I love all the different types of intelligence on this show. I love that they’re all shown to be clearly valuable and effective even though they’re so different.
I mean you have Monroe, who’s just a never-ending font of random facts he finds interesting. Not necessarily because he spent a ton of time studying or mastering a specific thing, but because he gets so immersed in anything he finds interesting and learns and retains everything he can about it. And he finds a lot of things interesting.
Then you have Juliette/Eve, who’s the investigator, the researcher. She knows her own field really well, but she’s also capable of searching and examining until she finds out anything else she needs to know, and then applying that knowledge to a problem. She’s inquisitive by nature, so if there’s a question in front of her she immediately starts seeking an answer.
Rosalee is the innovator, the experimenter. She knows a lot of things about the past and what is understood about how the world works, but they live on the edge of what’s accepted knowledge versus what’s possible but unheard of, and she is constantly finding ways to synthesize old knowledge into new concoctions: cures, weapons, you name it. She adapts quickly to new information and isn’t afraid to try something completely untested if it has a chance of getting results.
Then there’s Hank and Wu, who are grouped together because their type of intelligence is so similar. They’re interrogators. They don’t look for the answers, they look for the questions. They look for the logic holes, the lies that fall flat, the things that don’t quite make sense or haven’t been fully explained. They’re always listening for not just what people say, but how they say it. They’re critical of even the sources they trust, and downright skeptical of those they don’t. Their interrogations feed on each other, and when they really get going they can break down a shady story in ten seconds flat and turn a false lead into a good one.
Sean and Adalind are also similar, although they often come at problems from a different perspective: Sean from a place of power and Adalind from a place of disadvantage. Sean knows how to move people when he wants to, or twist their arms if he needs to. He can be a leader or a bully, depending on the situation. He’s good at manipulation, reading people, and getting them to do what he wants or needs even when they don’t want to. Adalind is the same, except where Sean makes people want to be useful to him, she makes people think she can be useful to them. She’s a bargainer, at times a con artist. She’s a master at ferreting out what people want and finding a way to align her interests with theirs–or at least make the other party think they do.
They all have such different ways at coming at a problem. And what’s really interesting is that none of them get perfect results alone. Even if what they’re doing works for a while, there comes a point when it fails and a new tactic is needed…which is why they work so well together as a team.
Which is where Nick comes in. Nick faces problems head on and eyes open, most of the time, but left to his own devices that can mean recklessness and a lack of strategy. What he’s amazing at, however, is uniting brilliant people who have very little in common toward a single goal, and inspiring their loyalty.
He doesn’t radiate leadership or power the way Sean does, but he has an earnestness that makes people congregate around him and care about him. None of them leave, even though it would clearly be safer far away from him and the troubles that come his way. Even Sean, much as he tried everything he could think of to sever all ties and trust between himself and the rest of them, still hovers around Nick’s orbit.
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