A Stereotypical Teen Soap Character

Every teen soap has the same stereotypes, the beautiful bitch, the weird outcast, the hot 'jock' guy, the tormented musician etc.

I'm going to outline the stereotype of the general 'nerd'. There's always one, think Elliot in Hollyoaks, Mouth in One Tree Hill, JJ in skins.

They're always the one with the awful dress sense - the wooly jumper with excentric patterns, thick rimmed glasses, ancle swingers, shirt tucked in, a weedy body thats always completely covered up, they read comics, love astronomy, and are known to have a heart attack when they catch a glimpse of the girl they are secretly in love with. This stereotype is likely to be seen in school/college/uni in a classroom - probably a science lab - working on a wacky experiment, or doing somebody elses homework. They are often found in their bedroom painting a model aeroplane or something similar with the walls covered in posters from classic comics and sci-fi films like star wars with the single bed with the spaceship patterend duvet. If they are feeling adventurous they could be found in the café with an oj, a tuna sandwich with the crusts cut off but not without a text book and a pen close to hand.

There is not often a mass of geeks in one programme, it's always the odd one or two, so when it comes to social groups they are often a complete loner, or have 2 or 3 close friends and they end up getting themselves into the stupidest situations including getting acused of sexual harrassment when falling on top of a woman in the park at 8 o clock at night because they are running with a camcorder attatched to their head after what they think is a UFO and not looking where they're going when it turns out that all along it was a happy 21st birthday balloon that flying through the sky. Other situations include spending 20 minutes of a half hour episode arguing with each other who is most likely to be able to buy the averagely hot girl over at the bar a drink when eventually they all fail because they're too young to get served and each one in turn makes an idiot out of himself when talking to her by stumbling over their words and putting their foot in their mouth by making a comment that she interprets to be sexual innuendo and she ends up slapping them and walking off, OR it turns out after all that admiring her from afar that when they finally get up and walk towards her they realise shes a transvestite and they are in a gay bar.

Basically the nerdy character very rarely has a serious or tragic storyline, they are there for the audiences amusement, and to lighten the mood between another couple of major storylines happening with other characters.