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Crazed inventor the villain of March 12 "Eleventh Hour"

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

In an episode of the CBS show "Eleventh Hour" depicting models walking down runways, the villain turned out to be a technician who was ripped off by his boss for inventive credit for a perfume that functioned as an aphrodisiac, with (of course) some unfortunate side effects. Having some parallels to a 1995 episode of Law & Order ["Big Bang"] where a post-doc tried to take vengeance on his advisor who stole his idea, the tech in "Eleventh Hour" was simply trying to create mayhem. Without design, his general plan managed to get his idea-stealing boss killed. [The post-doc in L&O inadvertently killed the (divorced) wife of his supervisor, but the post-doc's murder trial did expose the idea-stealing of the supervisor.]

In the "Eleventh Hour" episode, there was even an allusion to a legal proceeding over inventive credit for a patent, and the tech in the end talked about his desire to get credit for the invention. "Patent reformers" should take note of the strong feelings of inventors, which are not totally a creation of tv writers.

In the world of tv science, Dr. Hood (Rufus Sewell) prevented a wild scene of destruction by men affected by the perfume {"Fervor"] by introducing cerulenin, a natural fatty acid synthase (FAS) inhibitor into a fogging device on the model runway, calming everyone down.

See also:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/12/eleventh-hour-depicts-evil.html

for another storyline of a cutting edge invention with an unfortunate side effect

The show needs some writers from Law & Order for more subtle plots, and someone to get the science beyond name-dropping.

On the other hand, the tv writers may have a better understanding of invention than some patent reformers.

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).