Round One

FOREVER

VS

SCORPION

You can see the bracket at challonge.com/popfilter

Here’s the debate about television: instead of it being this art form that is presented to an audience for sheer entertainment value, it is actually a mirror held up to the general public that reflects our mores and values–who we are as a people in this place, in this time. The mirror that Forever and Scorpion hold up to society is that the general public is a bunch of mouth-breathing dummies who can’t be trusted with sharp scissors let alone anything important. Each show relies on the general public thinking of genius as a superpower that grants those who have it with ESP. They both use genius the way computers are often used in storytelling; they assume people won’t question something beyond their understanding. So they so they use a character’s “genius” abilities to quickly push through any part of the plot they can’t explain through regular exposition. These TV geniuses make somersaults in logic that I’m just suppose to except because I’m a normie. It’s insulting and it’s lazy.

Scorpion is about a group of social-outcast geniuses that hang out with a beautiful waitress who helps normalize them. Wait, no, that’s Big Bang Theory. Scorpion is about a group of social-outcast geniuses who hire a beautiful waitress who helps normalize them. There it is. The geniuses in Scorpion look and act like hipsters. Do you know why everyone hates hipsters? It’s because they are nerd posers. Ever since Rivers Cuomo started strumming his guitar and signing about Buddy Holly and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started raking in billions, nerds have been it in pop culture. So much so that we have created a term for people who are inauthentically nerdy, a term that has the prefix “hip,” no less. That being said, there is a lot that is really inauthentic about this show. It suppose to be about smart people (Big Bang Theory) but requires you to be stupid in order to watch it. (BIG BANG THEORY!) The show attempts to create this aura of mystery around its characters but it doesn’t understand the culture of the people its suppose to be about. By the end it degenerates into a Michael Bay-esque action sequence. Yikes guys, just yikes.

Forever is about a doctor who cannot die and is inexplicably a genius who teams up with a pretty lady cop to solve a crime. The show is part Sherlock Holmes, part Dr. Who, part NCIS and all stupid.  The pilot is all over the place. Some scenes forget elements of the plot established in earlier scenes. Like why does she take him with her to question a person of interest if he is her number one suspect? That’s not exactly protocol. Ioan Gruffudd, who plays Dr. Henry Morgan, is disgustingly smug, but the director appears to be completely in love with him. The discrepancy is too much; it rips open a black hole in the universe whose gravity is so strong that no charisma can escape.

Both shows are garbage. The difference in how much is negligible. But we have to pick a winner so screw it. Scorpion moves on to the next round. Next time Ryan will present his case for

GOTHAM VS NCIS NEW ORLEANS

-Stephanie Rose