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'The Big Bang Theory' Is Finally Ending (theguardian.com)
"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?
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.
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.