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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?
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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.
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That show was never laughing *WITH* us. It was laughing *AT* us.
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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.
How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
I may have seen half an episode once.
-Indifferent.
My father, Once a head research chemist with too many patents to count, thought that show was amazing and watched every episode he could see!
I on the other hand have hated that show from the first episode I watched with him. I never watch another. Good bye, good riddance, thank GOD its FINALLY OVER!
Impersonating me again I see: Poor imitation & yet sincerest form of flattery proving you WISH you were ME but an offtopic "ne'er-do-well" in yourself can NEVER ever be since you waste your time producing the outcome of your WASTED LIFE we all see now from you.
APK
P.S.=> Grow up, get on topic & be normal... ok? Thanks!... apk
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...
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.
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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".
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
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.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
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...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
My 85 year old father watches it.
I can't explain it, it's incongruous with the rest of him. Naval Aviator, two tours in Vietnam, combat veteran, farm boy, born in Iowa to an illiterate Kentucky bootlegger on the run from the Feds in the middle of the Great Depression. I know everyone says this about their dad, but he's the toughest, hardest MF'er I've ever met- still works three days a week for the biomed company he formed in Mountain View in the 70s.
And he never misses a freaking episode. I don't understand anything anymore.
It stopped being about celebrating geek quirks long ago. Now it's just a mixture of pity, condescension, ridicule and insults. Oh, and a heaping helping of "who pairs up with whom". That seems to be the end phase of every American sitcom. The actors don't even manage to stay in character anymore.
Considering each cast member makes a million per episode, and it already has made a billion plus in syndication is a good reason to end it. They have plenty of seasons to sell for the syndication gold mine and not have to pay the current huge cast member salaries. Makes perfect sense, and the series has basically run out of ideals.
How fitting: The first on topic comment insults geeks.
Need more proof?
-- inexplicably, The Big Bang Theory is still one of the most-watched shows.
Ive always enoyed the show and felt the multiple levels of jokes was cool as it can reach all audiences.
Haters will hate, keep in mind its a sitcom not for everyone
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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It's a Roseanne reboot with "geeks" who have minimal likeability. The jokes suck. The lines suck. The plot sucks. Every now and then a clever gem appears and is stomped on until it smashes. You decide if this is worthy...
The rest of the world thinks you're a FUCKING MORON if you like retarded shit like that though.
I am a pretty scientific geek with a Ph. D. in chemistry, a chemistry professor at a major university and took a look at the show early on. I was hoping that maybe the show would present some real science or computer literacy and enhance viewers' understanding and appreciation for these subjects. My guess is the show did just the opposite. How many geeks have white boards with arcane equations posted in their apartments or home living rooms? I didn't see anyone writing or explaining the math or science behind this material. Maybe things changed later on.
I won't miss the show because I didn't watch it after my initial short viewing introduction.
Bernadette becomes morbidly obese and bedridden like her deceased mother-in-law, screaming cringingly embarrassing things at an elderly Howard.
Sheldon finally wins a Nobel Prize for his work in string theory.
Rajesh is the first person in California to legally marry his dog.
Leonard uses a complex setup of lasers, high temperature superconductors, and Bose-Einstein condensates to commit suicide after Penny runs off with a hunky doctor she met at work.
Ah Chuck Lorrie, you've done it again!
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.
Now can we also kill off the fucking spin-off too?
Just die already.
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
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 trek kid and so on). This took more and more a backseat to relationship-soap opera stuff which made me quit.
Silicon Valley might not be very precise with its technical details, but it feels way more nerd-relateable than BBT to me.
Hell man, the guy is barely old enough to get out of High School and be drafted for the still on-going Conflict in Korea. So I guess he can meet Hawkeye, Dylan, and be rewarded with a trip to Cypress Gardens for his baking soda volcano not opening a pit to the Hellmouth.
I tried to watch the show several times but couldn't last beyond what had to be the worst automated laugh track on TV.
Give me a show like The Middle, with clever, often hilarious scenarios and writing, and not a single laugh track, ever.
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The jokes have become boring and sadly stale. Theyve made being a geek cliche and stereotyped. :-/
Impersonating me again I see: Poor imitation & yet sincerest form of flattery proving you WISH you were ME but an offtopic "ne'er-do-well" in yourself can NEVER ever be since you waste your time producing the outcome of your WASTED LIFE we all see now from you.
APK
P.S.=> Grow up, get on topic & be normal... ok? Thanks... apk
Impersonating me again I see: Poor imitation & yet sincerest form of flattery proving you WISH you were ME but an offtopic "ne'er-do-well" in yourself can NEVER ever be since you waste your time producing the outcome of your WASTED LIFE we all see now from you.
APK
P.S.=> Grow up, get on topic & be normal - ok? Thanks... apk
I can't remember anything about it, other than the set seemed to be an unusually large living room.
> How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory? Silicon Valley is funny, well written, accurate, and well acted. Big Bang Theory was none of those things.
I'm a 2000 man.
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 liked Big Bang - sorry your show ended. Different strokes for different folks.
#DeleteChrome
It seams like its only reruns because it's one of CBS' most popular shows. So rather than releasing new episodes on multiple streaming services, it's an exclusive to CBS's streaming service. Oh, you didn't know CBS had its own streaming service? Yeah, that's the problem. So the only time you'll see new episodes on TV is during live broadcasts. Everything else is reruns.
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 the early seasons and reruns available for a short time on services like Sling and Playstation Vue with a DVR feature, there's no way to stream it without subscribing to CSB All Access. Thus ended my interest in the show.
But only when the show is *actually* funny. Look there are many shows where they make funs of geek in a certain way, see some episode of ti crowds, heck I would dare say futurama or many episode of the simpson, and I pass many many other. But TBBT is really poor in joke, it is a sitcom like people like them, but not geeky. Look, take some of the geek stuff, remove the laugh band and often you see there is nothing there. I can remember one with sheldon reciting names of games "mario kart etc..." if you remove the laugh band you realize there is ntohing tehre. TBBT is filled of those.
You see there is a difference also between laughing AT geek, and laughing WITH geek. TBBT the the sort of "AT" point at geek like ape and laugh. Look at their studio antics ! Other shows present funny geek situation but laugh WITH geek on those situation.
IMO TBBT was a show about geek charicature as viewed by non geek put into situation the non-geek view as funny. It was not funny. Want to show something utterly funny making fun WITH geek (and not AT) ? Watch the gamers. Watch brad Vader. You will immediately see what I mean with the difference between AT/WITH. And PS: sheldon is not funny. He look like somebody with a terrible mental problem which is not helped by its entourage. And that's unfunny unless you like laughing AT people with mental problems. I can nearly hear the producer whispering "why are you hitting yourself" while using your own punch to hit you in the face.
TL;DR TBBT is not a geek show. And yes we can laugh at ourselves but only when it is REALLY funny.
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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. :)
Echoing across our solar system (and beyond) are reverberations of every BBT episode... never to die, just to fade and fade into the background noise. Shows like BBT will never go away, they just fade into syndication. The A-Team is still being broadcast by DirecTV! I wish I could find the old Gumbys.
Big Bang Theory is extremely weak comedy involving some nerds.
If you thought Big Bang Theory was for nerds then you aren't one. Simple as that.
On the other hand, my 75 year-old mother loves this show. She is basically confined to a wheel-chair at this point, but, she still has her mind. She thinks this show is hilarious for some inexplicable reason. Personally, I believe it is because my Mom is a much more intelligent person than her life and health has allowed her to live and so she is attracted to the "idea" of a bunch of science-types sitting around, goofing off, and enjoying themselves (no matter how unrealistic or inaccurate). So, for that alone, I appreciate the cast, crew, and writers of this show for giving my mother a number of years of joy. So long, and thanks for all the laughs (on my mother's behalf).
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.
it was the best show around that took basic 10th grade science, dumbed it down for an american audience, and added a laugh track just in case you still didn't get the science jokes.
what television needs is more science shows like this, and more laugh tracks.
I've caught the show on occasion, whilst switching between channels, and I never found it engaging enough that I should watch an entire episode. I found its reference-based presentation of nerd culture and its characters to be uninspired and puerile. The IT Crowd, on the other hand, could at least present the (at times) childish nature and situations of its characters in a more intelligent and endearing way, IMO.
There were glimmers of humour and much potential in Sheldon's character, I thought, but for the most part, he came across as annoying, and not in a way that I could sympathise with. I would say that Dustin Hoffman does a better job of this as Raymond in Rain Man (albeit a more extreme example).
How do I feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory? I feel nothing.
If you don't like it, don't watch it. Works for me. No need to get all melodramatic.
Never found it to be particularly interesting, me being an anime fan and all, but...
TFA>_ "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."
You know, people will read this here at /. and won't understand the "weirdly" qualification...
I myself am way older than 46, so there.
I was on a cruise back in March, and one of the in-stateroom TV channels showed random TV shows and their actual runtime, minus commercials. Most 30 minute shows had about 22 minutes of runtime. Big Bang Theory was at about 17 minutes. Literally half of the show's scheduled runtime is taken up by commercials.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The BB theory fans are all just a bunch of whiny sociopaths who should be shot with a thousand BB's each.
just for the fun of it.
that would make an excellent follow-up show
CAP === forego
Both the show, and its intended audience, apparently.
It just goes to show that Idiocracy and the show 'Ow!, My Balls!' isnt that fucking far away now.
we cancelled our DirecTV and lost access to CBS
Where do you live that a CBS affiliate's ATSC broadcast does not reach?
How dare others like something I dislike!
A lot that was good ... we still make the whole Sheldon and his spot where he has to sit reference at work ... that's kinda me with my preferred seat in the conference rooms.
But yeah, got old pretty quick.
the shark jumped years ago ....
Never watched the show. Got better things to do than keep current on sitcoms. Don't even bother with broadcast tv anymore. Worst part was how I had a dunce of a boss who couldn't understand why his resident techie didn't watch the show.
I forced myself to sit through half an episode once, too. It was not clever or funny at all, despite trying really hard to be. Just goes to show how bad most other TV programming sucks these days that it lasted even a single season.
I remember hearing about this show maybe 8 or 9 years ago. Somehow (piracy or Netflix) I watched the first season. It wasn't so terrible that I stopped watching after one episode. I'm not sure exactly why I watched the whole season... it's not a good show, and the characters are all one dimensional, and have no depth beyond their little stereotype. The hot dumb girl, the dorky genius, etc. Maybe because it had some scientific accuracy to it? I might have kept thinking it'd get better... it didn't so I never watched another episode.
I guess I'm just a little shocked the show lasted for so long, and had such popularity. It wasn't a good show, and I have to agree with the article that it's about as geeky as someone who once liked a post about the moon. (It's rather odd that this level of geekiness is now chic. Maybe that's good? I honestly don't know.) But I never had the level of animosity towards the show that the Guardian author did. I can sort of understand it though. The show presented this sort of one dimensional stereotype that you might see on.
On the other hand, anyone that's paid attention to what's on TV regularly shouldn't really be surprised this show was popular. How long did Friends go on for? 10 seasons? Friends was about as vacuous as The Big Bang Theory is. So why is it surprising these shows went on for so long? They don't challenge anyone, nothing much ever changes in the show, and you barely have to pay attention to it to understand what's going on. That's perfect for a sitcom. The vast majority of the population doesn't want challenge, they just want to sit down and understand everything without much thought.
If you want an actual geeky show that's actually quite good, go watch Mr. Robot. Which is the first show I've seen that portrays computer hacking accurately. Not the weird underworld stuff, which isn't really accurate, but the actual planning, dedication, and hours of study involved. The portrayal of corporate america as a series of mindless drones is largely real. Also the real world implications of suddenly "setting everyones debt to zero" are also quite accurate of what likely would happen.
The Big Bang Theory was for people who like geeks.
TBBT was a solid sitcom. That was its appeal. It was not a clever reflection on post-docs, scientists vs engineers, Aspergers, or any of the geek culture aspects it had bolted on.
I did 'only' a masters in physics. I shared a flat with 4 other physics students. One of us had diagnosed aspergers. One of us had to drink heavily to quell his social anxiety before his parents put him on a train and we picked him up at the other end. We all poured scorn on engineers. So i wanted to love TBBT. I really did.
The fact is I never saw myself or my friends in TBBT. 2 examples:
I never understood their finances. Students / post-docs / junior lectureres never have any money. I remember eating pickle out of a jar with a spoon a couple of times because we had no money. We never did take away. We rarely ate out apart from at the university. Much of the comedy in our house came from the terrifying experiments in cooking. Raj had rich parents, but where was the financial turmoil for everyone else?
I never understood how "broadly" geeky they were. We all had our own "geeky interests" and would pour hours of our free time into them. (The warhammer geek, the coding geek, the role-play geek, the video editing geek, etc). And we had interests in common (physics, computers, girls). But TBBT group all seem to have a vague interest in all things geeky. They have a general liking of geek culture, the conventions, the sci-fi, the memorabilia. Sheldon was perhaps the exception to this with his love of trains, but even that seemed to be something that was presented only opportunistically rather being a constant visible presence in his life.
So I enjoyed TBBT for its characterization and the characters responses to the awkward situations that the writers came up with. But it will always feel like any opportunity missed to me.
A good sit com, but hardly irreplacable.
I'm not a big TV guy, but I kept reading/hearing about the series, and finally started watching. I didn't particularly like the early episodes, where the characters were extreme and one dimensional (Raj couldn't talk around women, Howard was such a complete jerk), but, later on, as they matured, I found it more palatable. They did try to get the science right, and some serious scientists (not just Steve Hawking) made cameo appearances. They addressed some social issues too, like Bernadette's initial resistance to having children, which, from what I understand, rings true for a lot of women even though they are reluctant to admit it.
I didn't fall in love with the show, but I didn't hate it either. Maybe I'm part of the mostly silent majority who thought of it as an interesting, somewhat different, pretty good TV show, and nothing more.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
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."
Won't be missed. Never really was able to get past the foolishness of people who were supposedly really smart. Real smart folks just don't roll that way.
Then Sheldon was changed from a loveable Asperger sufferer to a total narcissistic bastard and I stopped watching.
I seem to be in the minority here.
I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?
Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...
—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.
Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.
Shipping
After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).
Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)
Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.
I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.
All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.
But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.
Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump
I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.
Speaking as a geek, the most offensive thing about "The Big Bang Theory" is that they try to pass it off as representing (or appealing to) geeks.
As a non-geek what I find most offensive is everything else. The acting is bad, and it's still light years ahead of the writing and direction. It is and has always been a shit sitcom, where even the guy pressing the "canned laugh" button gave up on trying to figure out where it should go after the first three episodes.
Going from Seinfeld to Friends was a drop in quality that I thought could never be matched, but Friends is bloody Oscar Wilde compared to this crap.
Whoever wrote this show is not only not a geek, but has never met one. This is just a series of nonsensical stereotypes held together by canned laughs at random points.
If you want to see geek humour, try watching Parker Lewis or The IT Crowd (original UK version).
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?
------- Mark
That show is garbage.
Sequel... Heat death? Or Big Crunch followed by a whole new Big Bang series (one of an already infinite number, presumably).
This was a shitty show, they actors were little more than mean caricatures of nerds and geeks. They were doing the equivalent of wearing 'geek blackface'. If the show was focusing its humor on black people instead of nerds, the studio would be firebombed the day the first episode aired. It was a shitty show, and it belongs in the same category as 'Song of the South' - if not actually truly offensive, pretty tasteless none the less.
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"
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Granted, I set the bar lower for television shows than I do movies or books (I watch Salvation, for cryin' out loud, but in my defense it's mainly to seethe and laugh over how much they ignore and/or screw up the science, and to drool over Jennifer Finnigan, not because it's such ground-breaking entertainment) so Big Bang Theory was never something I took too seriously, but it's had it's good moments, and in my opinion if you're going to go on and on and on ad infinitum about how bad it was and why would anyone watch it, then I've got to question why you're so angry about a half-hour TV show that, ostenisibly, you're not even watching because it's so bad as far as you're concerned. I say, if you want ground-breaking, highly intelligent, thought-provocking entertainment for the Mensa crowd, then just leave your TV set to PBS and never change it, or maybe just toss the TV in the e-waste bin and read books instead.
I don't get the nerd/geek hate I see lately. It was a fabulous show with wonderful references to science and geek culture. But people get used to something and then expect more.
I watched it about 9 seasons. But it got overly focused on Sheldon who was better as a spice than a main course.
I find nothing implausible about geeks living together and sharing a place. I have two nerdy friends who share a house at 50. If you don't marry, it becomes a decent option if today's irregular and insecure job market . People shared houses until the 70s quite often. It's *EXPENSIVE* to live on your own. I can only do it because I was successful and also got lucky in the timing of the housing market.
Anyway, it was a good show. It focused a bit too much on sheldon so I stopped watching it. I guess some other folks don't like it because the characters grew up into adults, got married, had kids, etc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
BBT hasn't been funny for at least nine years. Just watch one of those YouTube videos of BBT with the laugh track removed. It comes across as pathetic and creepy, not funny.
That TBBT is "A dumb show about smart people, vs something like Arrested Development which is a smart show about dumb people". I'll take the latter any day.
Thank goodness a show about a group of 40 year old socially inept losers is finally gone. Now we can have another group of angry women talk about their emotional problems and discuss their anger management issues.
Sheldon walks out of the room and turns off the light. The screen goes black, and then slowly dissolves into a fuzzy pattern, then a dimly-lit ceiling. The camera reframes, and you see Wernher von Braun in bed with his wife.
He wakes her up and says, "Honey, wake up, you won't believe the nightmare I just had." Link
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I though it was cancelled years ago. Well back to what really matters news for nerds.
Let alone nerdy.
A complete waste of space that was popular, or protected. Not sure which.
Any show with a laugh track is a non-starter for me. So I won't miss this show in the slightest.
... funny at all. Hyped-up, 'canned' laughter, concepts that just aren't funny.
A waste of electrons on every level...
Finally. That is all.
Not soon enough. Every episode I've seen has been just awful, painting everyone in tech/science as an asshole. I haven't seen a funny episode, so obviously i am in the minority here.
-In space, it is very hard to rig lights.
I started watching in year 6, then went back to watch the first 5, which I thought were funnier. As with any LONG running series, the writers run out of ideas, the actors of the show probably get in a rut, and if it wasn't for the insane salaries they are getting, probably would have booked a few years ago. The "big 3" actors, will probably have a harder time finding meaningful work in the tv industry as they are typecast. The "new girlfriends" probably won't have a hard time, as will the other minor characters. The show lost it's edge & appeal when the nerds all got girlfriends/wives. A series is usually doomed, when you start introducing babies into it. Time to end the series and wrap it up. I just hope, the producers, on the last scene, hopefully have them moving out of the building and, as they get ready to walk out the door, they hear a DING from the elevator and it opens up.
When I first saw the show, I found it amusing and refreshing that "nerd culture" was being hilighted. There were definitely some really hilarious plots and dialogue.
But then Sheldon became the focus of everything. Clearly suffering from a pronounced case of narcissistic personality disorder, and he became the focal point of the series. Each week, he treated people horribly, was incredibly insensitive and sociopathic -- sometimes even psychopathic, and *cue the laugh track*.. ha ha ha ha
Watching the show's success spiral upwards was to me, a sad testimony on how sociopathic our society has become. How it's amusing to watch a horrible, horrible person treat his Stockhom-syndromed friends.
any ?'s
Finally! Bazinga!
*Insert laughter*
I don't give a fuck about it because I never watched a single episode.
I never watched a singe episode of Sienfeld either.
Why? Because U.S. sitcoms stopped being funny decades ago.
When you accept the characters have no resemblance to reality it's easier to sit back and enjoy the acting and writing. I worked in various aerospace R&D areas, the latest with 70% PhDs, including some occasional FEL and space station work. Literally nobody was interested in anything close to comic books, old (or new) video games, sci-fi TV series, Comic_Cons, trains or whatever other trivia that formed the teen-aged grist for their humor mill. One reason you never saw Howard's mother was that she was a comic caricature from the Milton Berle era. The show started to jump the shark early on with an unnecessary drop in the absurdism brought on by the girlfriend(s). Some clever writing and good acting gave it enough momentum to keep going.
The main protagonist turned from likeably oblivious into selfish ubergeek. And Penny cut her hair.
For Me To Poop On
Korean war vets lapped it up and offered anecdotes of their experiences to the show.
I think a big part of the success of TBBT is that this one show does not follow the standard Hollyweird treatment of trying to tell you that you have to worship LGBT, hate gun rights, hate conservative values, and it doesn't constantly make fun of all men. Get off the political bulls&x#1 and try to entertain people. It will work.
It's just Friends 2.0. I don't have any evidence for that, even anecdotal, except myself, but I'd be willing to bet there's a large overlap between the two fanbases. Likewise, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is basically Seinfeld 2.0, or Seinfeld with indecent language. As a Seinfeld fan I think Curb is one of the few comedies worth watching. I hated Friends and I hate Big Bang even more, along with 2 1/2 Men and every other Chuck Lorre show. The guy is a cash machine and yes his shows have a lot of jokes, the problem is they just aren't funny. But hey humor is subjective and I'm not going to judge someone based on their taste in it. I just won't be caught dead watching those shows because they make me want to hang myself.
"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."
The reason the people watch the show is because it's a great show with great characters played by hysterically funny actors, one of whom is an actual biologist in real time.
The TRUTH is that many geeks are uncomfortable seeing themselves accurately portrayed.
I think of it like the way people from Kansas regard the Wizard of Oz. Everytime they reveal to someone they're from Kansas, they're met with "oh you must like Wizard of Oz! Kansas must be black and white and boring. Say hi to Dorothy and Toto for me".
It's not that they hate the Wizard of Oz, it's that it's unnecessary to bring it up constantly.
I feel like many in the "geek community" received the same treatment regarding Big Bang Theory. While we could identify with many parts of it, others would bring it up too many times, "Oh you must be like Howard around girls, huh".
Good thing it was enforcing disparaging stereotypes about geeks and jews, and not about radical feminists.
That show was fucking atrocious.
I was sort of like that myself and have two adult children who are now. My 44 year old son and 46 year old daughter are professionals with advanced degrees. Both of them are going together to Dragon Con. My son has organized his own cons twice. There are reasons for stereotypes.
They didn't even get sustained nuclear fusion reaction working!
Finally. Kaley CooCoo may've looked nice, but what a stupid show.
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I have been a fan of this show, along with some other very intelligent friends, from the first. Yes, it can be a bit silly at times, but I have known people like the characters. I grew up as the neighborhood geek girl. I had the chemistry sets, a microscope, a weather station, and I wanted to build a lab in the back yard where I could do serious experiments. One summer was spent exhuming what I thought, at first, was the skeleton of a small dinosaur. It turned out to be the skeleton of a dog. Later, I would take apart radios, and such, and wire things up to see if I could get them to work. One of the neighborhood's less bright boys asked me what science was good for. I proceeded to point out everything that he had that was made through science. He never asked a dumb question like that again. Now, I am older, but I still keep up with a lot of things, like physics, programming, and such. This show has been very entertaining, and I am rather bemused by those who have decided to hate on it, mainly because someone has told them they should.
BBT is the funniest thing that's ever been on tv, period.
I am extremely difficult to entertain, so if BBT entertains me, I don't give a rat's ass what anyone else says, especially columnists of any type.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
All good things must come to an end. And that end should have been around season 4 or 5.
Not all entertainment should be high-brow. This stuff was somewhere in the middle. Entertaining, and I'm glad it was in small chunks of 22 minutes a piece.
The nerdface on this show was outright offensive, they made Sheldon's blatant autism the punch line of every gag where the punchline wasn't about just participating in nerd culture and if you watch it with the laugh track edited out everyone sounds like an unfunny psychopath, which only makes the nerdface more offensive. At the least, it's condescending to everything geeky and at worst, a hateful show made by people who should have known better but didn't. F*** this show.
Your UID suggests you're an older guy. This divide you are noticing is the difference between nerds and geeks. They are not the same. Geeks are just weirdos. They were literal circus side shows back when the term was coined. Nowaday geeks watch anime and play video games. They couldn't fix shit if thier life depended on it. As always, nerds are tearing thier fancy cellphones and computers apart to understand and improve them, and though both groups can intersect, the two typically don't get along. The autism and OCD within both groups kind of sees to that. The other 2 groups lumped in with us nerds are the dorks and dweebs. Dorks are poser geeks and dweebs are poser nerds. Both want to be in that respective group but are too dumb to actually perform the role. BBT consists only of autistic dweebs and dorks. AKA nerd blackface.
Couldn't disagree more. You have shitty social interactions because you have deplorable and shitty ideas about the world. Don't forget, we can read your posts. If you talk to people's faces the way you type at people on here, I don't think it was the jocks who were the problem. I mean read what you typed about yourself. You think you're a borderline-autistiuc genius? You're brilliant and savvy? You're a harassing womanizer but we all have faults amirite? You have no idea how big of a shithead you look to the rest of the world. YOU are the reason no one wants to interact with you.
That show was never funny, and I'm glad to see it go.