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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?
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.
Or the caricatures of geeks presented by the sitcom do not resonate with actual geeks because they are fake.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How do you feel about the ending of The Big Bang Theory?
I may have seen half an episode once.
-Indifferent.
I liked this show for the first few seasons. Then it turned into Friends...and I didn't like it so much.
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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.
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
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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
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.
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.
You could say the same thing about Futurama. The difference is Futurama is funny, whereas Big Bang Theory has never made me laugh.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
It is a word, it's just not the word I meant.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you don't like it, don't watch it. Works for me. No need to get all melodramatic.
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,
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
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)
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
Not a bad summary!
Mod +1 interesting
Reading through the comments, I get the impression that a significant number of Slashdot readers had pretty crappy childhoods that they still haven't gotten over as adults. I'm genuinely sorry to see that.
No. Your ignoring the fact that TBBT was created for normal people, not smart people. As a show for normal people it succeeded brilliantly by making smart people the butt of all jokes.
Tip: if you find it funny, you're not among the smart people. Sorry.
Sorry but I loved Seinfeld. The characters, while neurotic, weren't pathetically so.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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."
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.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
geeks would be incapable of making a comedy about themselves
You don't know who Mike Judge is, do you.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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
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!
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.
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 she would explain that it was the way Penny looked at Leonard or the ridiculousness of the situation... and I would explain that I was laughing because of some physics engineering thing (and explain a bit about it) and I always thought it was interesting that we could both enjoy a show in that way.
TBBT had a lot more going for it than people give it credit for. Good characters, decent writing, funny "science" all thrown together and made just enough over the top to be interesting but not unbelievable.
Do actual family's resonate with "Modern Family"? The fact that they're fake geeks is not important because it's a sitcom not quarterly code drop! Lighten up