"Him? Oh, that's just my geeky little brother."

[mrissa]

(Right up front: I have only watched two seasons of Numb3rs and thirteen episodes of season one of Criminal Minds--though by the end of the day it'll probably be fifteen--but I do not care about spoilers. I do not request that people avoid them in comments, so if you do care about spoilers for these shows, be careful about reading the comments section.)

Among the results of the vertigo is that I can't read while riding the stationary bike any more. I have to hang on so I don't fall on my head. So I've been watching DVDs while I exercise. For my birthday I got the first two seasons of Numb3rs and the first season of Criminal Minds, just for me to use as workout videos. They're trying to do very different things, and I'm glad, because mostly that means I can just appreciate them both rather than seeing one as a worse version of the other. But there are some commonalities. They're both about FBI agents, of course. And then there's the matter of Dr. Spencer Reid and Dr. Charles Eppes.

Sometimes when I'm watching a movie or a TV show, the minute a character comes on, I know: watch carefully. This is what the people who make this think of people like me. Egon was my favorite Ghostbuster, but more to the point, even at that age, I knew that Egon was the Ghostbuster who was supposed to be like me. I didn't watch The Breakfast Club and say, "Anthony Michael Hall's character is my favorite!", I watched it and said, "That's what they think we're like." And from the first glimpse of Matthew Gray Gubler as Spencer Reid--he didn't even have to open his mouth. He was just that guy, and you just know. (I suspect that for some of you who watch Criminal Minds, there is another character who provokes that reaction: Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope Garcia. My reaction to Garcia is more like, "This is what they think some of my friends are like.") matociquala's tags for her Criminal Minds posts are "geeks with guns," but geeks and smart people are not the same thing, and it is very hard for me to read, say, Thomas Gibson's Aaron Hotchner as a geek. Smart, knowledgeable, professional, yes--but none of his co-workers think to tease him that he spends his weekends at home watching Star Trek reruns. Even if he very well might.

(I see Hotch as a ST:NG man, at this point in my watching of the series, particularly the episodes with Tasha Yar. I can see Hotch trying not to get annoyed with a really stupid Q episode because he has the baby asleep on his chest at 2 a.m. and his wife is getting the first sleep she's had in weeks. I just don't think he could get into even the better parts of DS9. And I can easily imagine Elle and Morgan gaping as he talks about it with Reid. But I digress: point is, he hasn't actually done that stuff onscreen.)

(Further digression, and then I'll stop: nobody told me it was Inigo Montoya and Greg Montgomery Fight Crime (With Some Other Folks). That...took a bit to get used to, and I'm still not completely there. "When you're in the middle of the episode, do you start thinking, 'Who's gonna kill him? Is it Inigo? Who?'" asked timprov, using his best Fred Savage voice. And it's like he knows me or something, because yah, that's exactly what I think in the middle of episodes.)

The people who created Spencer Reid decided to hit all of the geek kid brother buttons so hard they were practically jumping up and down on them. They dropped an anvil on the buttons. I suspect that a 7-year-old who watched this show would (probably have nightmares and) be able to read Spencer Reid as a kid brother figure. He is not incompetent, or weak, or a whiner. But he is spindly, with floppy hair and ill-chosen sweaters and fairly high tenor voice. He is not romantically successful, and it's in the traditional "geek doesn't go out on any dates" way. He struggles with his firearm qualification. So far it looks like they're pressing all those buttons really hard so they can mess with people's preconceptions, and I approve of the messing-with. But even his physical competencies have so far been well within geek norms (sleight of hand, for heaven's sake!). Not only do I know which old-school D&D character classes he'd be suited for, I know that he knows that too. In fact, I suspect it's only a matter of time before a role-playing reference comes out of this character's mouth.

And so far, what the creators and writers of this show think of people like me is pretty darn good, actually. He's brave--he is, in fact, the kind of brave that's easily mistaken for fearless if you underestimate how fast this person is thinking, because the processing of the fear and the decision-making about what needs doing actually goes faster than average. He does not dither. When something needs doing, he will do it if it is even second cousins of the next door neighbor of something he knows how to do. Also, while Hotch is married and Gideon appears to have been around someone romantically for long enough to have a kid with her (information about these characters' personal lives comes out in a very slow trickle), Reid's lack of romantic success is by no means unique. So far we have seen people flirting with Morgan and making eyes at J.J. and Elle, but none of them are in stable relationships, either--and they're older than Reid. And he has already been clear about his interest in women, so they are not playing up the sexless geek thing. (Thank you not at all, Breakfast Club.)

It's interesting to me that Numb3rs has such a different take when it does have the little brother geek explicitly at the center of the show. The show's emotional core is the Eppes family, and Don the FBI agent is the elder brother and Charlie the mathematician is the younger brother. There is no coding about it, no way to read it differently with a different critical view: Charlie is literally the geeky little brother, and anybody who said, "Oh, I didn't see it that way," would be, well, not watching the same show. This is not what we call subtext, people. Also, the premise of the show is essentially, "People like you are very useful for solving problems"--in two seasons they haven't gone down the, "Sometimes instinct is better than math!" road with the sympathetic characters. They understand that someone who has done a lot of math will have developed a mathematical intuition--and when something tweaks Charlie's mathematical intuition as wrong, he doesn't just hare off after a random feeling, he redoes the math. There are some times when he's chosen premises that are ill-suited for the problem, but when your basic backdrop assumption is that geekdom is good, your geek characters can make mistakes a lot more freely without it looking like an endorsement of whiny anti-geek bullshit. (Exception: one episode was enough to let Peter MacNicol write. Ick. Just say the words they give you, Janosz.)

And--well, big difference: Dr. Spencer Reid is still being a prodigy. And Dr. Charles Eppes has just gotten to the age where he isn't one any more. And that's interesting. Reid is in a field where prodigies are rare and noticeable; Charlie is in math, a field where--at least at the level at which we're to believe he works--they're expected. When he's challenged in the field, it's at least as much because he doesn't fit a preconceived job as because he's young; with Reid it's almost always the "are you out of high school?" looks from the episode's other law enforcement characters or crime victims.

And bless the writers of Numb3rs, Charlie Eppes is consistently written and given camera angles as though he was completely hot (which he is). And Charlie has a consistent romantic interest where his non-geeky big brother does not. The writers can't be unaware of the sexless geek/geek who can't get a date idea. It's just not what they want to do with this character. When Charlie is romantically unsuccessful, it's because he and Amita are having difficulty moving from colleagues/friends to lovers. He has had a long-term serious girlfriend in his past, who shows up briefly. He is very, very much a geek. But he's not that particular geek. Part of the difference between that and Criminal Minds is just that David Krumholtz is never, ever going to be mistaken for a 17-year-old again in his life, no matter how he's dressed. There are only two years' age difference between the two actors, but Matthew Gray Gubler is a guy who can be dressed to look much younger than he is, and David Krumholtz really isn't. Charlie Eppes gets nervous the way people get nervous when they're dealing with potential romantic relationships, but he is not written as a skittery virgin. He's a geek as a fully mature, though young, man. Yay for that.

And there's this: Charlie Eppes is not an FBI agent. He is a professor who consults with the FBI from time to time. He doesn't have the direct practice with the more violent cases that an agent would have, and getting used to them takes him longer in show terms because he is off doing math like he's supposed to. The ability to use a gun is still in the realm of personal choice for Charlie Eppes, not professional responsibility, and small crimes can still horrify him--so the viewer is handed a geek who is the most empathetic and the most emotionally involved of the people on the team solving these crimes. Far from the stereotype of geeks as socially disconnected, Charlie is the one who's still socially normal enough to not only get upset--they all get upset--but let that upset get out of control, even if it's often in very introverted, geeky ways. And Don and the other FBI agents protect Charlie as a little brother and as a civilian. For Spencer Reid, the protection of the other agents has to be limited, because he is a team member. He is an FBI agent. So when he has nightmares, they have extremely personal sympathy, having been there themselves--but they also know that this is part of the job, something he has to get used to in a way that Charlie Eppes never would.

So one of the things I was thinking about is, why is this idea of geek-as-younger-sibling (who am I kidding: younger brother) so prevalent? I know a lot of geeks. Really a lot. And most of us are oldests and onlies. Of course there are geeky middles and youngests; naturally it's not a universal thing. But the numbers are really pretty striking: the majority of geeks look a lot more like Mac in Veronica Mars in their family lives than like Charlie in Numb3rs. But we don't have a corresponding "geeky big brother/sister" screen type to go with that reality, and I was wondering why that is. Even in Veronica Mars, we got Mac, but we also got the Casablancas brothers doing the "geeky little brother" stereotype thing again. What's the deal? I have half a theory germinating, but I'm not sure quite how to put it or whether it applies beyond crime/mystery shows, so I'd be glad to hear alternate theories for the popularity of this type.

My half a theory says that geeks know stuff, and when you're more experienced and you know more, that's a pretty big imbalance built right in structurally, so if you want a comparatively balanced team or group, making the geek character younger means that they don't end up knowing everything.

My half-assed theory says that it's a way for writers who are not fundamentally threatened by geeks themselves to make geeks look less threatening to other people.

What do you think? Other examples/counterexamples/thoughts?

Comments

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

The choice of Gubler for the geek is kind of inspired, given that he was one of the highest-paid male models for quite some time before he got into acting. So the floppy hair and the unfortunate taste in fashion has more to do with (in my opinion) making him the geeky character they want to see from a guy who, when he's on a runway or in a print ad, is kind of ridiculously gorgeous. It's a playing against type that I like.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Nita's little sister Dairene is not a counterexample to the general point you're making, as her story fits so exactly in the category of "Geeks are weird but useful, not scary. See? Everybody knows little sisters can be annoying, but when the chips are down you still love them and take care of them." I agree that the little sister variation is less common than little brother geeks.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

While I can not count on recent TV, my old experiences tend to be that Hollywood and mainstream media do not understand geekery. (Although, praise be to Joss Whedon for introducing geeks who don't abandon their geeky hobbies upon gaining acceptance from somebody.)

My whole family is geeky. The geek is bred deep. But you never see that. Usually on TV, the geek is always the outcast or weirdo in a family full of sporty people. Nobody comes from a family of geeks. Geeks are portrayed as loners or asocial, EXCEPT when they get together with other geeks to play D&D. (Nothing against D&D, but there are so many geeky hobbies, portraying D&D as the only one shows a poverty of imagination.) Also, the geeks are often shown to be willing to abandon their geekiness or SEKRITLY HOT, and as soon as that happens, the geek is suddenly transformed. And generally when that happens, they are less dour and have lots of non-geeky friends, despite the fact that their interests would likely still be the same. (Witness: Christina Ricci in That Darn Cat.) Even when the geek is treated kindly by the script, usually they are still the token geek.

Maybe that's why I liked Buffy--it was basically a geek army. Even Cordelia had an inner geek. The interdependance of geeks was shown, and no geeks had to give up being who they were. When Willow acquires a boyfriend, she doesn't suddenly transform into a non-geek. She remains...a geek.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

What if it's a way for writers who ARE fundamentally threatened by geeks to make geeks look less threatening to other people?

I think a lot of writers, movie/television writers in particular, are geeks or geeks-in-denial who grabbed at the idea of being a scriptwriter so they could call themselves cooler than the average geek - so they could set themselves apart in some sort of perceived, and largely false, geek hierarchy (i.e. Sunglasses Hollywood Writer Geek is cooler than Angsty Indie Writer Geek is cooler than Science Wonk Geek is cooler than RPG Geek ....)

Not all of us embrace the sexiness of geekdom as readily as you can, I'm afraid, and another possibility is that one can have a whole family of geeks, but the older members of the family have learned to camouflage it better.

I'm waiting for my ideal geek character - one who is a geek but is also reasonably secure in his/her body/physicality and can interact with humans in a reasonably normal manner. Not all geeks are socially near-autistic, after all. Bones' Temperance Brennan would be my ideal ubergeek except she fails clause three rather unbelievably (I don't think she could possibly still be that bad after that many years out in the real world, and if she were, it would be near-absolute - in other words, if she can interact with Booth she can interact with other people and if she can't interact with other people then she never would have gotten to the comfort level she's at with Booth.

Also, the character is physically attractive and - I hate to go here, but I think it's true - could not have gotten to that age without having gotten clear signals that someone wanted to go to bed with her. If I had thought that a human was interested in any sort of intimate contact with me when I was a teenager, I'd have learned how to be a human in my twenties, rather than still being trying to get the nuances down as I'm about to hit forty-one.)

Um, wow, this clearly hit some deep well, I didn't expect it to be this long or this ranty. Sorry.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I don't watch either show, so I don't have a lot to contribute other than this question: do you, or have you ever, watched Bones? More geeks and FBI agents, but I really like the show.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly identify with any of the characters on either show, though I think my geek credentials are solid. Indeed, I'm the older brother to an established scientist, and my brother isn't like that.

Give me the guys on The Big Bang Theory. I know them. They went to sf conventions. Now they're online, or at least not prevalent at midwest cons.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched the shows either, but I think it is an attempt at acculturation by writers and others who are threatened (or who at least don't see the value that you do in "geekiness"): if the younger siblings are "geeky," there is still hope for them to "grow up" and not be geeky, still hope for them to be "like" their older siblings.

There is still hope, in other words, to eradicate the dangerous -- or at least un-understandable or undesirable -- geekiness.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

This is what I was attempting to say before I hit a spurting spring of ramble. Thanks.

[genarti]

Oh, that's an idea. And another option within that could be that the younger character is often (I think) meant to be the one the audience feels the most sympathy for or identification with in stressful situations. By that I mean not that everyone identifies with that character, nor is meant to, but that often in drama/action shows, we get a relatively innocent character who's allowed to react to horrible situations as if they're horrible. If hardened FBI agents react strongly, either it's a really really awful situation or they're not really all that good at their jobs. The little brother, though, or the kind-hearted outsider -- that person is allowed to react the way an audience member might. That person is the bridge. It's the s1 Willow role, etc etc.

So if you're a geeky writer, maybe it's to some extent natural and/or desirable to take the character most like you, and make that the one who's the bridge to the audience and the one who brings the show the normal person's reactions.

Edit: Uh, and now I reread, and see that somehow I misparsed your statement entirely. That'll teach me to skim! I misread your first paragraph as suggesting that it was a way for writers who are geeks to make them seem less threatening and more sympathetic to the audience. Which I do still think is a possibility for at least some writers, though obviously not all.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

I'm going to answer your question by completely sidestepping it and not answering it and asking you one instead. I'm a computer geek, not a math geek. I've watched some Numb3rs and it seems like math is being used as magic. Charlie is presented with a problem, he pulls an esoteric formula out of his spell book and uses it to solve the crime-of-the-day. It might not work right off -- usually doesn't, I think -- but he changes the frog eyes for newt eyes and poof! he solves things. For every episode I've seen, this immediately breaks the spell, so to speak, and throws me out of the story. Is math intiution, theory, and practice such that they could really solve these crimes like this? Or is Charlie on such a different plane of reality that he can make these connections no one else can?

I see the same thing with computer use on NCIS. So much that it makes whenever someone starts digging around on the computer I know we've hit the comedy portion of the episode.

Okay, here's an attempt to answer your question. If these shows were created by a committee, then I think you're attributing to much active motive to character design. They had selected a pile of stereotypes, they had to assign them to characters, the show is what happened. Orrr..... one of the show developers designed the two brothers after his own relationship with his geek little brother.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Too often, the math in Numbers is grafted on to the plot give Charlie something to do. The main reason to watch the show (assuming you do) is for the interactions. The technobabble is okay, and I'm happy that such terminology is being absorbed by millions of potential geeks, but really my favorite character is the ever-lovable Judd Hirsch. He takes over the National Treasure spot from Jack Gilford (who played Hirsh's father on Taxi).

Further aside: For sheer geekiness and yes-I-know-people-like-that empathy, my favorite character is Larry. Smart, weird, seeking self-knowledge, a but insecure but sure of some things, deliberate in speech. Charlie isn't a geek, he's a prodigy. Related, but different.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

I think I'm in with the 'younger siblings are less threatening' vote. There's also maybe some idea that elder siblings have dominance, that they have authority over and can keep the dangerous smart person under control. Stop them from using their powers for evil. I think the extreme inability to cope with normal day to day life is likewise a control flaw -- this person will not be able to use their great intelligence to run rings around you because hey they can't even tie their own shoelaces or remember that saying 'hello' is a social requirement. It's a bit like Angel being a vampire with a soul... all the hot and dangerous of the monster, but with an invisible leash.

[careswen.livejournal.com]

My theory (based on my personal life and psych studies) about why the geek is always the younger sibling:

In the competition between siblings, the oldest usually wins at being bigger, faster, more athletic, more powerful. So the youngest is left with being cleverer.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

And they do this wonderful thing with him where, every so often, you either get another character acknowledging that Reid is gorgeous, if he would just PUT DOWN THE HAIR GEL AND BACK AWAY, MAN (Mrissa, have you gotten to the FBI-Agent-protects-starlet parody ep yet?) or they light him in such a way that he's breathtaking. And when they do that second thing, it's almost inevitably during a scene where he's in agonizing emotional pain.

It's a very, very cool trick.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

The other thing they're doing with Reid there is... well, when it comes down to it, he's not nonthreatening at all. He can kill without blinking, and take a beating and come back fighting every time. It's camouflage, and it's something they undermine in really interesting ways.

There are a number of scenes--still coming up for you, I think--where Reid acts as a figure of authority, even more or less taking command of the team in a time of crisis mid third season. He develops authority and presence, and winds up hauling Hotch's ass out of at least one extremely hot fire. *g*

Of course, Reid is the character *I* project into, totally. (He's the first TV character I've ever found that I can identify with.) I *wish* I were Garcia, but Reid... oh, god, if you had known me when I was 25. *g* I am that guy.

(There will be more evidence as time goes by that all of these characters are geeks, though some of them hide it under a kind of professional veneer. Not all of them are SF geeks, however. Gideon is a bird geek. Morgan, of all people, *is* an SF geek. (This comes out after Prentiss, who is also a huge geeky geek, joins the cast, and they have a rather great conversation in S2 about how to blow a date by revealing that, well, you're a giant geek. *g*)

But I also happen to know that the executive producer of the show is a giant closet geek (He self-describes as "The only Chicago beat cop ever to read "The Mists of Avalon" in a squad car.") So, yanno. *g*

[evangoer.livejournal.com]

This reminded me that the geeky little brother at the end of Better Off Dead does get the girl. Girls. Of course that was all wildly inappropriate.

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any of those shows.

Would you consider Alex Keaton a geek?

I think it is harder to portray because older sibling as geek conflicts with other stereotypes like older sibling as bully.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i think he's breathtaking all the time. but then i have A Serious Thing for tall, spindly, and geektastic. although i usually go for keeps-hair-too-short rather than desperately-needs-a-haircut.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

He is looking a lot better S2 and on--the improved health helps a LOT.

*g*

I like androgynous muppetboys, but generally prefer my boys with noses, and Reid is way too much my television alter ego/twin brother for me to find him all that sexy--but when they do the angel-Percival thing with him, it totally works even on me.

(Oh, Mris: that's the other reason for the virginal-knight thing. He's Percival. Of course, Morgan is Galahad, so they will surely undermine THAT trope, too.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think there's body language to it, too. When I saw a bunch of still photos of Jason Dohring from Veronica Mars, I could tell immediately which ones were of Jason Dohring and which ones were of Logan Echolls, the character he played on that show. They're not the same guy; they hold themselves differently.

Even so, I saw pictures of Matthew Gray Gubler when I was writing this entry, and I am just not going to be able to parse that one. I can parse that the people who shot those photos think that he is attractive; you can usually tell that. But ridiculously gorgeous? Well, I'll take others' word for it, I guess.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, no starlet protecting yet. I'm just over halfway through S1, and the DVDs for S2 are ordered.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I have only recently begun watching both Numb3rs and Criminal Minds and have been catching both higgeldy piggeldy all out of order across seasons, so I don't have the sense of story arc that I might.

I hadn't noticed the 'kid brother' component you're reading into Spencer Reid. I think this may just mean that I don't have the cultural intelligence of a seven-year-old. Now that you 'splain it, I can certainly understand why you might see him that way, it just didn't strike me on the face of it.

To my mind the classic geeky kid brother character is Charles Wallace Murry in A Wrinkle in Time. There, Charles Wallaces geekiness seems very much part and parcel to his vulnerability, and the reason we, like Meg, feel an impulse to protect him. It makes me think that the 'kid brother' trope is just the expression of the writer's empathy for geek characters: a way to make the genuine vulnerability of geeks as people both external and sympathetic. Which may be just a variant on what you're saying.

Because you're right, geeks tend to be eldests, in my experience, unless they were the younger siblings of Even Bigger Geeks, which also happens.

I do find that when I follow enough of the math being alluded to on Numb3rs to understand what is being proposed then yeah, it seems to me that the math is being used pretty much as magic. I was pleased to see Nassim Talib and the Black Swan problem alluded to, but the allusion didn't make that much sense, for instance.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Oh, give Reid's sex life a couple more eps, yet. *g* (Also, there's an s2 episode with a character known fondly in fandom as "Reid's college ex-boyfriend." Because... yeah.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, am as close to a Kinsey 0 as you can get without actively disliking being in a room with members of the same sex. So androgynous whatevers? Not so much a thing I get. At all.

And, possibly not unrelatedly, I have always found both Percival and Galahad to be PITAs; I am more of a Gawain sort of girl. But if they set Morgan up as Galahad, I may have to change my mind a little: Shemar Moore is mighty fine to look at.

(Probably it is time for me to wave the Grant Imahara banner to indicate that I am not exclusively attracted to men with beards. But well. Ya know.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Not in any kind of conventional way. But he has really neat bones.

Somewhere, I have his most-ridiculous modeling shot uploaded, for amusement value. Hang on.

Ahh, here it is.



(Personally, I prefer to drool on Shemar, if I'm drooling.)