BrainSurge (partially lost Nickelodeon game show; 2009-2014)

The show's promotional logo.

Status: Partially Lost

BrainSurge is a game show that aired on Nickelodeon from September 28th, 2009, to May 13th, 2011, and was reprised for a final family season on July 18th to November 17th, 2011, on Nick at Nite, which finished from April 28th to May 9th, 2014 on Nicktoons. Hosted by Jeff Sutphen and created by Scott Stone, who made other game shows such as Legends of the Hidden Temple, Fun House, and The Mole. The show ran for three seasons before being canceled.

Format

The show involved six contestants known as the brainiacs who competed in 3 levels of brain games. The first level involved watching six visual puzzles, and the contestants had 10 seconds to lock in their answers on a numbered keypad. Each puzzle was worth a different point value (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 100), with the max score being 250 points. After all six puzzles, the 4 with the highest scores would move on to level 2, while the other two were eliminated and went down the Brain Drain (a slide filled with orange-colored foam) but were given a consultation prize.

Level 2 involved the contestants answering questions from a story Jeff told from his Big Book of Truth, known as "Jeff's Big Book of Super Fantastic True Chronicles of Truth That Are Absolutely True." There were two types of stories, question and list. The question stories were the usual who, what, where, when, why, and how, while the list stories involved the contestants listing up to 20 items in a specific category. When the contestants were asked a question, they were asked to sit down on the orange chairs. If they heard a ding, they were right. If they listened to a fart, they were eliminated and sent backward through the set of Jeff's mouth leading to the Brain Drain. The round went on until there were only two contestants left. Contestants would also be eliminated if they ran out of time or repeated an answer. The two remaining contestants would move to the Knockout Round, where they had to match images from the story in a 4x4 grid. If a contestant made a wrong match, sudden death would happen, and the person who made the next correct match would move on while the other was eliminated.

The final contestant would move to Level 3:The Final Stage, where they had to memorize and complete three paths on three grids in 90 seconds. The three paths were a 4x4 grid with a path of 6 squares (5 in one episode), a 5x5 grid with eight squares (9 in one episode, 10 in two episodes), and a 6x6 grid with ten squares. Each time they completed a path, they would win a prize, with the final prize being a vacation. If the contestant finished all three paths in 90 seconds, they would win all three prizes and get slimed. However, if they ran out of time, they were allowed to keep the prizes they won but were sent down the Brain Drain. In special Nick Stars episodes, the winner would win prizes for a randomly chosen audience member.

Broadcast History

The first season premiered on September 28th, 2009, and ended on April 9th, 2010, with the final episode airing on July 1st, 2010, during the beginning of season 2. Some differences compared to later seasons included the stories in level 2 were still photographs instead of the animated ones shown in other seasons. In the first few episodes, if a contestant got a question wrong in Level 2, Jeff would skip the question and reveal the correct answers, while in later episodes, he would throw out the question but not say the answer. Another minor change is that Jeff allowed the contestants to throw the 90 seconds on the board, which happened a few times in Season 2.

Season 2 premiered on June 21st, 2010, with the final episode airing on May 13th, 2011. A few changes were made to the show, including omitting the 40-point puzzle and making the max score in Level 1 210 points. The stories in Level 2 were now animated, and the list stories had a max of 16 items instead of the usual 20. The last change was that the Brain Drain ran down straight to the audience instead of the original exit sign. This season featured four special weeks, each with five episodes. The four special weeks were; Girls vs. Boys, Stars of Nickelodeon, Co-hosts, and Family Week.

During the final season, the show was later changed to Family BrainSurge, which premiered on July 18, 2011, to November 17, 2011. More changes were made to the show. Instead of 6 contestants competing, five teams of 2(a kid and an older family member) would compete. All the levels were renamed, Level 1 being called Brain Tease, Level 2 was called Brain Fart, and Level 3 was called Brain Trip. Level 1 only featured four puzzles (10, 25, 50, and 100), with the max score being 185, and the only team would go down the Brain Drain. Level 2 introduced a new mechanic called the Brain Fart, where if the family got stumped, they could yell Brain Fart, and their Brain Trust consisting of 2 other family members, could help them with a question, but there were two catches. First, if they were wrong, the team would be eliminated, and second, the family could only use them once. The list stories were changed from 16 items to 12, and if the families named all the items, Jeff would ask other questions about the story, but the remaining families could not use their brain farts. For Level 3, the kid would complete the 4x4 and 6x6, while the parent would complete the 5x5. In celebrity episodes, the celebrity families would compete for prizes and to win money for their selected charity ($1,000 for losing Level 1, $1,500 for losing the story part of Level 2, $3,000 for losing the Knockout Round, and $5,000 for winning the show).

Cancellation/Reruns

The show was canceled in late 2011 due to Sutphen hosting the revival of Figure it Out in 2012. However, the last ten episodes of season 3 aired on Nicktoons from April 28th, 2014, to May 9th, 2014, with reruns airing until July 2014. Also, season 2 reruns lasted until about June of the following year. Some episodes also aired on Nickelodeon's sister channel Nicktoons aside from the final season with the ten withheld episodes.

List of Lost or Incomplete Episodes

Episode	Found footage for the episode	Status	Contestants for episode
206	Clip from Promo	Lost	Ashley, Tyler, Ada-Nicole, Karine, Isaac, Danny
211	Levels 1 & 2	Partially Lost	Aiden, Rhudi, Ashley, Gretchin, Jake, Shaylie
221(Brothers vs. Sisters)	None	Lost	Nicole, James, Madison, Mason, Amber, Zach
228(Siblings)	Level 2 without intro but mirrored	Partially Found	Daquan, Zakiya, Bridger, Brecken, Jenna, Nikki
237(Family)	None	Lost	Isaiah & Mike, Charlotte & Barbara, Brooke & Ann, Crystal & Tony, Myles & Michelle, Skyler & Sean
238(Twins 2)	Clip #1 from Nick.com Quiz and Clip #2	Partially Found	Andy, Kyle, Madison, Mallory, Max, Mason

Episode	Found footage of episode	Status	Families
301	Level 1 and Story without Intro	Partially Found	Fenton, Munoz, Augustine, Dejoy, Kohno
303	Level 1, Level 2-1, and level 2-2	Partially Lost	Bennion, Pakula, Cardena, Redfearn, Danesh
304	Level 1 and Level 2	Partially Lost	Daruvala, Ayala. Gilmore, Johnson, Lancaster
306	Level 1, Level 2, and KO Round	Partially Lost	Haynes, Ark, Jenkins, Herren, Torrey
310	Level 1 and Story without Intro	Partially Found	Guerreo, Jinadu, Corcoran, Houlihan, Bramson
311	Story but audio is replaced with music	Partially Found	Cruzata, Ardon, Kokason, Orriss, Sellers
312	Level 1 and Level 2	Partially Lost	Martinez, Rowe, Gillcrist, McLurkin, Oliverio
315	Level 1 and Level 2	Partially Lost	Ocampo,Smith, Conneen, Wright, Gannuscio
318	Level 1	Partially Found	Sankofa, Levine, Gonzalez, Menotti, Arroyo
321	Level 1 and Level 2 without intro	Partially Lost	Monick, Ott, Parker, Barnes, Alvare
323	Level 1 and Most of Level 2	Partially Lost	Aguilera, Nolan, Garcia, Steele, Baxter
326	Level 1 without intro and Level 2	Partially Lost	Moultrie, Muniz, Smith-Harris, Pieper, Torress
327	Level 2 and Level 3	Partially Lost	Sarem, Vera, McLaurin, Butler, Holtwarren
328	Level 1 and Level 3	Partially Lost	Crawford, Meza, Galdamez, Kling, Loucks
333	Story	Partially Found	Sargent, Woods, German, Vargas, Schoonover
337(Monkey Quest Sponorship)	Level 1 and Story without Intro	Partially Found	Pilapil, O'Neal, Edjhuryan, Hinojosa, Hilbig
339	Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 without Sliming	Partially Lost	Atteberry, Ek, Jens, Panganiban, and Johnson
340	None	Lost	Haltrecht, Webber, Musquiz, Crawley, Molnar

Availability

Out of all 120 episodes, only 97 episodes can be found in full. All 40 episodes of Season 1, 34 from Season 2, and 23 from Season 3, but only 11 episodes are found in good quality (307-9, 314, 316, 317, 322, 324, 330-2). While many episodes from all three seasons aired on reruns, a few episodes only aired once. These include the family episodes from Season 2 and the final episode of Season 3, which never aired on Nicktoons despite every other episode airing. No episodes were released onto iTunes or DVD, making the only possible way to redeem episodes is via recordings of premieres or reruns.

Episode 101

It is known to fans that the first-taped episode, Episode 101, went unaired. The only footage from the episode is the dancing puzzle seen in the Season 1 intro, the clip of the 6x6 with 27 seconds left in said intro, and a screenshot shown in the story of Episode 108.

When asked about her time on BrainSurge, Alyssa Waldrip from Episode 137 revealed on her Twitter that all the contestants from her episode, except for Skyler, were in the episode but had the shirts swapped. Mayah was purple, she was still red, Philip was green, Mike was pink, Austin was yellow, and an unknown contestant was blue who didn't return for the reshooting. She also revealed that in the episode, she lost in level 1, and Mayah actually won the show, which explains why she said Mayah was mad when she lost to Alyssa in the Knockout Round in 137. She also mentioned in her tweet with an audience member that filming took 13 hours due to technical and mechanical issues, also the audience wasn't allowed to get up for food and water. She stated that Philip was crying the entire time during the episode, speculating that Philip was also eliminated in level 1. Unfortunately, Alyssa and the other contestants weren't given a copy of the episode, so the episode is still lost. It's unknown if any of the puzzles or the level 2 story are the same as 102 aside from the dancing puzzle. Also, fellow competitor Austin said that she got injured when she got eliminated in Level 2 and was told that changes were being made to the format, so five of the contestants came back for a re-film (Episode 137).

Director Steve Grant said that the Knockout Round in the episode was matching funny faces on the board. However, the round went longer than expected, so it was thrown out and switched to the Knockout Round we know today.

Contact Attempts

Jeff Sutphen himself claimed to a Twitter user that he had no episodes despite fans' requests, and the studio behind the show, Sunset Las Palmas Studios, had no recordings of any episodes in their library. In fact, they had not even heard of the show, so it must have been a new employee responding to the call. In addition, a producer of the show Derek Bartholomaus was asked if he had episodes, and he responded with,

No. I'm sorry, but due to conflicting rights issues the episodes are not available on any streaming service. Hopefully that will change in the future.

This is a common concept with shows that had to deal with music rights. In the case of BrainSurge, these conflicting rights were initially speculated to be from the parodies of name brands in several of the stories in level 2 (Indiana Jones, Willy Wonka, Transformers, etc). However, it is actually due to the production companies fighting for distribution rights on this show, hence its absence from streaming, including the newly made Paramount+ and even iTunes and DVD.

Recovery of Episodes

On January 14th, 2019, YouTube user Originalsboy uploaded 15 Season 1 episodes (four of which had already been posted, 110, 131, 132, 139) to the Internet Archive, which were then re-uploaded to Youtube by another user appropriately named BrainsurgeGuy, including the premiere episode of 122 from Dailymotion around this time; the original archive has been removed, however.

Six months later, 2 Season 2 episodes (217 & 219) were uploaded by TelevisionArchives. Following three months, Episode 229 was recovered from its deletion in 2012, only to disappear on March 16th, 2020, but recovered once more on September 22nd of that same year.

On February 6th, 2021, contestant Natalie Martinez uploaded her episode (236). One month later, 115 was finally publicized, having been originally privatized on December 29th, 2015.

The next month, 104, 125, & 114 were uploaded from a Microsoft OneDrive by George Ortuño, a screen recording from Nick.com in 2010, and a file from Google Drive, respectively.

Most surprisingly, on May 3rd, all of Season 1 and about the first half of Season 2 were uploaded to a Google Drive folder by Halofan. These episodes were originally obtained from Usenet and a private tracker.

On July 9th, 8 more episodes (204, 232, 235, 308, 309, 314, 322, & 331) were uploaded from another Google Drive Folder by Lost Media Wiki user Racelympics.

Three weeks later, another episode (317) was found through another trade done with Racelympics.

On August 31st, he uploaded Episode 324.

Gallery

The intro to BrainSurge.

Behind the Scenes footage of Episode 238

Blameitonjorge's video, which mentions BrainSurge (04:38-07:15).

External Links

• YouTube playlist of Season 1.
• YouTube playlist of Season 2.
• YouTube playlist of Season 3 (Family BrainSurge).