In Charlie X Why Didn't Charlie Like Tina?

She was quite a pretty and charming girl. Charlie barley looked at her and turned her into a iguana later. Sure Yeoman Rand was quite beautiful but she was at least twice Charlies age. Tina was probably only a year to three older than Charlie. WHat more did the kid want. Sheeesh.

 

He wanted love at first sight, which was Janice Rand.

Grace Lee Whitney was 10 years older than Robert Walker, who was 5 years older than Patricia McNulty, who was one month shy of 21 when the episode was filmed. Walker was playing 17.

 

Exactly. Charlie was an immature boy who didn't know how to handle his feelings, and Janice Rand was his first adolescent crush. It's not that he didn't like Tina -- he simply ignored her.

 

What red blooded male could resist Yeoman Rand, come on!
JB

 

Precisely. She even had a hairdo that you could hang your beer cups off (not a euphemism).

 

Once you have a crush on one person, it can be hard to notice a more viable alternative standing right next to them. That happened to me in tenth grade -- I had a crush on a gorgeous girl in Biology class, but she already had a boyfriend, and it kept me from noticing that her friend in the same class was also fairly pretty and nice and actually had a crush on me. And to this day I'm mad at myself for the way I inadvertently hurt the latter girl's feelings and cheated myself out of a great opportunity.

 

Underscore this. Any "average" 17-year-old who'd grown up in human society might act as Charlie did. Considering he grew up among incorporeal aliens, he was doing pretty well. Still, Charlie didn't recognize a woman as such at first sight, so I find it hard to believe he'd suffer such a sudden attack of hormone poisoning. Why would he notice Janice, let alone Tina? But the producers needed a story about absolute power corrupting...


On top of everything else, Dr. Noel hadn't joined the ship yet!

 

"Is...is that a girl?"
"Yes, Charlie. That's a girl."

I think he recognized a woman at first sight. But his hormone poisoning was something he had no way of understanding beforehand, and that's where the problem started.

 

In general, guys tend to like a challenge, and he already had a fixation on Rand. She spurned his advances and that only made him want her more.

 

^I think that "guys liking a challenge" is more a matter of cultural conditioning than intrinsic nature. Society teaches men that they need to be strong and competitive. Charlie had been raised alone since childhood, and had no one to compete with, let alone anyone to teach him that he had to be strong and successful. All he really had driving him were basic hormones and urges, without any socialization to focus or crystallize them in a certain way.

Indeed, one thing the episode made clear was that Charlie hated a challenge. He was used to instant gratification and was outraged when he didn't get what he wanted -- when he lost at chess, when he lost at wrestling, etc. So it would've been completely contradictory to his character to favor a "hard-to-get" woman over an available woman, all else being equal. If he was obsessed with Rand, it wasn't because he liked the challenge she presented -- it was because he couldn't accept failure. All his life, what he'd wanted had become his. Now he wanted something that wasn't instantly his, and that frustrated him, so he kept going after it. The reason he wasn't interested in Tina was because Janice was offering her as an alternative to herself. He couldn't understand the concept of giving up on something he wanted in order to settle for something else, since he'd never needed to learn how to do that.

 

Maybe Charlie just likes older women?

 

Charlie saw Rand as a WOMAN. Tina was just a GIRL. Charlie wanted a WOMAN.

 

^Again, I don't think Charlie had the socialization to make that kind of distinction. He hadn't been raised with media images or real examples of women to shape his preferences. Like I said, he was simply accustomed to instant gratification of his basic desires. Rand was the first person to inspire sexual desire in him, so he pursued her expecting gratification, and wouldn't accept not getting it. He didn't reject Tina because of any of Tina's qualities; he rejected her because he couldn't conceive of giving up on his pursuit of Rand.

 

It's like wanting to marry the first person you sleep with, an experience I know too well.

 

Christopher, your thought about the girl in 10th grade speaks well of you.

 

Charlie's little buddy was pointing him in one direction, and in one direction only. He never had a chance.

 

Don't forget the ****-blocker that came in the end of the show and whisked li'l Charlie away.

 

The gay ones. Funny how you always forget us in these "any man'" statements.

 

^Heck, I'm as hetero as they come and I don't find Rand the least bit attractive. Tastes differ.

 

Yeah, weird. I'm as gay as hell and I love her with a passion to which no man could compare!