You know the stereotype: horn-rimmed glasses, whiny voice, button-down shirt, pocket protector/calculator/sliderule (depending on the generation) in his shirt pocket.
Before The Big Bang Theory, what iconic television characters represented the stereotype? Steve Urkel from Family Matters springs to mind immediately. Somewhat less iconic were Arvid from Head of the Class and Boz from Riptide.
Potsie and Ralph were often called nerds on Happy Days, but neither of them fits the image usually associated with the name.
I can think of several more if we include animation and/or movies, but I’d like to stick to live-action television. Who were the best-known nerds on television before TBBT came along?
On the radio version of Our Miss Brooks, Mr. Boynton was definitely a nerd. He was written that way in the TV version, but they cast an actor who was way too good looking to carry it off.
Even before that, there was Dr Beaker on Supercar.
Wasn’t Walter Denton, Richard Crenna’s character on the TV version of Our Miss Brooks, kind of a nerd as well? After the guy on Riptide (who was more a computer geek than a full-blown nerd, I believe), this is the first character I thought of.
Real nerds: Abby on NCIS. Probably a bunch of other cop/detective shows, too, but I haven’t watched many of those.
MacGyver. Who is also a great counterexample to the notion that nerds can’t be cool.
Tried to hit “real nerd”, but didn’t do a very good job of it: At least one or two characters from every iteration of Star Trek. Spock, Scotty, Data, Wesley, Dax, etc.
And I don’t remember the show well enough to say which category they’d fall into, but most of the cast of Head of the Class.
There have been a few fairly short lived TV shows set in dotcom startups that had many nerds, usually with one hot female who was their connection to reality.
Ross Geller from *Friends *fits most of the stereotypes.
