Heroes of Cosplay – What Did You Think?

(Sorry, no full episodes online yet. And gee, Syfy, thanks for always making your embeds so tiny)

In the end, I don’t think the show was as disrespectful as some of you feared it would be. Now, granted, it does focus on the competitive side, while pointing out that the competition is to win more money to maintain the hobby; I can see how those who do it just for fun may not feel represented. And there were one or two cringeworthy moments of fake drama, like when they pretended there was actually a chance Jessica Merizan might get stuck in a head cast, when it was pretty obvious there was just a split-second of irrational anxiety.

But for those who feared it would make cosplayers out to be deranged method actors – no, it only had one of those, and I must say her fake Scottish accent as Brave‘s Merida was a notch or two below my stoned college roommate’s impersonations of Sean Connery and Scrooge McDuck. Yaya Han came off as a diva, while Holly and Jessica’s down-to-earth banter (“scrappy” is how they were described in narration, which sounded awfully like a euphemism for “tomboyish” in context) proved that they deserved their own show – and that as such, Nerdist was more on the ball than Syfy by focusing on them to begin with. I didn’t see Chloe Dykstra on there at all, and that Jesse dude felt like a token guy without much going on, but maybe I’m just biased because I really personally hate the trend of waxed, twirly mustaches as a hipster look, especially if accompanied by a beard.

I also think reality shows need to lay off time-lapse B-roll, but that’s a problem bigger than this one show.

I’d like to see them address the professional/amateur gap in future shows, but I certainly don’t think everyone came off as an attention whore. Maybe one or two. Hell, the winner was a giant Totoro whose real face we never saw, which I thought was a nice irony given all the cleavage on display.

Now…didn’t one of you say you feared a Jersey Shore for nerds would be next?

Voila. And this, I am totally prepared to hate. How does a network theoretically aimed at the geek demo not realize that this is like a red flag to a bull? Unless that’s what they’re counting on…

So, did anybody else actually watch?