“Nerds we got a show!”
And do we indeed! ‘The Wil Wheaton Project’ can best be described, as the host would say, the result of “what you’d get if ‘Attack of the Show’ and ‘The Soup’ had a love child… with a beard.” And what better place to have a talk show about science fiction than on the Syfy channel, right?
The premise of ‘The Wil Wheaton Project’ is quite simple: For a half hour in front of a live audience, Wheaton gets to riff and poke fun at the week’s top sci-fi topics with bits of edited segments in between. Some of this week’s targets…er… topics include inane product tie-ins with ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, new characters for ‘Game of Thrones’, Kanye’s unicorn commencement speech and a nice little knock at his home network. One of the better bits of the episode was Shawn Ashmore’s little PSAs and the reimaging of the opening of ‘The Walking Dead’, theme song and all (on a side note, am I the only one that really misses TV theme songs?).
Chris Hardwick stopped by to seemingly legitimize the show and while it was a nice touch, the interaction had me thinking I was back at awards season watching two celebrities try to have some kind of playful banter before the nominees were announced.
There is also a segment called ‘Wil’s Memo’ where Wheaton gets to talk about things that are important to him. This week’s segment highlight had to be how funky 70s porn music “makes everything better!” (There is no way I could ever disagree with that – bow chicka wow wow.) Other segments included “This Week’s Shoutouts” and “Super Cut”, a compilation of internet bits.
Wheaton makes for an amicable host and it does help that he has quite a presence in the nerd world. He’s not afraid to make fun of himself and does seem to enjoy what he is doing, although it was done a bit stiltedly in this episode. I’m putting that down to nerves as this was the first show of the series.
Wheaton’s charm and irreverence is what makes this unique series one to watch. The segments and bits fly fast and furious so if a joke tanks, it doesn’t have time to stink up the place as we’re now on to the next subject. He had more hits than misses so that’s a plus, although I would have liked a little more snarkiness (but that’s me).
Overall, the show came out strong and has great potential. While some may wonder if the topics and jokes are too genre specific, my answer would be since the show is about all things sci-fi, what would you expect? I’m eagerly waiting to see what other things Wheaton has up his sleeve in future episodes.
If you missed this week’s ‘The Wil Wheaton Project,’ you can catch it on Syfy’s site here.
