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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leviatham" data-source="post: 6120898" data-attributes="member: 50740">The message is about format.My problem with geeks in current sitcoms is not the comedy or that they are geeks. If you knew me you'd know that I laugh at myself with scary frequency.The problem I have is the way they are portrayed. I don't feel they are treated with enough respect.I'll draw a parallel and try to illustrate what I am talking about with a different segment of the population that has seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years or so.Gay men used to be portrayed as "people who read" (last time I saw that was in The Bill, a few years ago when a copper was about to come out and one of the reasons the wife had to suspect he was gay is that he liked to read), or that he likes to cook (can't remember in what movie, but Rock Hudson flirted with a woman in a bar by making her feel he was gay using his love for cookery as a strong hint an putting her at ease because, suddenly, he wasn't a threat), or with similar hobbies and inclinations (we are artists, into interior decoration or fashionistas). They were also portrayed as effeminate people who like to wear female underwear or dress up as drag as alter egos.That was the vision that society had of homosexuality in the 70s and 80s.Then things started to change and now we have gay characters a lot more often without the stereotyping nonsense we used to see. Homosexuality is a non-issue. It just is.I feel with geekdom we are at the stage of being portrayed as the stereotypes, slimming the characters down to a skeleton that everyone can see, but far removed enough that not everyone will feel uncomfortable about.With that, they are simplifying geekdom to a point that people actually believe that we are the Sheldoms of this world, like they used to think all gays like to wear women's clothes.Even with geek characters who are heroic (the scientist guy in Alias, or Jake 2.0 for example) still have too much of the bad traits and not enough of the good ones. There is not enough depth to them. And I must admit those two are good attempts.A series full of geek characters that is actually very decent is Bones. All the scientists at the Jephersonian (or is it Jeffersonian?) are *uber* geek. Yet they're not shown under the light cast on A Town Called Eureka. Heck, most people won't even think about them as geeks!Does that make sense?</blockquote>

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