Overall, I really do like Joan Of Arcadia, and one of the things I
like is that -- apart from God showing up every ten minutes -- they
have kept the characters generally quite plausible. The one
exception, I think, is Luke. The young actor who plays the part is
very good, and I think his romance with Grace is nicely done, as is
his relation****p with his family -- but, they've written him to be
unrealistically smart.
I studied physics way back when in college, and I know that a lot of
the stuff Luke babbles about -- general relativity, quantum field
theories -- is at least first year graduate material, and some even
beyond that. I can buy a fifteen year old who might know calculus,
and might know Newtonian physics with the calculus, and just maybe
might have grasped special relativity. But quantum theory and general
relativity (which he specifically referred to in a recent episode)?!
Rarely -- really, really rarely -- a hugely gifted, utra-high IQ
teenager comes along who can actually grasp these things. (One living
example is the now-middle-aged Stephen Wolfram, who actually earned
his PhD in physics by age 20.) It's just that it's so rare, and I'm
not sure what purpose it serves the show to make the kid that
super-smart. Every time Luke starts talking quantum physics, I feel
like Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, TNG, has just quantum-leaped into
his body, and it's jarring. I suppose he could be babbling based on
science-for-popular-audiences type books that he reads, but they make
the character speak as if he understands -- or thinks he understands
-- the underlying math. Apart from the 1-in-50,000,000, once per
century Stephen Wolfram's of the world, most fifteen year olds just
can't advance that far, that fast.
Maybe I'm nit-picking, but I just wanted to know if anyone else finds
it as jarring as I do. By comparison, the rest of the family, and the
other characters, Grace, Adam -- even Joan -- are well inside the
spectrum of normal.
Steve O.
"Spying On The College Of Your Choice" -- How to pick the college that is
the Best Match for a high school student's needs.
http://www.SpyingOnTheCollegeOfYourChoice.com
|
