Pair the Smart Ones/Playing With
Basic Trope: If there are two smart people in the story of compatible gender/sexual orientation, they will be attracted to each other.
- Straight: Doctor Alice and Professor Bob meet, find each other's smarts appealing, and start dating.
- Exaggerated: Doctor Alice and Professor Bob get married because their IQ scores were next to each other on a list.
- Justified: People are often attracted to other people because they share similar traits, and it's nice to have someone who is bright enough to follow your line of thought around.
- Inverted: Doctor Alice only dates Dumb Muscle type men, because they're easier to order around.
- Subverted: Doctor Alice dates Professor Bob once, then dumps him for Charlie the janitor.
- Double Subverted: Who turns out to be extremely bright himself, and well-educated, he just likes working as a janitor.
- Parodied: The government passes a law requiring all geniuses to breed with each other in hopes of creating a generation of super-geniuses.
- Deconstructed: Professor Bob never dates because he never finds someone as smart as him. The loneliness turns him into a mad scientist.
- Other than being smart, Bob and Alice really don't get along that well.
- Reconstructed: Professor Bob meets another Mad Scientist and they become happily married.
- Eventually, they develop a Slap Slap Kiss relationship.
- Zig Zagged: The series has many smart people, some of whom date other smart people, while others date people well below their intelligence level.
- Averted: Despite there being at least two geniuses in the cast who could theoretically get together, they never show the slightest interest in doing so, and no one ever suggests it.
- Enforced: "We need a girlfriend for The Smart Guy so we can maximize the number of romantic subplots. How about a Hot Librarian? That way we don't have to stretch too much to explain how he met her."
- Lampshaded: "So, I take it you two met at a Mensa meeting or something?"
- Invoked: Doctor Alice uses her Mensa meetings as a place to look for eligible men.
- Defied: "Date Doctor Alice? Hell, no, I want a woman who won't challenge me intellectually."
- Discussed: "Do you think Alice and Bob ever actually get it on, or do they just discuss quantum mechanics in bed?"
- Conversed: "There's only two characters with IQs above room temperature on this show, no surprise that they've hooked up."
Doctor Alice, the one who performed the first successful human brain transplant, and Professor Bob, the one who invented the time machine, I pronounce you genius and genius. You may now go Back to Pair the Smart Ones and make out!