Beware of Geeks baring tattoos

LOVE it or loathe it, the reality genre has had its share of unforgettable moments. A Geek getting a tattoo to better his chances is one of them.

switched2

LOVE it or loathe it, the reality genre has had its share of unforgettable moments.

Etched indelibly in-to our memory is that moment in There's Something about Miriam, the dating show where would-be Romeos discovered Miriam wasn't all she seemed.

Turned out she was more of a Murray than a Miriam.

Then there was the Survivor scandal, where contestant Johnny "Fairplay" Dalton pretended his grandma was dead to improve his chances of claiming the $1 million winner's cheque. On a local level, geek Lachlan left viewers gobsmacked with his determination to stay in the game on Beauty and the Geek.

The big moment came after Lachlan, who was in the midst of a budding relationship with beauty Jordan decided to guarantee his and teammate Sarah's place in the house by getting a tattoo of his and Sarah's name on his backside. At seeing her boyfriend with another girl's name tattooed on his bum, Jordan flipped out.

While Lachlan was adept at using the English language to his advantage as a law student, when it came to calming a situation involving an angry woman, he was clueless.

His response to Jordan's outburst was to put his head in his hands and say: "I don't have the skills to deal with this."

It's a single moment that epitomises everything Beauty and the Geek is about.

At its heart the show is about teaching a group of inept guys how to deal with women. And after facing the wrath of a woman scorned for the first time in his life, Lachlan somehow found the right words to save the romance.

"We are still together, and he's in Sydney with me right now, in my house. It's awesome," Jordan says. Jordan has since admitted she may have been a little hard on Lachlan after he returned from getting inked.

For her part in "Tattoo-gate", Sarah was shocked to see her teammate with her name tattooed on his backside.

"I cried when he got the tattoo, because I was so shocked. When I first met him he came across as being so conservative, and he was always talking about how his parents were quite strict, so for him to get a tattoo was way out of his comfort zone," she says.

And as is often the case with tattoos, one has become two. But Lachlan was quick to say the second tattoo has been added for reasons of clarity. "I added the Beauty and the Geek logo so the tattoo became more about my and Sarah's time on the show," he says. "I've always thought getting a tattoo in a romantic context was rather foolish."

It was partly Sarah's advice that helped Lachlan smooth things over with Jordan.

"I was his teammate, and when he and Jordan were fighting, he'd come to me for advice. He'd appreciate it, but he'd look at me like, 'Really, will that work?' " Sarah says.

Jordan was surprised with the immediacy of her connection with one of the geeks.

"I went for that stereotypical bad boy (in the past). I thought coming out of the show I might find a happy medium in a relationship, a smart guy in the middle, but I came out with a geek," she says.

For Seven, Beauty and the Geek is the little engine that could. Now in its third season the show has gone from strength to strength. Rating well from the start, the always popular make-over episode added 300,000 viewers, all of whom have stuck around.

Host Bernard Curry, believes the secret to the show's success is that Beauty and the Geek doesn't take itself too seriously, but still allows moments of real emotion to sneak in.

"That moment between Jordan and Lachlan was a really genuine tender moment," he says. "She was being a bit hard on him personally, but she reacted in a certain way and he had to deal with it.

"We can all identify with that, on some level, even if it is thinking back to when you were a 13-year-old and you had no experience with girls and all of a sudden they blow up and you have no idea what it's about, or how to respond. I think that's why the audience have such a vested interest in the geeks."