Jenny wrote: <I'll tell you one thing that scene does show - that Gan's more intelligent than he lets on. Which makes one wonder why he's hiding it ...>
and that got me to thinking. Because it's based on an assumption that I don't agree with, that Gan acts (whether genuinely or not) stupidly.
He doesn't, and he isn't. Not if you look at him as an individual, rather than compare him with the glittering group he's got himself mixed up with.
Gan is actually far more Everyman than Vila, in my opinion - Vila being extremely sharp (if scatterbrained and lazy) and brilliant in his own speciality. Gan isn't *brilliant* at anything, and admits he's not the ideal pupil for a teacher like Orac (then again, who would be?) but when you actually read his lines in the scripts, he comes over as a plain-spoken man of average - possibly a little higher than average - intelligence. And he's got more common sense than all the rest put together (in fact, I'd argue that he and Soolin got nearly *all* of the common sense in this bunch).
Sure, he says something stupid occasionally - name me *any* of Our Heroes or Villains who don't.
Listen to him when he's arguin with Blake in Pressure Point or Shadow. He's not Blake's intellectual equal and knows it (and I think he respects both Blake's and Avon's intelligence, and defers to them when he thinks it right), but he puts his own points clearly and intelligently, unfazed by any notions of inferiority.
He's not stupid. He doesn't act stupid. It's just the company he keeps.
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