Who's The Man?

Roger Smith, the protagonist of The Big O, is certianly not your average, brightly-dressed, toothy-grinned hero. He may willingly play Saviour of the City whenever the opportunity strikes, but that is pretty much where the similarities between Roger and your typical hero end.

Roger is the type of guy that won't take anyone's crap if he doens't have to. He is very quick-witted, sharp, and to the point. He doesn't often get sentimental, and his slick black attire also projects a "don't mess with me" image. He also lives in a large mansion, complete with a faithful butler, which leads to the conclusion that he also has a lot of money at his disposal.

He serves as the Paradigm City's top "negotiator". In essence, he's the man you go to when there's a crisis you can't solve on your own. He has done such things as negotiating deals between two opposing parties, rescuing kidnapping victims, and solving mysteries that confound everyone else in town.

He also has shown himself to have very good instincts about people and their motives, and he often spots a trick where no one else would, as he does with Mr. Wise's predicament in Beck Comes Back, by sensing that the kidnappers would continue to extort money out of Mr. Wise if he kept giving in to their demands.

On the flip side, Roger doesn't seem to have much instinct for seeing what other people are feeling emotionally. In that sense, he's very much your stereotypical hero--a guy who wants to be in full control of what people do and don't know about him. He is very guarded, and that's quite understandable, given the fact that his line of work sometimes has him rubbing elbows with some pretty shady characters.

However, he doesn't seem to be very tuned in to what most others are feeling, particularly when it comes to Dorothy's thoughts. He doesn't always expect her to have feelings and curiosities in the same way that a human would, perhaps because he's so conscious of the fact that she is a robot.

He does deal well with the unusual and outlandish things he comes across in his line of work, however. He is faced with ghosts, robots, and other strange creatures, but rather than being a skeptic, he trusts his instincts, and accepts what's in front of him. He knows that he has to fight them in order to keep the peace in Paradigm City, so coming to grips with what they are is not such a vital part of his dealings with them.

In general, he has to deal with a lot of mysterious things, both in his current life, and his own past. Because he, and everyone else in the city, have lost their memories, Roger must take a lot of his existence on faith. He chooses not to be ruled by lost memories, and instead lives his life based on what he does remember, on what he knows he can do.

When you put it all together, Roger Smith is one serious hero! But he's also not the average kind of hero you grew up with... and hopefully any future episodes that may come our way will give us even more insight!