I must give Beauty and the Geek props for fiddling with its format from season to season. Even without the changes, the show still is more watchable than other reality competitions being shown nonstop like Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. But the fact that the producers give enough of a shit to try to keep the show from being too formulaic and easily-manipulated illustrates why I think this show is actually in a different class than some others of its genre.
However, this season's surprise that "America" will choose the winner isn't incredibly world-rocking. Why don't we have Simon Cowell choose it? It's just not the most original idea in the world, plus, it means we're now obligated to watch an overlong results show next week. I hate overlong results shows!
Tonight's episode was overlong itself. I have to admit I did get caught up in the crazy time-machine format, but once the reminiscing and the reflecting started, I couldn't get into it. Plus, the home visits were a little disappointing. Sure it was cute to see Jasmine LARP but why didn't Dave take her to see his beloved mother? It's hard to believe that Sam's gym really means that much to him. Also, he described Nicole as "happy go lucky" which is a term that doesn't exactly pop into your head when you look at Nicole, except maybe compared to her roommates, who mocked her frivolous display of a bracelet. Only Jasmine's visit home, with her family and kids she baby-sat for, gave a real idea of her life beyond the show.
Several times in the episode it seems we got the same stories from all the contestants about how far they've come and how much they've learned. And then, despite that and despite the audience's viewing the progression of the show, they were asked to give campaign stump speeches. They were, incidentally, completely overshadowed by the looming technical questions: "How is this going to get figured out by the end of the show? Oh damn, they're not going to figure this out by the end of the show!"