Relativity speaking
Screen portrayals make smartypants more approachable
Series television now features a real-life great thinker — Albert Einstein in National Geographic’s Genius (Tuesdays, 9 ET/PT) — but the small screen has had no shortage of fictional brainiacs.
TV’s high-I.Q. population, noteworthy for crime fighters, medical experts and intellectual haughtiness (we’re talking to you, Sheldon Cooper), has been growing recently, reflecting the cultural rise of Silicon Valley tech geniuses, says David Bushman, TV curator at the Paley Center for Media.
“What you’re seeing now (reflects) the whole explosion of the tech boom” and highprofile pioneers such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, he says.
This season introduced viewers to a tech mogul creating a state-of-the-art hospital (CBS’ Pure Genius) and a brilliant engineer attempting a high-tech transformation of a police precinct (Fox’s APB). Unfortunately, there’s no correlation between I.Q. and ratings. (Neither is expected to return.)
On the other hand, Mr. Robot’s Elliot is hardly a billionaire, but the brilliant hacker’s award-winning USA drama is heading toward Season 3.
TV portrayals can make it easier for super-smart people to be understood, says LaRae Bakerink, who in July will rise to chair American Mensa, the organization of high-I.Q. individuals. “Geek is chic. It seems that it’s OK now, whereas when I was growing up it wasn’t,” she says.
TV often links high intelligence and social ineptitude. But awkwardness may humanize smart folks, too. “If you make them more flawed, like the characters in (HBO’s) Silicon Valley, then how can you not like those characters?” Bushman says. “They’re so inept, in certain ways, (that) they’re not threatening to you.”
Let’s break our eggheads into categories: