More Numb3rs than you wanted
Mar. 24th, 2011 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficSo I’m getting sucked into Numb3rs, which I realize is so six years ago.
The math seems decently done so far. I don’t understand the equations on the boards, but they are at least feasibly equation-y. (Though him writing everything on chalkboards is more than a little eccentric. I suppose watching him use Mathcad isn’t thrilling TV.) Most of the times they have him explain something, it is recognizably math to me. They run into two problems with how it applies to the plot of the episodes, though:
1 – The math is easily enough understood, but it makes no sense that you would need it to address this problem. Like, there’ve been three sightings of a fugitive in a loose circle around his old house. You do not need to model soap bubbles to say, “Oh hey! The sightings are in a ring around his house!”
2 – The math is complex enough that Charlie’s little explanation doesn’t actually explain it at all. There’ve been a number of cases where the explanation is basically, there’s an algorithm that finds X. But he doesn’t even try to say how. So, for the writers, it becomes a black box. The algorithm said this guy did it! But there’s no evidence linking him to the case. But the algorithm!
What appeals to me, is, of course, David Krumholtz. Charlie is a super genius, but manages to avoid most of the super genius TV tropes. He doesn’t handle extreme emotions that well (but then, who does), and he has a tendency to lose track of things when he’s working. But he’s not autistic, or even Aspergers-like, he’s not unaware of social norms, he’s not bad at social interactions, he’s not wimpy, he’s not emotionally immature. He’s actually a mostly mature, stable, athletic, charming guy who is also a math genius. He’s a rock star—the producers say so repeatedly, and he’s definitely filmed that way. Since they’re modeling him on Feynman, this makes sense.
So it kind of bothers me that in most of the fic I’ve seen, Charlie is the tortured genius, oh noes, no good with people type. In the fic, he’s childlike, or ridiculously vulnerable and incapable of handling anything. He’s practically autistic. And he’s almost always virginal and—I just don’t buy that. Geeks who are that charming and also attractive and fit? Women throw themselves at them. They do not stay single.
There’s even an episode in season two where Charlie says he received a love letter/invitation to a dirty weekend after he published his first paper when he was fourteen. And we know that he’s a popular teacher, as well. Let me just say—I knew a lot of chemistry professors with far less to recommend them that married their former students (usually graduate, but some undergraduate too, and some had three or four successive marriages to students). So what I’m saying is, I don’t seen a teenage boy who is being offered no strings attached sex at every turn saying no. At least not to all the offers. And he certainly seems confident enough around women. (Crap at relationships, but that’s a different skill.)
It just makes me wonder why fanon gravitates so hard to the socially inept geek, despite the characterization on the show. My guess is it’s two factors:
1 – Lazy writing. It’s a lot easier to write a one-note character than one who is good at something sometimes and bad at other times.
2 – The redemption/sexual education of the nerd with no social skills is the story of their id that they were going to write anyway, regardless of the source material, and Numb3rs presents a character close enough that they can squash him into that box. (Something about author self-insertion and redeeming our geeky pre-teen selves, I’d say.) Same thing happens in a lot of fandoms with smart characters. Rodney? Not meek. But often gets written that way. Sherlock? I don’t know where people are getting this autistic can’t interact with people thing cause he plays people brilliantly on the show. And oh, god, Blair. Did anything on the show portray him as meek and virginal?
There’s an episode where Charlie says something like, “the one keg party I gave, he stole the keg” (referring to a rival). I’ve seen this pop up in fic. But he went to Princeton. And at Princeton, keg parties? Really not a thing. Princeton has eating clubs, which function as coed fraternities (some you have to rush, like a frat, some are “sign-in,” meaning membership is determined by lottery if too many people are interested). But the salient point is the eating clubs provide free booze to all comers every Thursday and Saturday night. Even as a freshman who has just arrived on campus and knows no upper classmen you can walk straight into an eating club your first week at school and get free beer. Of course, it’s not actually free, the members of the club pay for it, which pissed me off something awful when I was in a club, cause I didn’t drink in college.
But the point is—eating clubs make keg parties unnecessary. People pre-game in their rooms, but usually with liquor. The parties I went to hosted by a cappella groups were also more of the hard alcohol type than kegs. There are kegs on campus—under the bars at the eating clubs. But these are bought by the “liquid assets” chair of the club, whose main requirement is that they be over 21, so Charlie wouldn’t have been one. Charlie would almost definitely not have been in a club. So him throwing a keg party, just from the outside, would be a really odd thing to do. I mean, I could see him at sixteen trying to be cool by doing something like that, but just his lack of awareness of the drinking culture exhibited by having a keg party would have marked him as an outsider. I don’t really see anyone going to such a thing. Except for the rival, who stole the keg. (Given his timeline, the only reason I could see for him to throw a kegger is the Nude Olympics—and why isn’t that a story, Numb3rs fandom? You’re letting me down here, seriously.)
To close, I am terribly amused by the discussion of the original pilot, which had an almost entirely different cast, except for Krumholtz. The producers all say things like, the cast just didn’t have chemistry. Then one finally says, “Casting David Krumholtz took us in a much more ethnically specific direction.” Yes. And the original cast for his brother and father were generic whitebread types. Krumholtz looked adopted. At least one show in Hollywood is not going to ignore blatant ethnic miscasting, so woo for that.
I also have to say, I cannot stand Megan. I know I am from the East Coast and should be used to her accent, but I CANNOT STAND HER VOICE. Oh my god, so whiny and nasal. And she holds her mouth in this really annoying way. Ugh. Bring Terry back, please.
The math seems decently done so far. I don’t understand the equations on the boards, but they are at least feasibly equation-y. (Though him writing everything on chalkboards is more than a little eccentric. I suppose watching him use Mathcad isn’t thrilling TV.) Most of the times they have him explain something, it is recognizably math to me. They run into two problems with how it applies to the plot of the episodes, though:
1 – The math is easily enough understood, but it makes no sense that you would need it to address this problem. Like, there’ve been three sightings of a fugitive in a loose circle around his old house. You do not need to model soap bubbles to say, “Oh hey! The sightings are in a ring around his house!”
2 – The math is complex enough that Charlie’s little explanation doesn’t actually explain it at all. There’ve been a number of cases where the explanation is basically, there’s an algorithm that finds X. But he doesn’t even try to say how. So, for the writers, it becomes a black box. The algorithm said this guy did it! But there’s no evidence linking him to the case. But the algorithm!
What appeals to me, is, of course, David Krumholtz. Charlie is a super genius, but manages to avoid most of the super genius TV tropes. He doesn’t handle extreme emotions that well (but then, who does), and he has a tendency to lose track of things when he’s working. But he’s not autistic, or even Aspergers-like, he’s not unaware of social norms, he’s not bad at social interactions, he’s not wimpy, he’s not emotionally immature. He’s actually a mostly mature, stable, athletic, charming guy who is also a math genius. He’s a rock star—the producers say so repeatedly, and he’s definitely filmed that way. Since they’re modeling him on Feynman, this makes sense.
So it kind of bothers me that in most of the fic I’ve seen, Charlie is the tortured genius, oh noes, no good with people type. In the fic, he’s childlike, or ridiculously vulnerable and incapable of handling anything. He’s practically autistic. And he’s almost always virginal and—I just don’t buy that. Geeks who are that charming and also attractive and fit? Women throw themselves at them. They do not stay single.
There’s even an episode in season two where Charlie says he received a love letter/invitation to a dirty weekend after he published his first paper when he was fourteen. And we know that he’s a popular teacher, as well. Let me just say—I knew a lot of chemistry professors with far less to recommend them that married their former students (usually graduate, but some undergraduate too, and some had three or four successive marriages to students). So what I’m saying is, I don’t seen a teenage boy who is being offered no strings attached sex at every turn saying no. At least not to all the offers. And he certainly seems confident enough around women. (Crap at relationships, but that’s a different skill.)
It just makes me wonder why fanon gravitates so hard to the socially inept geek, despite the characterization on the show. My guess is it’s two factors:
1 – Lazy writing. It’s a lot easier to write a one-note character than one who is good at something sometimes and bad at other times.
2 – The redemption/sexual education of the nerd with no social skills is the story of their id that they were going to write anyway, regardless of the source material, and Numb3rs presents a character close enough that they can squash him into that box. (Something about author self-insertion and redeeming our geeky pre-teen selves, I’d say.) Same thing happens in a lot of fandoms with smart characters. Rodney? Not meek. But often gets written that way. Sherlock? I don’t know where people are getting this autistic can’t interact with people thing cause he plays people brilliantly on the show. And oh, god, Blair. Did anything on the show portray him as meek and virginal?
There’s an episode where Charlie says something like, “the one keg party I gave, he stole the keg” (referring to a rival). I’ve seen this pop up in fic. But he went to Princeton. And at Princeton, keg parties? Really not a thing. Princeton has eating clubs, which function as coed fraternities (some you have to rush, like a frat, some are “sign-in,” meaning membership is determined by lottery if too many people are interested). But the salient point is the eating clubs provide free booze to all comers every Thursday and Saturday night. Even as a freshman who has just arrived on campus and knows no upper classmen you can walk straight into an eating club your first week at school and get free beer. Of course, it’s not actually free, the members of the club pay for it, which pissed me off something awful when I was in a club, cause I didn’t drink in college.
But the point is—eating clubs make keg parties unnecessary. People pre-game in their rooms, but usually with liquor. The parties I went to hosted by a cappella groups were also more of the hard alcohol type than kegs. There are kegs on campus—under the bars at the eating clubs. But these are bought by the “liquid assets” chair of the club, whose main requirement is that they be over 21, so Charlie wouldn’t have been one. Charlie would almost definitely not have been in a club. So him throwing a keg party, just from the outside, would be a really odd thing to do. I mean, I could see him at sixteen trying to be cool by doing something like that, but just his lack of awareness of the drinking culture exhibited by having a keg party would have marked him as an outsider. I don’t really see anyone going to such a thing. Except for the rival, who stole the keg. (Given his timeline, the only reason I could see for him to throw a kegger is the Nude Olympics—and why isn’t that a story, Numb3rs fandom? You’re letting me down here, seriously.)
To close, I am terribly amused by the discussion of the original pilot, which had an almost entirely different cast, except for Krumholtz. The producers all say things like, the cast just didn’t have chemistry. Then one finally says, “Casting David Krumholtz took us in a much more ethnically specific direction.” Yes. And the original cast for his brother and father were generic whitebread types. Krumholtz looked adopted. At least one show in Hollywood is not going to ignore blatant ethnic miscasting, so woo for that.
I also have to say, I cannot stand Megan. I know I am from the East Coast and should be used to her accent, but I CANNOT STAND HER VOICE. Oh my god, so whiny and nasal. And she holds her mouth in this really annoying way. Ugh. Bring Terry back, please.