If anything I wish it had not been a comedy but rather a more serious film with the same cast. They only touched on but could have done more with the psychology of these young, awkward, hormone-fueled "geniuses" falling in among some of the most awkward and smartest other young people in the world. Those who have always been the smartest in school now finding themselves ranking maybe somewhere in the middle among their new cohorts. And of course all the heightened awkwardness of being away from your parents for the first time in co-ed living arrangements....

In my typology of bullies, there's the archetypal "unhappy at home" kind of bully who is troubled and traumatized and takes it out on other people. After-school specials will teach you that all bullies are like that, but in my experience, they were relatively rare in real life. The more common type, who accounted for almost all of the bullying, were the "protecting community standards" bullies, who were happy and popular and bullied people as a public service, sometimes even for the good of the victim. When people did something disruptive or destructive to the community, like being gay, thinking they were as good as people that they weren't as good as, or talking to a jock's girlfriend, the community needed to be repaired, and the violator needed to be put on a more healthy path in life. As budding community leaders, the jocks naturally stepped into that role, especially when physical work was required.

I managed to escape bullying in high school by being incredibly bland and repressing any inappropriate social ambitions (i.e., any at all) but I could see from cases around me that if there had been anything socially disturbing about me, a strong effort would have been made to correct the situation.

My sophomore year, when getting a ride from my state champion teammate, I don't know what I said, but he just turned to me and said,

"McCall, you're a neeeerrrrrd."

It wasn't bullying, because I've never been bullied, but I was -- and am -- a nerd.

And, yeah, "Real Genius" got a lot of play on HBO back then. I especially loved the Lazlo storyline, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is such a GREAT song.