lineup, like "In Defiance, how many members of the Tarr family are there, including Christy?" But, at least in the first show, they avoided plugging their own products.

Ignoring the question about how socially (ir)responsible it might be to encourage alcoholic consumption in such a frivolous manner, we might ask if the bar conceit makes the game more enjoyable? And I think many viewers will think so. I much prefer it to a dry discussion of obscure factoids.

Update 7/27/15: I am upping my grade to 7 after watching the second show. A lot of what makes this show fun is selecting good players for the two teams and I think they are doing a good job with both the celebrities and the non-celebrity players.

I agree with user kep315 I like these sort of shows, they are great for people like me who participate in things such as scholars bowl, however, they normally cut out the "boring" things like history which when simplified is my personal specialty.