Reese - stupid or not stupid, that is the question?

admin

Retired Administrator
Many of us will assume the Reese is stupid, afterall he does badly at school, poor grades, and doesn't even realise he's taking geography in "Tutoring Reese". Many though this is his home life and lifestyle. I have noticed in a few episodes over the past couple of seasons which suggest that Reese is bright, but simply doesn't put his mind to it.

In, Busey's Take a Hostage (I think) where Reese revises so hard he flunks all his exams getting every quetion wrong - that is pretty difficult I should have thought!

Although he is probably not as "naturally gifted" as Malcolm, I think these episodes show that he is actually not as dumb as everyone thinks - he is just too lazy!

Any thoughts?
 

NeCoHo

Retired Mod
admin said:
Reese is bright, but simply doesn't put his mind to it-he is just too lazy!
I really have agree with you there. He could take care of 1000 butterflies(butterflies), and you mentioned earlier that if he got every question wrong on purpose(Busey's take a hostage) he has to know all the answers in the first place.

He was smart enough to lead a squad of trainees to capture the enemy and save his captain and to get out of the prison in the Reese joins the Army episodes.

As my teacher says: "he just doesn't apply himself enough".
 

admin

Retired Administrator
Thats very true J. Reese may not be as "Acedimcally" clever as Malcolm but he has certainly creative and talented skills that Malcolm does not have.

Another thing would be has great talent of cooking. In Hal's Christmas Gift both Reese and Dewey were able to produce something personal gifts which they had very talentledly created themselves. While Malcolm has no arts and craft skill, so simply bought a present and prentended to make it.
 

allison

New member
I also agree with you. Reese showed more than once that he actually isn´t as stupid as people think. Especially when he thinks of a vicious plan he takes his time to plan it out. Just remember the "Evacuation" episode. As he said himself "when people are miserable and suffering, it brings out the best in me." I think Reese usually just turns on his brain if he thinks he´ll take advantage of it. I also think that Reese (as strange as it sounds) actually is a pretty sensitive person who cares about other people. I think sensitivity is also kind of an intelligence. I think there is a lot about Reese that people don´t see.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
No, no. Reese doesn't really turn his brains on and off. Even when his brain is "off" in Reese Joins the Army, he's still thinking about how he can only listen to the commander. He acts like a tool, but thinks like he's performing a punishment for his mother. Only when he turns his brain back "on" does he realize it.

Reese definitely isn't stupid. He just doesn't care. He doesn't understand the purpose of life; he sees adulthood as a bunch of phoniness. Childhood holds innocence. The message of MITM seems to be that it's good that childhood eventually ends, but you have to make compromises when you cross into adulthood.

Like I said, childhood means innocence. If someone is disabled, kids look at them. Adults will correct the kids, but they won't fault them. The kids are innocent, because they didn't know better. As adults, they're simply expected to know better. They're no longer innocent.

I think I've illustrated my point. But I seem to have forgotten the question.

Ahh, yes. Now I remember where I'm going with this. As a child, when you have this innocence, you're free. You can be who you want to be. Period. As an adult, you may still have rights, but you're no longer truly free when you lose this innocence. You can't look at the disabled man anymore, even if you really, really want to. You have to pretend--you have to be PHONY.

Reese doesn't understand this. He isn't ready to cross into adulthood; he wants to maintain the simple innocence of doing what he wants to do. He's not dumb, he just doesn't necessarily understand life.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
That was actually Francis in Buseys Take a Hostage, wasn't it? Or is that not what you're referring to?
 

ReMoss85

New member
In that cold opener from season 2 I think, all the kids from the neighborhood were in the street playing and Malcolm was addressing the camera and said something like "Reese can't even pass math but he's invented like 100 games - fun games!" Maybe it was only 50...
 

Malcolm

New member
This post made me remember something my Dad told me long time ago. "There is no clever people or stupid people. We all have the same potential. But we all have also the power of decide how much of that potential we want to use"

I think Reese is not stupid. In the last episodes I have changed my mind about that character, and I even think that he could be more succesful in life than Malcolm.
 

admin

Retired Administrator
Bringing the thread back on topic, I thought of yet another example...


Reese' Apartment, where Reese starts doing very well at school, because he has time to concentrate and has no Malcolm or Dewey distractions. In some respects I really wish they allowed Reese to keep that apartment!
 

Amigo22

Super Moderator
In "Reese's Apartment" Reese uses multiple credit cards, which he obviously didn't realise he'd have to pay off later. And when his clothes got dirty, he'd just go and buy new ones and throwing the old ones away (which is not shown but we can assume that), which is throwing money away, and you'd have to be really stupid to do that.
 

ReMoss85

New member
He didn't do the laudry A-because he's lazy, and B-because he probably doesn't know how to. And it gives him all that extra time to do homework and get A's on chemistry tests. That's just making good use of your time. Plus he's got all of that free credit card money to throw around. Speaking of which, how was he to know you have to pay them off? His parents certainly never sat him and explained all this to him. He's not dumb, just a little ignorant. He was unaware!!!
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with all of you (or atleast the posts I've read).:D Reese is stupid!

I appologize for this being a superlong post, but I feel like I have to justify my answer more than usualif I am to disagree with all of you.

Smartness refers to academics, maybe not rote book learning, but academics none the less (being able to make connections and draw conclusions). He is very creative and is a very sensitive person, but that says nothing about his intelligence. They're different qualities and different words - they're not interchangable.

As to the few instances where Reese has shown academic skill i.e. Reese's Apartment and Busey's Take a Hostage: Reese is in high school, and not only that, in his Junior and Senior year. By this time, there would be no one class standard he has to keep up with. With his record, he is no doubt taking the lowest level of courses possible. So, his A doesn't mean he did well, it means he did well by his standards.

Also, we assume the family isn't in a particularly good school district (considering their income) and lower level courses sometimes don't even require any kind of intelligence (I know, I've tutored!:)). You just have to keep up with the homework and pay attention.

Even in these eps, he hasn't shown any intelligence, just dedication, like in Buseys Take a Hostage, when he tries to write down all the numbers, or the examples Amigo22 mentioned (hmm...I guess that's 1 post I don't disagree with:)).

@remoss85 He didn't chose not to do his laundry, he thought that's how things worked. He asked Hal and Lois how they were able to keep up with all the expenses. And after all those years of watching TV, and just being alive in general, he should know how credit works. Ignorance to that level is stupidity. Besides, I don't think he got "free credit card money to throw around." I assume Lois and Hal had to pay it off and return the stuff.

In Tutoring Reese, Malcolm spends a long time teaching him simple stuff, and they still don't think he can get a B. This is one instance where dedication did not help him.

@yardgames I do kinda agree with you, but don't put as positive a spin on it. I think Reese is stuck in childhood not because the adult world is PHONY, but rather because he doesn't comprehend things beyond the simple good and bad, black and white. To bring a bit of politics in, Reese is like one of those people who simultaneously wants tax reductions and more gov coverage, not realizing that they're inversely related (bad analogy, that didn't explain anything:Angry: )

@malcolm We all have different skills, and smartness doesn't make us any better than anyone else, but I don't think we all have the same academic potential and that work is ALL that matters. People do have and academic threshhold and there are concepts that no matter how hard you try, you're not gonna get them. Like me with Acid/Base Equilibria. That doesn't mean that being stupid makes you a worse human being, just suited for something else.
 

admin

Retired Administrator
ReMoss85 said:
He didn't do the laudry A-because he's lazy, and B-because he probably doesn't know how to. And it gives him all that extra time to do homework and get A's on chemistry tests. That's just making good use of your time. Plus he's got all of that free credit card money to throw around. Speaking of which, how was he to know you have to pay them off? His parents certainly never sat him and explained all this to him. He's not dumb, just a little ignorant. He was unaware!!!
Yeah, I think he was just concentrating on his school work and not bothering about anything else - his mother has done his laundry since his birth - he just chucks them in a laundry bin at home, so in his apartment once there in the laundry bin he doesn't know what to do.

Coming back to the credit card business, I believe that he did know how to pay them off. He was getting every credit card around and planned on paying them off against each other, quite complex but it means you can basically have an interest free loan if you are clever enough to not get caught and pay it all off!
 

Garbage Kills Megan

parties with your mom
Alright, I think Reese can be very sweet, and there are certainly a few things that he is very smart at, like cooking and making trouble...
But with that said, I do think that boy can be as dumb as a sack of bricks. Sure, if he tries really hard he can do good in school, but how much time did he waste highlighting his whole book? Or writing down ALL the numbers? And when he gets into a bad situation, he always does something to make everything a million times worse, like in Reese Drives. In Reese's Apartment we see that he has no idea how to manage money. What about his battle with Jamie? Or taking 200 pills a day for money? Just today I saw Baby 1. Reese gets himself locked in a "giant violin case", calls shotgun from inside the case, then when Hal asks where the keys are Reese replies (from inside a locked case) "I have them! LET'S GO!"
I love Reese. We all love Reese, 'cause, well, he's just a lovable guy. But I still think the boy is few fries short of a value meal. He has his moments and his talents, but still...
 

admin

Retired Administrator
Emrysgirl said:
I'm going to go ahead and disagree with all of you (or atleast the posts I've read).:D Reese is stupid!

Smartness refers to academics, maybe not rote book learning, but academics none the less (being able to make connections and draw conclusions). He is very creative and is a very sensitive person, but that says nothing about his intelligence. They're different qualities and different words - they're not interchangable.

As to the few instances where Reese has shown academic skill i.e. Reese's Apartment and Busey's Take a Hostage: Reese is in high school, and not only that, in his Junior and Senior year. By this time, there would be no one class standard he has to keep up with. With his record, he is no doubt taking the lowest level of courses possible. So, his A doesn't mean he did well, it means he did well by his standards.

Also, we assume the family isn't in a particularly good school district (considering their income) and lower level courses sometimes don't even require any kind of intelligence (I know, I've tutored!:)). You just have to keep up with the homework and pay attention.

Even in these eps, he hasn't shown any intelligence, just dedication, like in Buseys Take a Hostage, when he tries to write down all the numbers, or the examples Amigo22 mentioned (hmm...I guess that's 1 post I don't disagree with:)).

@remoss85 He didn't chose not to do his laundry, he thought that's how things worked. He asked Hal and Lois how they were able to keep up with all the expenses. And after all those years of watching TV, and just being alive in general, he should know how credit works. Ignorance to that level is stupidity. Besides, I don't think he got "free credit card money to throw around." I assume Lois and Hal had to pay it off and return the stuff.

In Tutoring Reese, Malcolm spends a long time teaching him simple stuff, and they still don't think he can get a B. This is one instance where dedication did not help him.

@yardgames I do kinda agree with you, but don't put as positive a spin on it. I think Reese is stuck in childhood not because the adult world is PHONY, but rather because he doesn't comprehend things beyond the simple good and bad, black and white.
Some excellent point here. I forgot about Tutoring Reese, but I think this shows that Reese does have trouble learning, distractions etc, rather than he is not intelligent. His attitude to not realising he does geography is one of not caring at all, rather than being stupid I feel. I also feel that from experience people like Malcolm who are very clever are not very good teachers - they can't get accross their points easily to people in they way that teachers do - I for one find it very difficult to tell people how to do things.

I agree with most of the points here, Reese certainly isn't "Malcolm" intelligent but I don't think he is stupid - Clearly these episodes show a bit of dedication is what he need! :D
 

Emrysgirl

New member
@admin maybe I misunderstood the whole credit card thing. I'll admit I've never had one. Please explain:).

@GKMegan That's what I'm saying: all the examples of smartness you've given show he's sensitive and creative, but not smart.


@admin In Tutoring Reese, I wasn't refering to the Geo class, I was reffering to the math problem that Malclm was helping him with. And Malcolm tutors on a regular basis (people like Nikki), so I assume he's some good.

admin said:
I agree with most of the points here, Reese certainly is "Malcolm" intelligent but I don't think he is stupid - Clearly these episodes show a bit of dedication is what he need! :D
I assume you mean "isn't". That's the thing. His success (the A and knowing all the answers to get them worng) says nothing about his stupidity or smartness, only his dedication.
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I think the smart, but not dedicated label applies more to Francis. Like Malcolm, he always finds some intelligent way to get out of trouble. But we don't really know, because he's never been tried. And, we know for fact that he's lazy (from Softball, where it takes him forever to find any sign of work). I don't think we've actually seen him fail at anything because he was bad, just because he didn't do it at all.

(Ok, maybe the ATM thing was stupid. But I haven't seen that ep, so I can't say)

Oh, and we know that, unlike Malcolm, he isn't musically clueless b/c in the Ms. Alabama pagent, he played the Piano.
 
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