TV, stop with the genius trope

TV seems to love detectives that are insanely smart. What is their obsession with the genius? Especially the insufferable genius. What's wrong with an inspector who doesn't get everything right? Who makes mistakes? Who doesn't go on long, elaborate monologues, failing to explain things apparently way beyond our understanding? Whilst I really enjoy the BBC Sherlock series, it also kind of sucks in that way. Sherlock is not the only one.

My Little Thought Tree is my channel for drawing out the deeper meaning and emotion in film, TV, and the world at large through relaxed, analytical video essays. I am a professional counsellor and often draw on my psychology and therapy background to better understand characters, themes, and emotion in fiction. I upload every Saturday and occasionally on Tuesdays, if I'm feeling productive.

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#genius #tv #sherlock

[mylittlethoughttree]

So here's a more rambling one for you all. I considered talking more specifically about "the insufferable genius" but maybe that's a bigger topic on it's own for another video, we'll see.
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[mattburton]

Brandon Sanderson was roommates with Ken Jennings the jeopardy guy, who was a genius, and Brandon said that all the brain power usually expressed itself in Ken making Simpsons references faster than anyone else. Genius doesn't make you omnipotent, it just makes your brain faster at pulling up its own stored information.

[billuraral]

I went to elementary(later middle) school with a literal child genious. She could speak several languages and play more than one musical instrument, she was sporty and had natural talent for math and many other subjects. She was hands down the smartest person in whole school. And she was geniuenly the nicest, kindest kid you'd meet. She was one of the few friends I had back than as the resident weird kid who everyone bullied for. We met again in our 20s and she was still every bit of the smart and kind girl I knew. I think this is why I hate "the asshole genious trope" so much

[Alex-cwrz]

The only time I have seen the "I am smart therefore rude" work is in Doc Martin, his persona is shown as a failing and a condition he would like to sometimes change rather than just the, I'm cool because I pretend not to care, like Rick and Sherlock. It is also shown in a positive light in other scenarios too and the main thing being it is very funny.

[NorroTaku]

I always hate when the audience cannot solve the mystery because crucial informal is withheld to them

[MrPoopaloops]

House is more about character development than the actual medical mysteries in my opinion. I would love to see you go over the show if you can find the time to watch it and actually end up enjoying it.

[somethingwolfish]

A series you might want to try is Monk. It's an American series, but he's got severe OCD and anxiety which really affects the way he's able to solve cases and he really relies on the people around him. Plus Tony Shalhoub is a brilliant actor.

[the_Analogist]

MULDER!! i've always identified with Mulder from the X-Files because he heavily relies on his intuition to navigate through mere bits and pieces of vague evidence. his willingness to believe makes him exploitable, but his instincts are right often enough that he usually gets results.

[stswagmastere]

Columbo may be a good counter to your point. Columbo is similar to Holmes in that he is very deductive person, but he always seen as unremarkable or average person. He is just good at asking the right questions and finding holes in people's stories. He is also a very social and friendly person, usually interacting very nicely everyone even if he suspects they are the culprit.

[dustinpaulson]

Nicely done.

I enjoyed watching House for a few seasons. Not really sure why I stopped. Maybe because of how nasty he spoke to and treated his colleagues and patients. What I liked about him, besides watching a well-written genius work, is that despite his rudeness, he did want to help people, even if it meant calling out all the BS obscuring the real problem. I also enjoyed that, for as intelligent as he was, he couldn't fix himself. He's broken, and though he's a whiz at fixing others outside of him, he either can't or won't fix what's wrong inside of him. You have some sympathy for a person like that. That in their own ongoing suffering that they are a balm to those also in suffering.

[tristanharmsen]

I enjoyed this video, and I largely agree with your points about genius characters. I think you should give House another watch though. It definitely has elements of what your talking about especially in early seasons, but House becomes much more interesting as a character as the series goes on, when he starts to question himself and makes various attempts to better himself or his relationships with others. I think the thing that makes him so interesting to me is his selfishness and how that affects the people around him. Plus there are some therapy scenes later on that I think would fit well into your content. I'd just really love to hear your take on the series. Either way, love your content. Have a nice weekend!

[ughhseriouslywowdamn]

The biggest problem with the godlike supergenius as a concept is that they're always written by mere mortals who are nowhere near as smart as the character they're writing, and so the writers make mistakes or oversights their characters never would. Or they just fail to perfectly walk that line of giving the audience just enough pivotal information to the audience that they go "Of course!" once it's all laid out but will never beat the godlike supergenius to any of their deductions.

As a result, I do occasionally find myself figuring something (not everything, but an important piece of the puzzle) out before the godlike supergenius does, and for me, that actually breaks immersion. Like, it was really that simple and obvious and it took the godlike supergenius longer than me, a normal smart person to catch on? It's just a let down. And the only way to entirely avoid that outcome is for the writers to withhold as much information as possible until all that's left is the bare minimum necessary for mere mortals to even be able to follow the basic linear series of events in the mystery, which is no fun either. If nobody in the story is time traveling, the audience should not be struggling to follow what is happening when.

The alternative format of godlike supergenius mystery solving in which the solution hinges not on the genius noticing & remembering something the audience is also shown, but on the genius somehow possessing all human knowledge inside their brain regardless of obscurity or complexity and then pulling one of those facts out to solve everything is also a very difficult line to ride, because the mere mortal writers obviously don't have all of that knowledge either, and no matter how obscure of a fact they choose, someone in the audience will just so happen to know that very same fact because of their specialized education or a night procrastinating on the weird parts of Wikipedia, and they won't experience the shocking reveal in the way the writers intended. Or worse, the writers will pick a "fact" that actually isn't true but rather a common misconception or a once well-founded scientific theory that just didn't stand the test of time, and instead of the few people in the audience with the relevant knowledge being underwhelmed by the godlike supergenius's solution to the mystery, they'll be actively annoyed that the genius is literally wrong and therefore their solution is wrong and therefore the whole story and the mystery is wrong.

A few years ago, I was watching the 3rd episode of this new godlike supergenius crime show where the solution hinged on the genius knowing every species of snake on earth and which ones are venomous to solve a murder. However, the genius who supposedly possessed all human knowledge repeatedly used the words "poisonous" and "venomous" interchangeably, and did not once acknowledge that a dose of snake venom strong enough to kill a mouse in under a minute might be merely unpleasant and inconvenient for a whole ass human adult. But the writers were so confident that the audience wouldn't notice or care that they couldn't be bothered to consult a dictionary or a wikipedia article about snakes when constructing their murder mystery or their "genius" solution to it. If you wanna make a crime show but you don't care about real life factual accuracy, don't make a Sherlock Holmes clone show, just make another NCSFBI5-0PD show where making 38 keystrokes in 1.5 seconds can cause the resolution of CCTV footage to suddenly quadruple and all bombs are made with exactly two wires and cutting the red one always disarms it. It's okay.

Anyway, season 4 of that show is now in production.

[ShirDeutch]

The worst version of this trope is when the detective is a genius, but the screenwriter is not. In such cases the mystery is poorly constructed and characters spend most of their screen time talking about how smart the detective is, while the story does nothing to back up this claim. Like in Sherlock!

[trinaq]

Thank you for pointing out this cliché, which seems to be commonplace in several detective/murder mystery shows. Why can't a detective simply be of average intelligence, or not be so egotistical and insufferable?

[Mjumiman]

Some very great thoughts in this. It seems that oftentimes, what we admire about genius detectives isn't their intelligence, but their confidence. And the power fantasy of being irreplacable certainly has its appeal, which is something to think about. Maybe we shouldn't have to worry that we are replacable to begin with.

[abracadaverous]

BBC's Sherlock is frustrating as a viewer. Moffatt writes Sherlock as smart the same way he writes the Doctor as smart: he makes everyone surrounding the smart person take stupid pills. Also, Sherlock deals in absolutes, when that is the easiest way to find oneself being wrong. Sometimes it leads to gaping holes in the "smartness".

Also, smart people don't have to be arrogant jerks.

[eliseirvine]

I’d love a video on the show monk! There could be some analysis on his detective work, but also maybe some insight/criticism about the portrayal of OCD

[SyntheticReign]

One trope I've seen plenty (that's part of a larger problem) is a character constantly doubting the brilliant protagonist. Like, writers, we are 27 episodes into the protagonist being right, there is NO WAY this career-adjacent character is STILL doubting them. Then you get the inevitable mistake of the protag and the following gloating of the aforementioned naysayer. 1:113 but they still retain smugness and it's obnoxious to me. This is directly related to a common issue in these types of shows, and all of larger media in general, which is that rarely do studios seem to understand you can give a character a trait without removing that trait from every supporting role. This guy is smart? Everyone around him is oblivious. This girl is independent? She constantly degrades other women who aren't, which she is surrounded by. This character is awkward? Everyone around them is super fluid with everything (there is a good way to do this and display how it FEELS to feel alone, but that's a separate point). Nuance in character traits expressed through anything other than comparison of opposites is unfortunately rare.

[Rosemont]

I think it's wish fulfillment for a certain type of "intellectual."

[SamButler]

House is just Sherlock in a hospital. House/Holmes, Wilson/Watson. So your preconceptions are pretty close