In the comic book he’s a raging alcoholic and actually wound up homeless at one point. But, that’s just how he is, some people are alcoholics by nature – no connection is drawn between that and his mechanical genius or anything else. I mean, it’s not as if drinking and fighting Commies (Iron Man started out as a Commie-fighter) are different manifestations of the same inner demons he has.
In the movies, he’s not exactly an alcoholic; more of a spoiled-rich, arrogant, self-indulgent hedonist to whom drinking and womanizing are simply different forms of hard-partying. That is relevant damage, as it would seem to be connected with his egotism, which is based on brilliance, success, and hereditary wealth.
It was only briefly touched on in the film, but Charlie clearly had issues with his father. He also seemed (to me) to be highly insecure and attention-hungry. That was the whole thing behind the plot angle of Charlie’s relationship with the principal: they disliked each other because they were more alike than different (and the principal was obviously “damaged”) but weren’t keen on admitting so.
I think it depends on how you define “genius.” House’s team, for example, are all very very smart, as is the cast of CSI, and they’re all portrayed as normal…i.e. dull as dishwater. However, if you define genius as superhuman, then yes, they tend to be portrayed as having negative character traits.
However, I could argue that this is not solely directed at smart people. Dumb people aren’t treated kindly either, and there’s a long-standing bias against girlfriends of superheroes.
The old MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series featured master planner Jim Phelps plotting strategy for record-breaking weightlifter Willy Armitage, master-of-disguise Rollin Hand, hot chick Cinnamon Carter…
…and all-around brain Barney Collier, who often enough was just called on to display whichever skill the episode required – he was an explosives expert who could tap your phones easy as play safecracker when he wasn’t busy picking up yet another language or performing hypnosis – but if you needed to beat a chess grandmaster or break the bank at some casino by predicting every spin of the roulette wheel or whatever, rest assured that everybody’s favorite helicopter pilot was a good enough computer programmer to swing it in no time flat.
In the ’60s.
I mean, sure, if you merely want to lay someone up in the hospital, he’ll mix up the right drugs to simulate a heart attack, or use ultrasonics to evoke the symptoms of vascular disease, or produce a forty-foot telescoping metal tube for to compressed-gas launch the mosquitoes he’s been feeding the right bacillus culture, or whatever. But if you need a computer genius, he’s decades ahead of his time; about the only thing he ain’t is psychologically damaged.
Then there’s Barnes Wallis, from the movie The Dam Busters. Seemed perfectly sane as characterized in the movie. Certainly someone I’d consider having met the requirements of being a genius.
The little I know of his personal life supports the claim that he was not damaged. A single marriage (if a bit of a May-September romance) that lasted until his death is not proof of sanity, but it’s a nice data-point.
I thought the same thing about the limp. Is House really a genius? It seems to me that he cures most patients via trial-and-error (with half of the patients almost getting killed with the wrong cure).
I don’t think fans would be calling him McDreamy is he’s boring. (Or is McDreamy an in-show name and not used by fans? Or is he called McDreamy because he’s spaced-out/dreaming most of the time?)
I think the writers intended for Bones to have something like Asperger’s but some network executive vetoed the idea so it was never stated outright in the show.
The McDreamy nickname is an in-show name the female characters call him because he’s pretty. The writing is just that clever. This was later topped with a second pretty male doctor getting the in-show nickname McSteamy. We should all bow to the writing genious of Shonda Rhimes.
“Then we have the Professor on “Gilligan’s Island.” The man could craft a two-way radio out of a coconut husk! Yet aside from his glaring lack of sex drive, he was a regular guy.”
Jeb Bartlett, the president on West Wing, is clearly a genius (Nobel prize for economics and everything). He has an ego the size of freakin’ Montana, but is otherwise normal and undamaged. The only things you could call damage (that I remember) are the side effects of his illness and his daddy issues.
I think it has to do more with making the character interesting. A character that is effortlessly good at overcoming adversity is boring. In fact, there is no story unless there is some sort of conflict the character must overcome.
There is an easier “damaged” argument to make for House though; he’s a drug addict, with a serious Vicodin habit – which started because of the leg injury.
(The drug habit is probably part of him being based on Holmes).
He’s also an enormous jerk. (Which doesn’t seem to have the same Holmes basis).
This one is very obscure, but I remember it because I happened to see Spartacus : Blood and Sand the other day, and recognized the actress Brooke Harmon. She was in a TV movie (which looked a lot like a failed pilot) about ten years ago, playing a teenage girl genius. She had somehow discovered the 108th element, which had some fantastic application. Aside from being young, she didn’t seem eccentric. I think at one point she was sort of coerced or tempted to be friendly with the villain who had kidnapped her (there was an oogy sexual element as well), but it seemed more like his failings than hers.
If geniuses weren’t depicted as being “damaged” in some way, the rest of us would, out of envy, storm their castles with torches and pitchforks. We need the fraudulent impression that geniuses have shortcomings the rest of us should thank God we don’t have, like the compulsive need to wash our hands 80 times a day.
How about Nichols on L&O:CI? He seems pretty well-adjusted, unlike Goren. Or is handling crappy, clicheed scripts a form of damage now?
While you could maybe build a case around his reluctance to use guns, I wouldn’t say MacGyver was damaged. (And, for what it’s worth, he of course used a gun when necessary, in episode after episode, but was enough of a genius that it usually wasn’t necessary – since, y’know, he’s often standing next to a well-stocked kitchen, which means he’s got access to various janitorial chemicals under the sink and plenty of magnets on the refrigerator even after combining some vinegar with cayenne pepper and baking soda to fill a hot-water bottle with instant tear gas, such that he’ll probably whip up salted but sugary explosives for the win fast enough to save your life with the improvised defibrillator he made from candlestick holders and this or that appliance before fixing your car by cracking a few eggs into the radiator.)
Is House really a genius? It seems to me that he cures most patients via trial-and-error (with half of the patients almost getting killed with the wrong cure).
(Or is McDreamy an in-show name and not used by fans? Or is he called McDreamy because he’s spaced-out/dreaming most of the time?)