Growing Up Clever

I'm always a little nervous when a movie or television program features an obviously bright child who has skipped grades or who has begun college early. So, when one of my favorite PBS series, Inspector Lewis (a spin-off of the widely beloved Inspector Morse, which was based on the detective novels of Colin Dexter) aired the episode "The Gift of Promise," I held my breath for the first few minutes. How would Zoe, the 15-year-old first-year Oxford student, be portrayed? As arrogant? Unprepared for early university entrance? Socially inept? Hot-housed? Pushed by her parents?

I needn't have worried.

Zoe (played by Lucy Boynton) is different in many ways from her fellow students. How could she not be? But she is also clearly portrayed as where she should be, well-adjusted, what many people would refer to as "normal." An interesting counterpart to Zoe is her troubled classmate, Elmo, to whom she is naturally drawn, who is also very bright but in different ways. We first see him displaying breath-taking parkour skills on his way to classes, and it is eventually his—not Zoe's—intellectual prowess that leads to the case's solution. Yes, it is true that Elmo's social skills could use some practice and polishing, but that deficit adds an important depth and reality to the story. Clever children or high-ability children or gifted children or whatever we want to call them do sometimes struggle with finding their place among peers, just as do all young (and sometimes not so young) people. They are by no means a homogeneous group.

The most fascinating scenes in the episode are those that Zoe shares with Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (played by Laurence Fox), the cerebral ex-seminary student with a mysterious past. Hathaway immediately notices her across the room while he is questioning her tutor, Donald Voss:

Hathaway: "She looks young?"

Voss: "Zoe? She's not even sixteen. She's one of Andrea's so-called gifted kids."

Hathaway: "So called?"

Voss: "Well, is it such a gift? Being identified as special at such a young age isn't alway conducive to developing a rounded personality."

Hathaway's stare grows icy. "Isn't that rather a lazy assumption?"

Later, Hathaway and Zoe sit in a stairway.

Hathaway: "Tell me something. Don't most gifted children study maths or computing or—"

Zoe: "Something where the answers are quantifiable? I wanted a broader approach, to help me develop the emotional intelligence that some gifted kids lack. It can get lonely." She pauses."Is that why you are a policeman? Because you are frightened of your own cleverness and of being lonely?"

Hathaway: "I was never as clever as you."

Zoe:" You were. I can tell."

Zoe's parents are portrayed in a less generous light. Her father in essence bought an honor for his daughter, for which she appears understandably uncomfortable in her acceptance. Her mother is shown to have a complicated past, one that her own cleverness probably helped her to survive. Through it all, Zoe is a constant observer, trying to understand the grown-up goings-on around her with an advanced intellect and only 15 years of life experience. She displays a fascinating and true-to-life mixture of unusually high intellectual ability and as yet undeveloped wisdom, the uneven or asynchronous development typical of very bright children. This asynchrony can make it hard to find a comfortable fit in the world. As Zoe says, adults "aren't problematical for me, mostly. It's my slightly older peers...that present a challenge."

The moment in the episode that lingers is another between Hathaway and Zoe, after Zoe has just suffered a personal loss and lashes out at Hathaway, as a representative of all adults, for having lied to her. He starts to leave, then comes close to her and says, with visible effort, "Don't grow up angry, Zoe. It takes so much effort to find your place in the world when you're angry. Believe me."

You can watch the full episode online.

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