Scorpion is pretty much your standard network fare. Take a group of people, define them by a basic concept, inject a romance thread, bake as long as you can get away with over a steady heat of both low and high grade conflict until the network decides it's done.
Simple enough.
The particular basic concept found among this group is that most of them are highly intelligent. "Geniuses", as defined by the show. And I enjoy it, because the low and high grade conflicts are entertaining, and the relationships are interesting, and the characters are, in an odd way, charming.
Look at these charming mother-fuckers.
But I have a really, enormous, super huge problem with the show, and I'm about to lay it out for you.
See, the way they make the tension within the show work is that they have defined a simple and easy-to-follow parameter. In the Scorpion version of reality, having a high IQ (intelligence quotient) means having a low EQ (emotional quotient), so that the more intelligent you are, the less able you are to realize other people's emotional states and have those impact your behavior. In other words, the smarter you are, the more socially awkward you get.
Just a couple of brilliant dudes, acting like dumbasses.
This really pisses me off.
First of all, it's blatant bullshit. There are people who are massively socially awkward and also very smart, and there are also people who are very smart and socially suave as fuck. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Intelligence is measured by how easily you acquire and apply knowledge, and social facility is just another type of knowledge. I feel like the show is contributing to the false schism between intelligence and emotion by defining IQ and EQ that way.
This dude, right here.
Super smart.
Charming as hell.
I also think it's justifying the way so many smart people are assholes by pretending that they have no choice in the matter. Now, let's be clear. There are people who have legitimate social stumbling blocks, and I'm not trying to harsh on them. People with ADHD, Asperger's, various Cluster disorders--they can all have a hard time processing social and emotional cues, and therefore have legit reasons for not being socially adept. That's *not* what I'm talking about.
Sheldon, for instance, is clearly on the spectrum. I heart him.
It isn't his intelligence that makes him awkward. It's just who he is.
I'm talking about the subset of smart people who are so convinced that intelligence is the only significant trait that they choose to not care about anything else. It's like when athletes only care about your physical prowess, or artists only care about your creativity, or hipsters only care about your trilby. The difference is, for some reason we let smart people get away with this bullshit. If a jock makes fun of a mathlete we call them on it. We say "hey, football isn't the only thing in life." But if a brilliant scientist chooses to discard social niceties as a waste of time we don't say "hey, science isn't the only thing in life, asshole." We just let them go on acting superior and condescending, and we make excuses for them while they do it. "Oh, this person is very smart," we say. "They cannot be expected to behave like a human being."
So, Scorpion, I like you. I really do. But I'd really love it if you'd stop propping up this nonsense. Oh, and while you're at it, stop classifying people as either "geniuses" or "humans". It is both dumb and insulting.
Yeah, I'm looking at you, Walter O'Brien.
