The Nerd Club

"Delightful"

- Mel The Nerd Club is the eleventh episode of the second season.

YouTube
Talking Ben wants to hang out with more intellectual people. The Smarties! But not everyone's pleased with his new choice of friends.

IMDb
Desperate for intellectual conversation, Talking Ben joins a club for hyper-intelligent people. He is excited to finally be among people who think like he does - until the Smarties start making fun of his non-genius friends. Tensions run high as Ben is forced to decide between his old friends and his new club.

Plot
Ben enters the garage to find Tom dancing instead of working on ideas for the Founder's Day Parade. Tom explained that he was brainstorming, but it turned into a dance party. So, Ben tells him he prepared a speech. Tom throws the paper aside, calling it "just a boring speech." He came up with an idea: he'd dance at the parade. He dances with the others, but on his way to his computer, he slips on the paper, injuring his knee.

So, to fix this, Ben invents an invention that turns informal speech into more intellectual language. Tom didn't like the idea, saying that the real problem was the way Ben talked, not the way Tom did. So, Ben called Xenon at the Grape Store, seeking more intelligent people. Xenon suggested joining the Smarties, an intellectual group. A grape store employee asks him if he wanted a new hat, which was code for an initiation. He presses a button on his phone, opening a trapdoor under Ben's feet. It took him into the Smarties HQ.

They take him into the Test Tube, a tube that displayed holograms of numbers, animals and science concepts. Ben recognizes and identifies all of the holograms, which the Smarties deemed him smart enough for the group.

Back at the garage, Ben informs his friends that he joined the Smarties, which caused a couple communication difficulties between them. They met Mel and Flo, two elderly scientists. While they hung out at the garage, they did mean things to Ben's friends. The friends grew sick of Mel and Flo, but when they confronted Ben about it, Ben claimed they were jealous of their intelligence.

Tom was in a prospector persona for the parade. They find out about Mel and Flo's invention; it was the opposite of Ben's. It turned intellectual language into simple talk in Tom, Angela and Hank's voices. It was clear they only invented it just to mock Ben's friends. Tom, Angela and Hank leave him for the parade. Ben realizes that Mel and Flo really are snobs, so he pushes over the invention, breaking it, and leaves the Smarties.

At the parade, Tom was in a chair on the mayor's float. Hank and Ginger lifted up the chair as part of the display when they started to lose balance. Eventually, Hank fell over, leaving Ginger to keep Tom from falling. They got dangerously close to the edge of the float and were about to fall off, when Ben grabs a chair leg and saves him. Ben apologizes for choosing the Smarties over them, and his friends forgive him.

Characters

 * Tom
 * Ben
 * Mel
 * Flo
 * Angela
 * Hank
 * Ginger

Locations

 * The Studio
 * Grape Store

Cast

 * Colin Hanks as Tom
 * James Adomian as Ben
 * Maria Bamford as Flo and Ginger
 * Tom Kenny as Mel and Hank
 * Lisa Schwartz as Angela

Reception

 * The Nerd Club got 18,748 likes on YouTube and 5,721 dislikes, indicating positive reception. However, the views have been below average compared to other episodes in the series, amounting to 9 million as of January 2020.
 * This episode was originally called "S.M.A.R.T.I.E.S".

Errors

 * When Angela says "Yeah, alright!" Her mouth doesn't move.