Triangle Graphing Hollywood Nerds

Hollywood depictions of intelligence usually seem to fall into one of three categories, the Classic Nerd, the Mad Genius, and the rarer Alpha Nerd. Depictions of the Classic Nerd are common, think of the characters in Revenge of the Nerds or every Anthony Michael Hall character in John Hughes films. The Classic Nerd is sympathetic to the viewer and empathetic to other characters, while in comparison the Mad Genius can be nearly incomprehensible to other people due to their intelligence, usually treating those around them with an intellectual detachment. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory and Sherlock Holmes on the BBC recent reimagining, Sherlock are both current examples. The third, and less common, is the Alpha Nerd. Confident, at ease with their intelligence, and popular with the members of the opposite sex, the Alpha Nerd is represented well in Good Will Hunting.
I really felt that these three archetype could be defined as locations on three different axises, sexual success (A), social detachment (B), and personnal detachment (C), so I rated a small sample of characters from television and film and then plotted the results. I present the Triangle Graph of the Nerd Triumvirate.

It's just so clear! Ok, so maybe not, but when you separate out the archetypes you can see they each have a distinct pattern.

The Classic Nerds

 

The Mad Geniuses

The Alpha Nerds

The 1980's Val Kilmer comedy Real Genius features all three of the main nerd archetypes,

while The Big Bang Theory only counts two of the three archetypes among it's main cast of characters.

The next step is plotting out basic nerd storylines as progressions along at least one of the three axises. I really should not enjoy playing with spreadsheets this much.