Television audiences may never realize it, but we are living in the age of the geek. That's right, geeks have achieved a tremendous (albeit unrecognized) coup, garnering huge representation on cable and network TV. It should be obvious to everyone, taking into account the characters in the hottest programs that are out there. The most obvious place to look is right at the top: CSI. This is a show that features forensic pathologists, kickin' ass and taking names (or at least paraffin impressions of bite marks). Solving crimes with brains and cold hard science is not the kind of job that attracts the average high school football team member. A few of the people on the show actually wear glasses for heaven's sake!

It's not just CSI though; after all, that's just the prettied up "Hollywood" version of pathology. Flip over to the Discovery channel and you can watch 60 minute documentaries about the real men and women (ok, mostly men I grant you,) who track down those bad boyfriends that go too far. Of course, the main focus of those shows is on the reenactments of the crimes featured on the program, since most crime scene investigators are usually pasty middle-aged men. You don't see many people getting doctorates who look like the lead from "Crossing Jordan".

If you look past all of the pretty people out there playing with dead bodies and picking pubic hair out of the rug with tweezers, you might notice the other crypto-nerds lurking within our favorite programs. Ok, maybe the cops on Law & Order were never geeks, but the lawyers must have been.

Don't act so surprised: everyone knows just how ruthless and cruel geeks can be when they get a little bit of power (call technical support sometime and you'll see what I mean). People who spend their college years getting drunk and living off of their parents only to come out eight years later with a BA in liberal arts or business administration don't usually make it into law school. No, every lawyer has behind him or her an enormous number of late nights spent studying, writing, thinking, and worrying, all leading up to that magical moment when they pass the Bar exam and finally join the ranks of the most hated profession in America. It's the same situation with Doctors (except for the hatred part).

Of course, the thing that makes these characters difficult to immediately peg as geeks is the apparent lack of social ineptitude they display. But ask yourself: Would well adjusted people be able to coldly guilt trip a rape victim into testifying against someone in a case that they have no hope of winning? Or be able to cut into dead bodies and examine the remains of someone's last meal? Probably not.

What's interesting is that, in spite of the popularity of these shows, we're not hearing about an enormous growth in the number of kids out there who say that they want to be doctors and lawyers. One Harry Potter movie, and the news is awash with stories about throngs kids wearing glasses and painting lightning bolts on their foreheads, but there's nothing out there about children rushing the library to pore over the college catalogues. I suppose the only conclusion we can draw from this is that, while they might not consciously accept it, they realize that professional careers require putting education and hard work before having fun and sleeping in.

It's kind of a wasted opportunity; we could be convincing kids to buckle down with the homework so they can become just like their favorite bad-guy busting heroes. I suppose it's too much to ask of commercial TV, to have some sort of positive effect on the children of this country, but I believe that it should at least be possible. Maybe we should start of slowly, by making brushing one's teeth and eating vegetables an integral part of solving crimes.

-B. C. Silvia