Now, I'm no genius, but immediately I had the solution to the problem presented in the show. They didnt resolve it my way at the end, and it's too early to tell if they will do it my way in the next show, but still, it was pretty easy.
My simple solution? Duh! Prosthetics!
Seriously, if I can come up with the answer, why cant someone in a town full of super-geniuses?
* Eureka, by the way, is nerd-candy, so dont judge me. It has cool devices, beautiful women, and every week the clever guy shows up the folks who are soooo much smarter than him. And yes, I said smarter, because the thing about nerds is that there is always somebody smarter than they are, and figuring out something before they do is the appeal of many nerd shows.
And no, it's not an odd plot-line, just substitute brawn for brains and you've got every Chuck Norris movie ever made.
4 comments:
As good as it sounds, I don't watch Eureka for the same reason I don't watch the Big Bang Theory: the two shows are secretly making fun of the smart. The cop in Eureka is not academically smarter than the scientists, but he's definitely more street-savvy. The lesson, of course, being that scientists (aka, smart people) are socially-repressed and "need" the non-academics to survive in this world, or they'll blow everything up (in the name of SCIENCE!). Same with BBT: super-smart nerds can barely talk to hot blond.
WV: "pracke" sounds like a breakfast food, or some designer clothes.
Yeah, I can see that, and it contains large dollops of 50's style science-paranoia, also. Still, I enjoy it's goofy good nature.
Big Bang I thought was funny, and the jokes are frequently geeky/smart, but that doesnt change the basic framework of nice-guy-wants-girl-girl-is-oblivious-but-it'll-all-work-out-in-four-or-five-seasons-time, so I never got into it.
There arent a lot of shows that I watch, and I cant tell you why Eureka is one of them.
Still, if there's one thing that drives me crazy about television and movies, and even books sometimes, is when they dance around an obvious answer for what is a purely narrative reason. Couldnt they at least make up a reason why that obvious answer cannot be used?
Intelligence follows a bell curve. That is, the higher or lower the intelligence, the fewer people there are that fall in that category.
Second, audiences don't like feeling like dolts. They want to feel superior to what they're watching.
This has consequences for the level of intelligence of tv programming: nobody ever lost money writing shows at least slightly below the average intelligence of the viewing audience. Write for the intelligentsia and one is likely to wind up with a hand-full of egg-heads, an insufficient audience to sustain a show...unless the show has a hook like a doctor so brilliant that the hospital can't fire him no matter how big an ass he makes of himself to all and sundry, like House.
Oh, there are a few shows that cater to those who follow world affairs that interview authors, scholars, world leaders, etc. but they tend to be on public broadcasting stations, funded by rich folks' foundations and shown late at night after most people go to bed.
In short, the obvious answer isn't obvious to most folks, who are usually willing to suspend whatever critical faculties they might possess in order to be entertained.
Tv isn't too stupid to survive, it's doing just fine writing just below the lowest common denominator.
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