'The Big Bang Theory' Is Finally Ending (theguardian.com) 441
"The Big Bang Theory is dead. If you need me, I'll be dancing on its grave," writes a TV columnist for the Guardian:
The inexplicably popular geek sitcom has announced that its 12th season will be its last. Its demise should come as a relief to everybody... Producers have promised an "epic creative close" when the series ends in May. After that, The Big Bang Theory will be dead, and nobody will be sad. Except, of course, they will. Because, inexplicably, The Big Bang Theory is still one of the most-watched shows on U.S. television. It regularly gets more than 15 million viewers an episode, and, statistically, not all of them can be incapacitated to the point of being unable to change channels whenever it comes on.
Nothing confuses me more than The Big Bang Theory's success. It has always been markedly less smart than it thought it was; the TV version of someone wearing a "GEEK" T-shirt because they liked a Facebook post about the moon once.... Watch any recent episode of The Big Bang Theory and you'll see that it is barely even a sitcom at this point. It has been going on for so long that the writing, presentation and performances are more or less autonomous. Everyone is just glumly going through the motions, stuck in the tracks they've carved out for themselves over the years. It's like watching a museum exhibit of a sitcom made with mannequins and miserable circus bears.
The actor who plays Sheldon will be 46 when the show ends, the columnist points out, adding that for 12 years he's been playing "a weirdly ageless man-boy trapped in a developmentally arrested closed-loop flatshare scenario more suited to somebody half his age." The Guardian titled their piece "Our Long Nightmare is Finally Over" -- but leave your own thoughts in the comments.
How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
Update from msmash: Two suggested readings, one from The Guardian itself, Critics be damned -- here's why The Big Bang Theory is an unstoppable force with fans, and this four-year-old article from Vulture, Why Are 23.4 Million People Watching The Big Bang Theory?
Nothing confuses me more than The Big Bang Theory's success. It has always been markedly less smart than it thought it was; the TV version of someone wearing a "GEEK" T-shirt because they liked a Facebook post about the moon once.... Watch any recent episode of The Big Bang Theory and you'll see that it is barely even a sitcom at this point. It has been going on for so long that the writing, presentation and performances are more or less autonomous. Everyone is just glumly going through the motions, stuck in the tracks they've carved out for themselves over the years. It's like watching a museum exhibit of a sitcom made with mannequins and miserable circus bears.
The actor who plays Sheldon will be 46 when the show ends, the columnist points out, adding that for 12 years he's been playing "a weirdly ageless man-boy trapped in a developmentally arrested closed-loop flatshare scenario more suited to somebody half his age." The Guardian titled their piece "Our Long Nightmare is Finally Over" -- but leave your own thoughts in the comments.
How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
Update from msmash: Two suggested readings, one from The Guardian itself, Critics be damned -- here's why The Big Bang Theory is an unstoppable force with fans, and this four-year-old article from Vulture, Why Are 23.4 Million People Watching The Big Bang Theory?
Oh no! Who will make fun or us nerds now? (Score:5, Interesting)
That show was never laughing *WITH* us. It was laughing *AT* us.
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This is a pet theory of mine. The things that geeks liked about the show are NOT the things that made it number one among regular people.
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Dumb people like laughing at smart people. Film at eleven.
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Re:Oh no! Who will make fun or us nerds now? (Score:5, Insightful)
That show was never laughing *WITH* us. It was laughing *AT* us.
More likely that the portrayal of a given group in an entertainment setting rarely sits well with the group being portrayed. It is why there are doctors who refuse to watch ER and House, cops who refuse to watch NYPD blue, etc.
The artistic license required to make something entertaining is what makes people knowledgeable about that something scream, "that's not how it works!" at the screen when they are watching. For example, police work is not all high speed chases, kicking down doors, and arresting suspects. It is like 95% boring paperwork. Medical diagnostics is not some sociopath verbally abusing a group of medical students into committing crimes because they are too afraid to stand up to him.
To look at two movies that I think most people just assume all geeks like, take Hackers and Sneakers. Both were based on somewhat flimsy premises, thought Sneakers was more believable. Hackers was all about hacking itself and showed that activity like it was some sort of real-time battle between the attackers and the defender. It normally doesn't work like that. Sneakers was all about the social engineering. It turns out, that hacking tends to be far more about social engineering that actual technical exploits (though those do play a role). That is why, to me as a geek, Sneakers was so much more appealing. Despite the plot holes and other flaws, it felt more believable than Hackers.
Probably why shows like Star Trek and Firefly were much more appealing to geeks that BBT. They go off into territory where believability is much less important and they generally do a good job of making the unbelievable believable.
Re: Oh no! Who will make fun or us nerds now? (Score:3)
Every single character touched on my nerve because it seemed partially about me. That's why I laughed so hard.
Inability to understand female irrationality was perfectly captures in the pilot where Penny is having typical breakdown and Sheldon and Leonard are silently gesticulating expressing utter inability to understand what is going on. This is spot on.
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The whole thing was pretty toxic.
Take Howard. Especially in the early series he was really creepy. That was his entire character: being a creep. Harassing and stalking women, creeping them out. And it was supposed to be okay because he was a socially awkward nerd or something.
Raj's mental illness was played for cheap laughs. Then there is the whole "Raj being camp" thing. They didn't know what to do with Penny after the first few episodes, and Bernadette quickly got boring too.
Mayim Bialik (Amy) is by far t
Re:Oh no! Who will make fun or us nerds now? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It was laughing *AT* us."
It was laughing at the characters, because it is a sitcom. Are you familiar with the genre?
It wasn't laughing at geeks, because it was pointing out that the problems that geeks have are the problems that *everyone* has[1] sch as:
Spouses with significantly different earnings.
Involuntary career changes.
Self-sabotage of relationships
Dealing with parents as fellow adults.
Workplace rivalries.
Note that the only character who has not had at least one long term relationship in the show is the guy with the art degree who had a business that failed once.
It was also laughing at you you.
[1] One exception: how PhDs view those with a terminal masters. But even there, that's just because a PhD is a requirement and still it includes any field where PhDs are awarded.
Re:Oh no! Who will make fun or us nerds now? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure there will be laughing stock nerds in many a series to come. That's the way it has been in American media for as long as I can remember. BBT put these nerds in center stage, but didn't change anything essential about their portrayal.
No matter how smart the nerd characters are, they are always downplayed in the end so that the average guy can be the hero. Their intellectual abilities are often balanced by childish obsessions with comics etc. or being socially awkward. It doesn't help that in the recent decades, very different interests such as watching anime and programming have been conflated into the same "geek culture".
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"the average guy can be the hero"
What "average guy" on BBT was the hero? Penny? She was often getting bailed out by the "geeks"... and then every now and again she could offer some "normal" insight to clear up a geek problem.
I don't buy this one at all: one of the more interesting things about TBBT is that the geeks largely had to resolve their own issues. Being very geeky myself and knowing many others that fit the stereotypes portrayed on TBBT... I always found it funny to watch them work their way out
Cultural Zeitgiest (Score:5, Insightful)
But, it is hugely popular in America, because for the past 20 years, we have been going through a profound cultural and economic shift. The nerd has gone from the mocked and outcast spaz of the 80's comedies (Revenge of the Nerds, various John Hughes movies) to ruling every aspect of modern life. (The founders of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc.) The common blue collar worker has been utterly crushed by nerds and geeks, his work is being threatened by automation and disruptive startups, and he is slowly being gentrified out of house and home as the middle class is crushed by the new class of tech workers made up of these strange spastic twerps that he picked on in high school. This is no less than a dimly veiled mocking of geek culture, and emasculation of their threat to middle class America.
"Oh look, they aren't going to create a new start-up that shuts down the plant and puts me out of work, they are just a bunch of stupid gits that are scared of girls"
Jumped the shark a decade ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I enjoyed the first two seasons, thought the third was already too much, and dropped out after a couple of episodes of the fourth. I found that as they piled more and more geek stereotypes onto the same four characters it eventually broke my suspension of disbelief.
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It's not a laugh track, it is a studio audience.
Laugh tracks are cheesy, but very rarely used. It is quite common for sitcoms to be filmed in front of an audience though. But whether or not you find it offputting is a matter of taste.
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I wouldn't go that far, especially since the series improved after the first few seasons when the worked off some of the more obvious cliches and built the stories more around the characters.
But, as a fan of the show, I have felt that the last few seasons were tired, well past their prime, and have actually been hoping that they would give the show a good wrap-up.
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I enjoyed the first two seasons, thought the third was already too much, and dropped out after a couple of episodes of the fourth. I found that as they piled more and more geek stereotypes onto the same four characters it eventually broke my suspension of disbelief.
Maybe the problem was that you wanted realism. I thought it was more like the nerd version of Mr. Bean doing comedy, like there is no over the top acting. There's a reason it almost ended up like the Sheldon show for a few seasons, he was the exceptionally most dysfunctional and the ways he managed to always take it to the next level was hilarious. But you should not try to binge watch it, just like a Mr. Bean movie is too much so is more than two episodes in a row.
That was still on? I thought it was just reruns. (Score:5, Informative)
How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
I may have seen half an episode once.
-Indifferent.
Because of CBS being stupid (Score:2)
I ran across clips of the show on YouTube and found it amusing enough that I searched for a way to stream it legally. Aside from th
It's about time... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think that is about right - I think Season 5 was actually its high point, and was still going strong in Season 7, with the passing of Professor Proton. But the last 4 seasons have been feeling like the "dark energy" has gone away.
I never got this show (Score:2)
I never got this show. At the urging of co-workers i made it through about 2.5 random episodes and just could not get into it. All the characters felt whiney and neurotic but not in a funny way (or even in a way I sympathize with) as I've seen other shows pull off, just pathetic and incredibly stupid. Really, I didn't find a single character likeable and the show didn't seem to be structured for "fun to hate".
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Sorry but I loved Seinfeld. The characters, while neurotic, weren't pathetically so.
Used to be good (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to like it, partly because it didn't take itself seriously - the characters were caricatures, but I could see aspects of myself and geek friends in the caricatures and laugh at them. Somewhere around season 5 all the characters started getting girlfriends and having semi-normal relationships and it wasn't funny anymore.
Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
When people learn that I have a degree in Physics, they almost instantly assume that I am a fan of The Big Bang Theory". Alas, it is painful to watch, it never was very written, and the obviously fake laugh track makes me cringe.
Yes, I tried to get into it, but even early on, it was, well, awful. As in unwatchable for me. I am surprised (or perhaps I should be surprised) that it lasted as long as it has.
Re: Meh (Score:5, Informative)
The laugh track isn't fake. I know because I was in the audience.
Totally wasn't worth the whole day wait to get on the show. Taping lasts at least 5 hours. Way too long. The show wasn't funny after hour 3 and the pizza they gave out sucked.
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Fake laugh track can work if the jokes are funny and/or they adjust the laugh-intensity to fit the joke. The problem with Big Bang is that after 2 seasons the jokes are so predictable it's just sad. Adding a hysterical laugh after each lame punchline just makes it that much worse
Laugh track didn't really bug me much until I watched Better Off Ted. It doesn't have any laugh track at all and I'm lauging because of the show actually
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Pretty much the definition of a laugh track. The people on older laugh tracks were watching and being recorded for use in dubbing later as well.
Obviously *some* like it... (Score:2, Informative)
Its obvious theres a LOT of people who like it, I, being one of them.. If it wasn't so well-liked it wouldn't have lasted 12 years, I, for one, will be sad to see it go...
Sad (Score:2)
As a geek and a nerd, I love that show. It always makes me laugh.
So, yeah, I'm sad that's it's ending. I think the use of the term "is finally ending" is harsh. Makes be dislike the Guardian's writer. If he didn't like the site, he didn't have to watch it. But lots of us love the show.
Show was terminally unfunny (Score:3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs [youtube.com]
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It was even hard for the laugh track to laugh. Btw, have you ever seen an episode with the laugh track removed, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs [youtube.com]
I'm thinking that this a strawman argument as I bet you can engender the same negative reactive by listening to *any* sitcom without a laugh track.
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Just watch any episode of All in the Family - no laugh track, just real people laughing.
And that is a false equivalence. You want me to compare listening to TBBT with zero non-cast generated sounds, and compare it with All In The Family with laughter sounds from a studio audience. (BTW TBBT is recorded in front of a studio audience https://the-big-bang-theory.co... [the-big-bang-theory.com])
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I bet you can engender the same negative reactive by listening to *any* sitcom without a laugh track.
The Simpsons doesn't use a laugh track.
Re: Show was terminally unfunny (Score:2)
That was angsty and existential, like watching Garfield without Garfield.
Leaked pilot (Score:2)
There's a leaked pilot for BBT floating out there. The setup was somehow way better relationship wise and not as much a caricature as the final product.
The actual series had up until season 4 or so a few things going for classic nerddoms: you could spot cool stuff in their cupboards (an idea taken from the IT Guys), the running gag often was nerdy (sheldon not getting over the girl beating him at halo) and such. Also, they had regular visits from different nerddoms (Summer Glau, Geaorge Black, that star tre
Popularity? (Score:3)
There were some actually funny scenes in it, but overall I just felt it was a programme about OCD and autistic spectrum disorder.
My impression is that the show depicts what dumb people think smart people are like (a cliche, I know. But it seems to fit). And it makes the audience of "ordinary" people feel good about themselves by showing that smart people are worse than them in most of the ways that are important.
I feel great (Score:2)
Good to hear (Score:2)
Maybe now people will stop telling me “you HAVE to watch this!”
A couple years ago we had a higher-up at work who based what she thought of IT people on what she’d seen in Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley. But, based on that second-hand experience, the shows seemed to be mostly based on tired geek stereotypes than anything else. I have known IT folks who do fit those stereotypes to a “T”... but they’ve been the exception rather than the rule.
If you’re someone who l
Missed the Pointy Part (Score:2)
You missed the point. The Big Bang Theory is about science. To make it completely and totally about science we employ AI's to write the show. You must admit for the current level of AI the show is very good. :)
echoes (Score:2)
The IT Crowd did it first and did it right. (Score:2)
Especially stopping at ~24 episodes before it exhausted its premise.
TBBT is its shite American ripoff, missing the point entirely, just selling nerdface with a laugh track.
"Our long nightmare is over" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like it, don't watch it. Works for me. No need to get all melodramatic.
Advertising medium, nothing more (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Good riddance (Score:3)
I admit that I only saw one episode about ten years ago, but what I saw was just plain awful. Canned laughter and tired geek stereotypes. What about this show was funny?
Re:Que the haters in 3... 2... 1... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the caricatures of geeks presented by the sitcom do not resonate with actual geeks because they are fake.
Re:Que the haters in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not entirely fake. Everyone knows a Sheldon (the one that is a bad Autisim-spectrum-disporder characture), and the show took a very slow route to making him not completely unbearable (He basically starts as "Comicbook guy", except not fat.) Everyone knows a Howard, they're every man with a twitch.tv or youtube channel, dumbed down to be less creepy, but redeemably creepy. Raj, everyone who lives in a city knows a Raj, the guy from outside the country who has money because of rich parents. Raj probably is the most "offensive" in terms of nerdcred combined with racist characture which is only somewhat improved over The Simpsons Apu, at least Raj is a scientist who hits rockbottom and sometimes sticks up for himself.
While Big Bang theory may star Leonard, the main character is really Penny/Leonard. Penny is the non-nerd's audience surrigate, and absolutely every nerd knows a dozen Penny's. "Why do I put up with these losers" types that hangs out with them because they're a mooch at worst, and they lack any social life at best. Leonard is the proverbial "nerd who moved out because of uncaring mother who treats him as a science experiment", only highlighted by the episode where he wrote a novel and the lead female character was Penny, Bernadette and later his mom, because that's how his ideal woman is... someone who is a bit of a sexy jerk.
Speaking of sexy Jerk. Burnadette is also just as mean as Penny is, but she does it with a smile. In my travels, these people are generally HR/Management people at work, and blowing off steam at home/with friends, and they will do nothing but talk about how incompetent their staff is (my mom is one of these types.)
That leaves Amy who is the only main cast actor on the show who is an actual nerd, she has a PhD. She is basically a version Sheldon who actually knows what their shortcomings are, and thus is the only person capable of putting up with him in a relationship. In any other Sitcom she would have been the main character, and it would have been creepy. This is because, she says a lot of blunt things that she is just observing to be true, much like Sheldon, but they reflect creepy interests of how she put up with being alone.
The show also features Stuart, the comicbook shop owner. Basically Grade A Loser who at least is not "comicbook guy" from the Simpsons. This is where several other occasional nerds show up. It's completely overplayed that Stuart is just as creepy as Raj and Howard are, but unlike them, he just wants attention because he feels like nobody notices him. He's wallpaper in a empty room kind of thing.
Is the show good representation for nerds? No, barely at all. But this is the problem with all Chuck Lorre productions. They are all embellishments of people "you know" and offer the audience a sitcom that lets you watch those people suffer. That is what those shows all do. Every show he's done has run for at least 3 seasons except BBT and Mom. My mom likes Mom, my mom likes BBT, and has in fact watched all the Chuck Lorre productions (Dharma and Greg, Grace under fire, Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly.) My mom is an "average tv watcher" . So I've watched all these shows with her, and they're all basically the same formula:
Roseanne - A blue-collar family, with rebellious kids, yeah haven't seen that before. The main characters are jerks.
Grace Under Fire - Single mother who raises three children, recovering alcolholic. Also blue-collar appeal.
Cybill - Divorced Mother of two, struggling actress, and the jerks in her life.
Dharma & Greg (5 seasons) - Dharma is a flower child. Greg is the audience surrogate, Dharma's husband. Like if you thought BBT was offensive, Dharma was equal parts Sheldon except "flower child". Point of note, Marlene, a recurring cast member is played by the same voice of Lisa from the Simpsons, and is a rude jerk on this series.
Two and a Half Men (12 seasons) - Ugh this show. The two main characters are brothers, and the "half" is the less-jerk'ish brother's son. The main character,
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Not a bad summary!
Mod +1 interesting
Re:Que the haters in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Funny)
It was kinda funny at times when it was realistic.
But once they got girlfriends... sorry, at some point suspension of disbelief just doesn't work anymore.
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Laughing at yourself is great when one of your own is doing the joking, not when some smug outsider asshole is making fun of you. One is fun self-reflection. The other is just being a dick.
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s/great/easier/
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Problem is, geeks would be incapable of making a comedy about themselves. They'd be so wrapped up in minor technical points in the script that they'd never get any filming done.
Now, a sitcom about geeks trying to make a sitcom -- that could be funny.
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geeks would be incapable of making a comedy about themselves
You don't know who Mike Judge is, do you.
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I liked this show for the first few seasons. Then it turned into Friends...and I didn't like it so much.
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I liked this show for the first few seasons. Then it turned into Friends...and I didn't like it so much.
I was also trying to identify why I liked the first few seasons so much, then drifted away, only to occasionally tune in when interesting or notable guests appeared.
Saying it became like "Friends" (or other long-running sitcom) is really saying it found it's formula, then stuck with it. Which isn't a bad thing if you can be entertained by repeated visits to a well-defined thematic box. In essence, the show became it's own trope.
I think that's why I've come to like series with relatively short and well-def
Re:Que the haters in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddball Coolness of Geekdom (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
Sad.
Say whatever else you want about the show, it showed an oddball coolness to geekdom.
Howard gets jerked off by a robot arm... and gets stuck. This would be lame lonely geek turf, but who owned that arm? NASA.
Raj can't talk to women until he's drunk... hmmm... maybe why that's my workplace sells several million dollars of beer every year.
Penny is the struggling waitress wanna-be actress turned pharmaceutical rep - sales is sales, and sometimes you just have to move onto what you're good at.
Sheldon makes semi-functional Aspergers cool in its own infuriating way.
And Leonard somehow is the leader (despite the Roommate Agreement) and keeps the place from falling apart.
Chuck Lorre is a genius.
I suspect that geeks generally lack the part of the brain that allows them to laugh at themselves. Kinda like reptiles lack that area of the brain that would allow them to experience emotional attachment.
And that's precisely the problem, and what made Chuck Lorre's show such a hit for so many years.
Were you called a freak on the playground? (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that geeks generally lack the part of the brain that allows them to laugh at themselves. Kinda like reptiles lack that area of the brain that would allow them to experience emotional attachment.
Elementary school probably wasn't fun for most of us who wear the geek label with pride.
We grew up having to be defensive. Defensive of our interests, our property, our lunch money.
Why would I learn emotional attachment when I'm being called a freak by people who are more interested in kicking a ball around than doing something intelligent like reading a book?
I'm a nerd. I'm a four-eyes. I'm smarter than you, I'm tougher than you, and I'm proud to be who I am.
But what we experienced on the playground must never be forgotten. It has, I believe, damaged the social skills of a lot of us.
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Actually, I enjoyed school for most of the time, despite wearing glasses. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was passable at sports and even won the occasional fight on the school yard.
I had to win the schoolyard fights. And so I did.
Re:Were you called a freak on the playground? (Score:5, Interesting)
I went through all of that, including wearing clothes my mom made me, and being terrible in every single sport except archery. (Really, archery is just applied mechanics combined with some physics.)
I was harassed on a daily basis at school. I learned all the ways home where the jocks were less likely to see me. I'm sure this sounds familiar.
Then midway thorugh high school, I started karate classes, and found that I was pretty good at it. Again, it's just physics and some applied mechanics, plus reaction training. By far the most difficult part was not thinking about what I was doing, and let reactions take over. And for the first time in my entire life, I started to fill out, gain muscle mass, and by my senior year the jocks started leaving me alone.
I retained the awkwardness and social ineptitude of course, never went to any dances, and didn't start dating until college. I'm married with an adult offspring, and I still have trouble with social interaction. I tend to analyze conversation too much.
But I look back at all that now, and I have to laugh at myself. Yes, I've been financially successful, I've traveled around the world, and generally lived a remarkable life, when most of those jocks are now in dead-end job and spend weekends watching sports on the couch. (Gleaned from classmates.com.)
Humor is a way to admit our faults and become comfortable with them. I absolutely suck at sports. I freely admit it. I couldn't hacky-sack with a gun to my head. About the only physical thing I'm good at is protecting myself and physically hurting people. (I still train, and hold a second degree black belt in two different styles now. Next year I'm testing for 3rd in an obscure style nobody has heard of. There's a surprising amount of subtle ways to defend one's self. It's a technically rich area, and holds my attention as a geek.)
I enjoy TBBT because, after 30 years in engineering and IT, I've known a lot of people like them. Hell, I am them. The character that needs alcohol to talk to women. The borderline-autistic genius. The brilliant and savvy scientist who's troubled emotional past makes social interaction problematic. The engineer who is incapable of understanding why the way he interacts with women keeps landing him in HR. (I have embarrassing memories of being *that* person also, years ago.)
So there's pretty much three choices: (1) We can decide that our social deficiencies are really advantages. I think that's a dangerous way to think and probably indicates therapy. (2) We can accept our foibles as such and learn to laugh at ourselves. (3) We can eat a gun.
I prefer 2.
Re:Were you called a freak on the playground? (Score:5, Interesting)
. Next year I'm testing for 3rd in an obscure style nobody has heard of.
What style is it?
Uechi Ryu. There's only one school in all of Oregon, and it's an hour and a half drive from my home. The style is similar to Goju Ryu, which gained popularity through the original Karate Kid films. But Uechi is not an offshoot. Rather, the two styles are separate Okinawan interpretations of a southern Chinese martial art.
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For example are you shooting compounds? Or maybe longbow or recurve? What is the draw weight of your bow?
Because I like to go (deer and boar) hunting with a bow now an then (not allowed in my own stupid country). Therefore I need an appropriately high draw weight - 60lbs. And since I also like the challenge, I'm not using a compound but a recurve. Drawing the bow and keeping it drawn already requires some co
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It was a hit, just not with the geeks. It was a hit with everyone else who loved laughing at the stereotypes.
Re:Oddball Coolness of Geekdom (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that geeks generally lack the part of the brain that allows them to laugh at themselves.
Bullshit. The IT Crowd, for example, is hilarious and absolutely makes fun of geeks. The episode where Moss and Roy get into a ton of trouble trying to talk sports like a "normal person" is some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen making fun of geeks. The problem with TBBT isn't that it makes fun of geeks, it's that it does it blandly and without particularly insightful humor.
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"The IT Crowd, for example, is hilarious and absolutely makes fun of geeks."
The thing about the characters in IT Crowd is that they are incompetent. The geeks eagerly herp derp about Jen assuming that all management is incompetent. But Roy is completely unsupportive as IT support and Moss has no idea what other people want to accomplish.
And they never learn any better.
Contrast that with TBBT which not only establishes that the intellectual conflicts are between competent professionals but that they also gro
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We dvr TBBT so we can read Lorre's Vanity Card at the end of the show. (Side note: Lorre really needs to get over the last election. Yes, it happened. Constantly grousing about it won't change that.)
The most hilarious vanity card, in my opinion, in the entire run of TBBT, was the time Lorre wrote several paragraphs, mathematical formula and graphs to explain a joke that non-geeks wouldn't get.
Geek can laugh at themselves (Score:2)
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I enjoyed the show , and so did every geek and nerd in my circle. I am glad the show is coming to an end though. It really ran its course about season 8, and should have been put down on season 10.
I guess what made the show funny to myself and my friends is we all had one member that was similar to the characters on the TV show. Lenard was my character, we had a "Sheldon" and even a "Howard".
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No. This show was designed for others to laugh at them, not for them to laugh at themselves. This is why it is so popular. Far be it for me to agree with the guardian on anything, but they're right. It's not smart. It was actually stupid from the get-go.
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You could say the same thing about Futurama. The difference is Futurama is funny, whereas Big Bang Theory has never made me laugh.
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This is plainly wrong. Too many little jokes require at least some scientific background, and the show tries to be scientificially correct. The formulae at the whiteboards actually make sense and really belong to quantum physics or astronomical problems. Yes, non-science people get their fair share of the usual sitcom jokes for laughing at, but there is a second layer which is not for them, but for us nerds and geeks.
Exactly. I'm from an engineering background, and loved how Howard's mishaps related to real news items. Like when he and his date tried to drive a Mars rover after a night of drinking and got Spirit stuck in the sand.
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As geeks, we may be incapable of noticing this, but NON-GEEKS WOULDN'T GET MANY OF THE JOKES. In some cases, Lorre explains a joke in the closing vanity card.
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They don't have to understand the jokes. For them, the joke is the characters themselves.
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Claiming a sitcom isn't high brow is hardly a case of superiority complex.
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About as much as dunning kruger has to do with having a negative opinion about a TV show. Big bang theory is unfunny, predictable, and boring to sit though, and the look-at-the-nerds-and-laugh plot device was hardly meant as reflective humor (humor that was unfunny enough to keep the laugh track around no less). I'm sure the creators knew the vast majority of the audience was laughing at them, not with them. Then it got even worse when they turned it into emasculated geek 90210. None of this is 'smart' by
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I suspect that geeks generally lack the part of the brain that allows them to laugh at themselves. Kinda like reptiles lack that area of the brain that would allow them to experience emotional attachment.
Please explain the popularity of the IT Crowd, then.
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?? Both shows are popular.
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no, big bang went south after a couple seasons. the hate is well deserved because the humor and fresh ideas were no longer there. you must be easily entertained....
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Yet TBBT is still immensely popular, and The IT Crowd (which I personally really enjoyed) petered out after four years.
Re:Que the haters in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
You are dismissing people who dislike it without actually understanding WHY they dislike it.
1. Wisecrack recently did an analysis of WHY the humor in TBBT is so bland:
* The Big Bang Theory: What Went Wrong? - Wisecrack Edition [youtube.com]
My bold emphasis added.
@2:33
@3:24
2. TBBT without the laugh track shows just how bland and boring the show really is:
* The Big Bang Theory - No Laugh Track 1 (Avoiding the Shamy) [youtube.com]
Does that mean I "hate" TBBT ? No. I just find it over-rated.
But please keep:
* placing people into a False Dilemma / dichotomy fallacy -- "You don't like the show so you MUST hate it.", and
* using Ad Hominem fallacy -- "Haters going to hate"; whining about how people hate X without taking the time to LEARN _what_ and _why_ specifically it is they dislike about it.
---
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. -- Josh Billings
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For me the thing was that they _weren't_ using gibberish. So "non-science" people can laugh without caring what those terms mean... but "sciency" people can laugh _because_ of the actual words / equations / theorems used. It did well with both crowds (I truly think it's the people that are in-between that didn't appreciate TBBT).
There were _many_ episodes where I would watch with my "non-science" wife and she would laugh at a joke as would I. Then I would pause it and ask what she was laughing about and
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I suspect that geeks generally lack the part of the brain that allows them to laugh at themselves.
Office space is funny, it is geeks laughing at themselves. Big bang is not funny, and it is not for geeks. It is for vapid, clueless people who like to pretend they understand what it is like to be smart. Laugh track, omigod.
Self respecting geeks do not watch sitcoms.
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It is a word, it's just not the word I meant.
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It's just not a word in English.
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Zoom.
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s/laughtrack/live audience/g
The difference being, with a live audience, the jokes have to actually be funny to someone.
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No, the difference being a producer holds a sign up telling people WHEN to laugh.
I know from personal experience that they used to do that in the seventies. I don't have evidence either way whether they still do this. Also, I'd expect it to be a monitor. A sign is so... last century.
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You're right. I freely admit I'm a geek. Even as an older adult I'm still socially awkward. (I tell people I'm better in print than in real life.) And yes, I've learned to laugh at myself. I have geek friends who have learned to laugh at themselves. It's a natural growth for geeks, but sadly one that a significant percentage of geeks never experience.
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Yep, I certainly did.
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ibid God bless your dad
And he formed a company in Mountain View?
I am doubly impressed!
So, the answer to the question, "What does he watch?" would be Whatever he wants!!
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