Beauty and the Geek: Are the Blondes Having More Fun?

When TVGuide.com interviewed Tori Elmore, the first beauty to be eliminated from Season 3 of the CW's Beauty and the Geek (Wednesdays at 8 pm/ET), she complained of cliquish attitudes in the house. Though at first we suspected she was just making up excuses for not having studied, last week's episode pretty much confirmed her story: The "blondes" seemed to have reverted to high-school behavior, leaving darker-tressed and surprisingly brainy pageant queen Andrea and "Former Hooters Waitress" Sheree to study their butts off in fear of this strong alliance. Of course, the end result is the following conversation with 25-year-old Sheree Swanson, who now works in event planning in Ft. Lauderdale, and 25-year-old Virginia accountant Piao Sam (aka Pi), who swears he does know how to listen to women.

First, Sheree's story:

TVGuide.com: Were you a ringer? I didn't see any evidence that you were shallow or ignorant.
Sheree Swanson: Smart people say something silly, stupid or dumb some time or another. I do, everybody does. Most of the girls are pretty smart, regardless of what they're acting like.

TVGuide.com: Did you feel like you should have been acting less smart?
Sheree: No. Have you watched any of those reality shows where you can tell that a girl totally did it for a singing career or an acting career or a modeling career, yet she's making out with everybody and doing all kinds of ridiculous stuff? I'm like, "Listen, girl, no one is going to take you seriously after this show!" That was my thought: As far as future things, I wanted to portray myself as I really am, so that hopefully I can be taken seriously for future things.

TVGuide.com: That's probably more valuable than your share of the show's prize.
Sheree: To me, it was. So I didn't get $250,000; I'll make it up.

TVGuide.com: That's pretty smart. Do you think some of the other girls were acting dumber on purpose?
Sheree: I thought all the girls were smart. When we were all together, everybody held intellectual conversations. It could be anything; Ceci would say, "In this part of town, the housing market is really expensive. For example, that little house right there would be a million dollars." Not brilliant things, but a normal conversation. But I'm watching the show, and she's saying some really dumb things!

TVGuide.com: Tori was not kidding when she told me how cliquey the girls were. Did you try to cozy up to the other girls to turn that in your favor?
Sheree: What happened was Ceci won the first challenge in the library, and Nate won the challenge talking to the people out on the street, and then Nate won the comedy challenge. That's three wins out of four challenges, which automatically made them a strong team. Common sense, I want to be friends with [them]. Ceci is very "out there" in her values and views, but I could care less what she does on her own time; it has nothing to do with me. Andrea, on the other hand, was like, "I say what I feel, and I feel you're disgusting." I think Nadia and Jennylee got caught up. It wasn't that they purposely said, "We want it to be blondes against brunettes." It was: "Ceci's winning. Let's follow Ceci."

TVGuide.com: Did you feel left out?
Sheree: I hung out with the girls sometimes, but ultimately, I was around Andrea the most. There were times I would be talking to four girls, and right in the middle of me telling them something, each one of them just started talking amongst themselves.

TVGuide.com: How much study material did they give you before a challenge?
Sheree: A lot. Specifically, for the first challenge, for the interview, it was two or three magazines, like Newsweeks, a binder with probably 100 or more pages, some newspapers and the Freakonomics book. Late that night before [the interview challenge], I was almost finished studying, and I went in Ceci's room, and she was like, "I'm gonna blow you guys out of the water. I've read this book. I know about this book. Do you?" Maybe it was intimidation, but I took my butt right out of her room and stayed up for the next three or four hours reading it. So, she helped me.

TVGuide.com: What did Pi need the most help with?
Sheree: Pi is on two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. If you say a rap song or hip-hop artist, Pi knows who it is. On the flip side, he doesn't hold conversations well at all. He gets caught up in thought and can't say what he's thinking, so he says something really weird instead. I was trying to help him with that. Physically, he was not one of the least attractive guys. He just made funny faces.

TVGuide.com: You scolded him for objectifying women when he drew nothing but the nude model's breast. But didn't you work at Hooters?
Sheree: I don't hide the fact that I worked at Hooters. For me, it was a good job when I was in college. It paid all my bills; I didn't have to worry about money; it was flexible; and I met a lot of cool girls.

TVGuide.com: What do you do now?
Sheree: I do business development for an event-production company. Event stuff is fun, but it's not making me rich, and it's not something that I ever saw myself doing. So eventually, I want to do something entertainment-related. I want to make a good paycheck and love what I do.

TVGuide.com: Did you get in touch with the news anchor from the interview challenge who said he'd hire you?
Sheree: He interviewed me just this morning. When we weren't on air he asked me what I was doing, and I should have said I didn't have a job! But I have his information.

TVGuide.com: Are you rooting for anyone else on the show?
Sheree: Of course, Andrea. The thing was, they hated her more than me. I didn't want her to leave at all, but I figured if I could stay in, then at least they wouldn't have the dislike for her rubbing onto me.

TVGuide.com: Did you have any favorites among the geeks?
Sheree: I love them all. I spent the most time with Niels and Matt, because he was with Andrea. Matt was really determined and really wanted to be there.

TVGuide.com: You seemed to think Pi wasn't trying hard enough.
Sheree: He was playing chess and hanging out and telling his little funny jokes. He was trying to be like the class clown. It was frustrating for me. He still says he tried his hardest. I think Pi's a gentleman, but I think he went more for fun than he did to win.

Let's see what Pi has to say about that:

TVGuide.com: Are you working as an accountant these days?
Piao Sam: Yes, in Virginia. It's for lovers. Maybe not for me, but for some others.

TVGuide.com: Yeah, why is that? Your label on the show was "Only Kissed One Girl."
Piao: That's the most interesting thing about me. Since the show, I've kissed two, maybe three girls.

TVGuide.com: Because of the show?
Piao: I don't think because of the show. I wasn't on long enough to have that drastic a change. I didn't even get a makeover. But a makeover wouldn't really do much for me. What are you gonna do, cut my hair and give me contacts? I've done that already. I actually have contacts, I've just been too lazy to renew the prescription.

TVGuide.com: Did you do anything to seem more geeky for the show?
Piao: I screwed my hair up. And for the most part, that was who I was.

TVGuide.com: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Piao: I just consider myself a person, not a geek. If you want to call me a geek, fine. If you want to call me one of the things I said in my comedy routine, fine.

TVGuide.com: What did you say during your routine? It was all bleeped out.
Piao: You won't be able to write it — I used the P-word. I basically turned off the whole audience at that point, and I had no backup material because I'm not a professional comedian.

TVGuide.com: What did you want to get out of this show?
Piao: I wanted to be around that type of girl. The girls that I'm usually around are really down-to-earth type of girls who basically take as long as I do to get ready. It was a little bit much, but it was interesting.

TVGuide.com: Did you learn anything that would help your dating life?
Piao: Trust me, I listen to women, I really do. I was just really tired after getting berated by Sheree.

TVGuide.com: What kind of study material did you guys get?
Piao: We got a pamphlet that said Art of Appreciating Women. There were like 500 things. There was an article on electrolysis, handbags.... I don't remember there being an article on manicures! [That was the question he got wrong in elimination.]

TVGuide.com: Did you study them all?
Piao: Of course I studied them! Sheree might say I didn't, but I put in a good effort. I probably didn't put in the best effort I could. I got the first question right! The problem was that Sheree and I studied with Matt and Andrea the whole time. We basically poisoned ourselves.

TVGuide.com: Sheree said you were more intent on being the class clown.
Piao: I had two goals on the show. My first goal was to have fun. This was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so why not live it up? The second was to improve from where I came from. Sheree gave me some fashion advice. One of her methods of trying to improve me was saying I should stop smiling so much, and she even made fun of my laugh. We just had a personality clash.

TVGuide.com: Your relationship didn't seem that bad on the show. More playful.
Piao: I don't really know what to think of it. I know she's out there on MySpace, and I haven't contacted her. I might as well let sleeping dogs lie.

TVGuide.com: Were you into playing the game of trying to make alliances?
Piao: It blew up in our faces because we were so aligned with Andrea. I compared it to Spartacus. At the end, it's Spartacus versus his protégé, and he kills his protégé, then he gets strung up by the Romans.

TVGuide.com: Uh-huh. Were you aware of what was going on with the blonde clique?
Piao: I didn't realize until the end, until our demise. It was weird that the guys got along but the girls didn't.

TVGuide.com: Are you expecting your life to change now?
Piao: I have 300 MySpace friends; I had 100 before. I'm kind of recognized. As Aimee Deeken said [in her TVGuide.com Commentary Blog], "Piao and Sheree were both serious about the competition, not to mention sizable sources of reality-TV entertainment."

TVGuide.com: Wow, thanks for studying our blogs at least. Got any words of wisdom for other geeks?
Piao: Listen to women, naked or clothed. My advice to everyone else is to get your taxes filed on time, the earlier the better.

Send your comments on this Q&A to online_insider@tvguide.com.