Comedy Central had a good thing going at the start of the 21st century, then let it slip away, largely because they, like their Viacom brethren, couldn't program it right.
Beat the Geeks ran for 2 "seasons" between 2001-2, and had just as many hosts. There would be three regular "geeks", chosen for their expertise in movies, music, and television. The TV Geek, Paul Goebel, was already known from having won TV Land's Ultimate Fan Search in season 2, and hosting the accompanying Ultimate Fan Hour. Unfortunately, the Ultimate shows were cancelled after Goebel's run ended.
At its peak, Beat The Geeks aired 5-6 days a week, and was for Comedy Central what Remote Control was to MTV a few years earlier. Comfort food for the couch potatoes. Regrettably, reruns are now locked in the Viacom vaults, other than what's available on YouTube.
Here's a sample episode with original host J. Keith Van Straaten:
Do us a favor, Comedy Central. Bring the show back, even if it's just on the website.
Rating: A.
4 comments:
Loved this show back in the day. Pity Comedy Central didn't nurture it properly.
Of the 3 "regular Geeks" who appeared on every show (Movie, TV and Music), there were no less than 3 Music Geeks throughout the series' run (Michael Jolly, Michael Farmer and the most popular one, Andy Zax) but only 1 Movie Geek (Mark Edward Hoyt) and only 1 TV Geek (the aforementioned Paul Goebel). Post "Geeks", Goebel appeared in a couple of episodes of the late Fuel TV channel's late-night sketch comedy series "Stupidface".
A bit o' personal trivia: one of the show's 'Guest Geek's, Ggreg Snyder, aka the Saturday Morning Geek, later joined one of the message boards I used to frequent, The Big Cartoon Database, after his week-long stint on the show. The guy did know his stuff.
How far back was that? I wonder if Snyder's still posting somewhere. I'd like to actually meet him.
This was around 2004-2006, give or take. Unfortunately, Mr. Snyder stopped posted there a while before I finally stopped frequenting the site. BCDB is kind of on life-support now.
Whoa! That bad, eh?
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