Slashdot Mirror
'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?
That show was never laughing *WITH* us. It was laughing *AT* us.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
The Big Bang Theory took a nosedive in quality around season 5, and has been gliding in for a landing ever since. The cast did not seem to have their hearts in the characters they portrayed, and the Sheldon character has become most annoying. The show should have ended four seasons or so ago...
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-defined arcs, from the 3-6 episode mini-series, to the 1-3 year series. Beyond 3 years seems to be where my interest fades: Even Amazon's "The Americans" had some weaker seasons during its recently concluded 5-year run.
For a 12-year run, I think I'd prefer to see four separate 3-year projects that connect together.
For me it was OK even when Penny and Leonard got married, but as soon as EVERYONE started having stable relationships and getting married? No. I think you nailed it - it turned in to something like Friends, I never could watch that show. I missed last season and most of the previous as we cancelled our DirecTV and lost access to CBS, and I really didn't miss it, which is sad as one of the astronomy programs that my wife runs was the inspiration for the lunar laser experiment early in the show's run.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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,
But TFA is just asinine. Does the Guardian have any writers who aren't whiny little bitches?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
. 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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.