Warren: Idiot or genius?

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I'm watching season 5 right now, and I asked myself a question about Warren. He's clearly smart if he can actually create a robot that acts like a person. And there are more things in season 6, he builds things such as freezing ray, invisible ray, etc. However, he's really being stupid with Katrina, his girlfriend/ex girlfriend. And then with Buffy, he wants to kill the girl who saved the world, the world wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for her. He's also a perv and doesn't seem very smart in his decisions. He has a big brain, I mean he thinks of stuff, comes up with plans against Buffy or against the rest of the world, such as stealing a diamond from the museum and such. So that's my wondering. Do you think Warren is a genius or just an idiot?
 
I see Warren as a very tragic person.
The guy was a genious! He was amazing with robotics, and obviously had a talent for it.
But he was a nerd! That's why, when he finally got a real girlfriend, he couldn't figure out how to act. Katrina wasn't programmed, and had her own dreams.
When he killed her, he turned desperate, and acted in what seems evil, but really was desperate ways. He really loved her. Warren didn't think of Buffy as the savior of the world, but as teh cause to his problems. He lost his girlfriend because of her, and in the end he couldn't stand anymore. She had to go.
Unfortunately Warren killed Tara.

Warren wasn't an idiot. He was a character who just was followed by bad luck. Evil? I really think not.
 
He was a mechanical savant, insofar as I could tell. But wouldnt call him genius or stupid.
 
Well, these things oftgen come interwined. From what I've heard there are tons of really smart people who lack any common sense or just the ability to deal in the 'real world'.
So yeah, he clearly was a genius. But that does not exclde him being an idiot.
 
I think he was a genius when it came to building things like the robots. But and idiot when it came to anything remotely social he just didn't know what to do. Like trying to get back with is ex, what was he thinking! it was always going to end bad.
 
He was genious scientist, but his social skills were pretty normal. Concerning S6, his ambition and desire for power and control got better of him.
 
He was neither an idiot or a genius. A good character in his own way, I liked what Adam Busch did with it. And in The Killer In Me when he was playing Willow I thought he did a great job.

What I always wondered was, how did he manage to get a girlfriend in the first place? hehe
 
Warren is, as my father used to put it, a man educated far beyond his intelligence. Once that is said, about the most charitable thing that could be said for him was that, due to his poor luck, he wasn't able to cause nearly as much harm as he could have, He was manipulative, self centered, cruel, cowardly, and a bully. This man was probably, in my opinion, the most cruel person to ever have a role on the series.

And in addition than that, I just didn't like him.
 
L
Lindsey McDonald
Stop saying intelligent things. You need to give everyone else a chance every once in a while!
L
La Luna Unita
A+ on the "cruel" comment. I was trying to figure the right word to describe him and that's exactly it.
ItMustBeBunnies
ItMustBeBunnies
example of why you earnt the member of the month title:)
Im gonna go with idiot, but thats probably bcause I hate his guts for killing Tara, she was a great character and anyway, you have to be pretty stupid to kill another person
 
Cangel said:
Well, these things often come interwined. From what I've heard there are tons of really smart people who lack any common sense or just the ability to deal in the 'real world'.
So yeah, he clearly was a genius. But that does not exclde him being an idiot.
Click to expand...

Completely agree, he was socially inept, but at the same time, very smart in an altogether different way. Good character.
 
To quote Raoul in Phantom of the Opera, "Cleary genius has turned into madness". Warren was definitely a genius in terms of intelligence in creating and building these amazing things. But his people skills were lacking, to say the least, and he eventually was just nuts and stupid about every decision he made. His intelligence morphed into mania.
 
I totally agree with CAngel.
People can be both very clever and idiotic at the same time.
Having an inflated ego and no common sense seems to be Warren's downfall.
Self centered, cruel and a cowered seems to be other ways to describe him too.
 
There is a word for what Warren is...but I'm not sure I'm allowed to use it on the forum...

yes, he is a genius in the area of technology, clearly. And honestly, he is not nearly as socially inept as his partners, he shows a reasonable amount of savvy, even if he is that word I'm not allowed to use. Of course, once his character got interesting, the writer's play with it to suit their needs, so Warren does not remain consistent, he changes in order to keep him around and keep moving the story forward.

I often wondered why he didn't take his very real skills and get money and recognition the honest way. He could have been a billionaire, but then, where would the humor and evil that he brings to the show be if he'd taken that route?

There are levels of characters on the show (on any show), and Warren is in a level where you have to allow more leeway and flexibility, don't expect everything they do and are capable of to totally mesh with each other, they are less characters we are supposed to identify with and more vehicles for plot development.

So, he can be an idiot and genius both, whichever meets the writer's needs at the time, and we are not supposed to press too hard for the loose ends to be tied up.

The best explanation I can think of for his hiding his skills in a basement and using them to take over a little town like Sunnydale is that the formula is taken right out of comic books, it's a nod to them. In comic books you have all these geniuses who work late at night in their basements with plots to take over...something. It's the genre. In that sense it fits the characters and their "nerd/geek" identities. Since they were little boys, they've had some fantasy in the back of their minds to play out a dark dream.
 
I think he's just like most nerds. Brilliant at unimportant things but a complete moron when it comes to basic human interaction and maintaining relationships.
 
I'd like to elaborate on my earlier comment. I know he didn't mean to kill Tara but he meant to kill buffy so that's just as bad, right? although he was an incredibly tragic character, he was still human, and not free-range evil
 
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