Okay, but no, the very simple answer is that Carmen really likes brilliance. There's a part in canon where she says outright, "Competition's fine, but I'd rather someone showed me something they were good at. Then I'd really learn something, wouldn't I?" (this following an adventure where one of her henchmen tried to impersonate her and usurp her title). And she really does just like people — meeting them, learning about them, seeing what they're good at, sampling what makes them unique.
The other thing that she's good at is (predictably) education, but not just in the sense of teaching people; she's good at looking at a person and seeing their potential and then doing things designed to draw it out. Conversely, she'll figure out a place where someone needs work and she'll throw something at them to try to fix it, or take it upon herself to motivate them to do so and so on.
There's an episode in canon where Carmen actually sets up an entire caper specifically to draw out this one detective who's obsessed with catching her (and has been for years) to try to tempt him into giving up sleuthing and becoming her accomplice — basically, the same choice she made herself ten years ago. Reid, I think, has a lot of that same potential for her. She gets invested in the lives of brilliant people because she wants to push them and challenge them and drive them to keep reaching past their own limits so they'll see just how far they can really go. And if, god forbid, she thinks they have a problem that they're not overcoming on their own, she'll scheme a way to address it because LOL SHE'S HELPING.
So with Reid, the interest is kind of twofold. The obvious one is that he is brilliant and it doesn't take a genius to see that, and so she's naturally inclined to be like OMG SHOW ME EVERYTHING YES OMG STUPID TRIVIA BABBLE FOREVER THIS IS FASCINATING AND OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO SMART THIS IS MAGICAL, because she is a nerd and it's pretty obvious that nerdiness is what he excels at. When he starts putting his other talents on display, she'll get enthralled by those, too — particularly the magic, because then that's like a game in itself.
The not-so-obvious one is that she's also spotted that he's not the greatest with people, and so it's her inclination to fix that, in her own Carmenish way — which in this case happens to be forcing him to deal with her. Her guess thus far is that she can make him subconsciously comfortable by enabling and encouraging his geekiness, while simultaneously making him address and practice the social stuff he's not as good at by, y'know, getting all up in his business and flirting the hell out of him.
(Also, she's just naturally flirty. She flirts with everybody. Meaningful long-term social interaction, she's still kind of fail at, but that is neither here nor there.)
So yeah, basically Reid is fun and smart and he hits a lot of her pings, and most importantly he's fun to play with — and since Carmen's greatest flaw is her tendency to get bored, it's always good to have things that interest her around.
Carmen on Reid
Okay, but no, the very simple answer is that Carmen really likes brilliance. There's a part in canon where she says outright, "Competition's fine, but I'd rather someone showed me something they were good at. Then I'd really learn something, wouldn't I?" (this following an adventure where one of her henchmen tried to impersonate her and usurp her title). And she really does just like people — meeting them, learning about them, seeing what they're good at, sampling what makes them unique.
The other thing that she's good at is (predictably) education, but not just in the sense of teaching people; she's good at looking at a person and seeing their potential and then doing things designed to draw it out. Conversely, she'll figure out a place where someone needs work and she'll throw something at them to try to fix it, or take it upon herself to motivate them to do so and so on.
There's an episode in canon where Carmen actually sets up an entire caper specifically to draw out this one detective who's obsessed with catching her (and has been for years) to try to tempt him into giving up sleuthing and becoming her accomplice — basically, the same choice she made herself ten years ago. Reid, I think, has a lot of that same potential for her. She gets invested in the lives of brilliant people because she wants to push them and challenge them and drive them to keep reaching past their own limits so they'll see just how far they can really go. And if, god forbid, she thinks they have a problem that they're not overcoming on their own, she'll scheme a way to address it because LOL SHE'S HELPING.
So with Reid, the interest is kind of twofold. The obvious one is that he is brilliant and it doesn't take a genius to see that, and so she's naturally inclined to be like OMG SHOW ME EVERYTHING YES OMG STUPID TRIVIA BABBLE FOREVER THIS IS FASCINATING AND OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO SMART THIS IS MAGICAL, because she is a nerd and it's pretty obvious that nerdiness is what he excels at. When he starts putting his other talents on display, she'll get enthralled by those, too — particularly the magic, because then that's like a game in itself.
The not-so-obvious one is that she's also spotted that he's not the greatest with people, and so it's her inclination to fix that, in her own Carmenish way — which in this case happens to be forcing him to deal with her. Her guess thus far is that she can make him subconsciously comfortable by enabling and encouraging his geekiness, while simultaneously making him address and practice the social stuff he's not as good at by, y'know, getting all up in his business and flirting the hell out of him.
(Also, she's just naturally flirty. She flirts with everybody. Meaningful long-term social interaction, she's still kind of fail at, but that is neither here nor there.)
So yeah, basically Reid is fun and smart and he hits a lot of her pings, and most importantly he's fun to play with — and since Carmen's greatest flaw is her tendency to get bored, it's always good to have things that interest her around.