I dunno, I actually really liked TBBT. It’s one of those series that I can go back and watch whenever I feel down.
Seems like a fun bunch of friends who know how and when to mock each other, and seldom go too far. If they do go too far, they usually apologise and don’t do it again.
I think people nowadays just get offended too easily.
We’re just telling you why it’s trash and not aimed at actual nerds. It’s aimed at the general population and the characters are shown to treat girlfriends like trophies. The whole offense thing is mostly a free-speech absolutist talking point. And you don’t want to know what type of political movement historically are free-speech absolutist until they consolidate power.
Well, you’re entitled to believe what you wanna believe. I don’t think they treat their girlfriends like trophies generally.
So, yes, I do believe people are getting offended way too easily. The fact that a simple opinion of mine is rubbing so many people the wrong way is proof of this.
Worf’s main function was to show how tough a new character was by getting beaten up by them.
Unless it was a Klingon story, in which case he would somehow be stronger with their weapons even though he wasn’t raised with Klingons and his combat training would have been mainly federation combat (though I suppose it would make sense for him to surpass them with his access to one of several holodecks on the Enterprise).
Another exception was if it was a child, in which case he was the scary adult laying down the law. But I believe there’s an exception to even this exception, though that child did have powers closer to Q’s than to humans’. And I can’t remember for sure if she did pwn Worf in that episode.
It makes some sense that Worf would be an expert in Klingon combat, because he’s such a tryhard that strives to be more Klingon than Klingons since he feels like he has something to prove.
Worf got exposed to Klingon culture and ideals with no context for how they’re constantly falling short. He’s trying to live up to impossible standards, without knowing that’s not really what it’s all about. And honestly, he’s not doing bad. Except for Alexander. Worf is a horrible father, and given his adoptive parents he really has no excuse.
I love that Worfs horrible parenting has become such a joke because he really was a terrible father. I love Worf, Michael Dorn is fantastic, but the writers had absolutely no idea what to do with Alexander. It all always felt so forced, which I guess was kind of the point.
This is actually explicitly canon to the point that some of the (admittedly less than canon) books have other klingons calling him basically a tryhard.
Also, Klingon culture had become quite corrupted by that point whilst he was raised outside it with the idea of what a real Klingon is supposed to be. I forgot the exact episode, deep space nine for sure, but he got called the last true Klingon because of this.
It’s an interesting take on being driven by ideals and insisting on them.
I wonder of the Klingon empire would never have stopped expanding if instead of fracturing into minor squabbles they all stayed true to the spirit as he did.
Silicon Valley managed to pull it off too, but just barely in my opinion. The characters have less range and are often defined by a single trait. It does end up on the happy side of the line though.
I’ve been a programmer 20 years and the bay area for 10, worked both startups and FANG, and that show nailed my damn life. Like, right on target. The subtle plot lines were completely on point. The blatant jokes were too real
Ohh it’s crazy accurate. I wasn’t criticizing that. I was referring to the way that most modern comedy shows about geeks (like BBT) are more for the “normals” to mock geeks than they are for the geeks themselves.
I just meant that IMO, Silicon Valley is closer to BBT than it is to The IT Crowd, but it is still safely on the “for geeks” not “against geeks” side.
Some of the earlier seasons did have some clever jokes. One every 4 episodes or so. Less frequent than what you find in children’s shows meant for adults. But, “nothing”, is something a sith would say
Essentially just the first season. The show was massively retooled after that because the executives felt the jokes went over people’s heads.
Well, money wise that was probably a good plan. I can’t see the show as it was in the first season running as long as the real show did or having the mass appeal it does.
I honestly find even ten seconds of the Big Bang theory to be like nails on a chalkboard.
It feels written by someone who isn’t a nerd trying to write a nerd character and just missing the point utterly and completely.
If you want an example of good non neurotypical nerd characters that are on the spectrum maybe, you don’t need to look any further than Tendi and Rutherford in Lower Decks. They both have heart and feel way more fleshed out than the Big Bang theory.
The Big Bang theory just makes me want to vomit, it either feels like the most insufferable version of nerds or it feels like a high school bullies super reductive perception of nerds. Also the whole “Penny is a normal hot girl hanging out with nerds” is such a stereotypically reductive setup too.
To me the humor started feeling forced, and the storyline became too formulaic. They really needed to give the Pied Piper team some wins, but getting them close to success and then snatching it away worked before, so they just kept following that formula. That gets tiring as a viewer, and fraught with angst. They leaned hard into Richard’s anxiety, and pushed a lot of that emotion onto the viewers, which isn’t enjoyable for me. That’s Ben Stiller, Meet the Fockers type humor, which I have never enjoyed.
I couldn’t get past the first season because it felt like anything that could go wrong did. Are you saying that keeps happening throughout the entire show?
It continued as long as I watched. I stopped watching at the beginning of s5. I didn’t enjoy s4 much at all. S3 had hilarious moments, but was already starting to get to me.
Edit: they have a measure of success during s1, and I think s2. But it always gets snatched away, either by their mistakes, or by someone outsmarting them.
The character arch for poppy becomes very disappointingly annoying later as everything keeps turning into disasters. As the writers seem to start taking on this idea to write in some feminism but seems they haven’t really read up on the subject. They reduce the women characters to very 2 dimensional reactionary characters and cannot possibly figure things out for themselves. Ian becomes the feminist common sense wizard. No woman can get anywhere in the world without a powerful male ceo guiding and pushing them into their power.
The whole first season was brilliant. Season two has some great writing too. Russ Hanneman is probably the funniest character I’ve seen on TV. They got so much of corporate culture at tech companies at the time spot-on.
So she’s basically the only woman in the show, and the only long term one. Despite basically everyone at the company being completely clueless about technology most of the jokes about it are played at her expense, particularly early on.
It’s very much playing into the “haha women be shopping and clueless” stuff, which is a misogynistic framing. Especially considering the actual history of computing.
It’s a show about a corporate IT department, and there are like 5 long term characters. Not unreasonable there is one woman. A lot of if not more of the jokes are with the CEO too. She gets a lot of jokes at her expense because she is a main character in a comedy show.
It doesn’t play into that at all, she is clueless because she lied to get the job, not because she is a woman, the other 2 are just as clueless about other stuff, and her interpersonal skills and cunning is what gets them through a lot of their challenges. The whole premise of the show is they’re clueless nerds and she is clueless at her job she lied to get. They cover each other’s weaknesses.
You need to ask yourself questions like “why is that character a woman?” “how does the show treat women generally?” etc
Like obviously they made choices, and those choices are because of and reenforcing misogynistic steriotypes.
misogyny isn’t characters screaming about hating women, it’s portraying women as bad at tech, sex objects, making a joke entirely about beating up a woman as the end of an episode, portraying women as liars etc.
it was a good how it played the idea of tech vs non tech but it did play a terrible stereotype about women vs men roles. Unfortunately at the time it was written, tech industry was at its prime of being the most difficult for women to break into it for one of the main reasons they were often excluded and even discouraged by a lot of gatekeeping men. (Example: James damore who wrote that misogynistic manifesto).
no doubt it was just writers writing what they know rather than writing from an idealistic approach which seems to be what current day sitcoms try to achieve.
Silicon Valley also suffered a bit of the same although it did try to introduce the occasional tech woman if even just a love interest now and again.
And then there was mythic quest that tried to almost even reverse the typical roles on gender in the tech industry…but then they still wrote women very terribly.
Si Valley does a lot better, while it’s still very male heavy in the casting etc the one woman that showed up early on was at least good at her job and somewhat independent.
One thing I did not like about data is he sorta made everyone else second best in thier specialty. stronger than worf, smarter than wesley. I almost surprised they did not give him more sensory capabilities than giordi.
But that’s kinda the same discussion as in pen and paper RPGs - why do have any other regular members of the party if you have magic user. It’s a cool idea to add frankly overpowered character but it will inevitably lead to the numerous plotlines where they gonna have to cripple them or remove from the picture in order to let others to show some problem solving skills.
They do that with villains in those superhero movies too. First you introduce ludicrously powerful character that can alter matter at will or manipulate time or crush armies with thought then how do some much weaker guys defeat them? When they are looking to the left so they don’t see someone’s first. Or some random crap that was never mentioned before. Or sometimes literally a more powerful guy shows up.
It’s the easiest way to put yourself into a corner as a writer.
yeah it drives me a little nuts with adam eve in incredible. she fights so many opponets who rely on tech but doesn't bother converting it all to lead bricks.
It’s actually atom eve. I had the same confusion when I first watched the show. The fact that the animators screwed up and used the “far away” version of her chest logo (with just an X over the female symbol) during closeups didn’t help. Her actual logo is the female symbol with electron orbits around it.
He’s stronger than worf, but doesn’t have his instinct for dangerous situations. He’s smarter than Westley (lol) but doesn’t have a great capacity for improvisation and adaptability. He’s technically better than Geordi at science, but not necessarily engineering, again pointing at his spock-like proclivity for sticking with “in the box” thinking.
Ironically, Geordi has better tech eyes, but data gets more play, if you know what I’m saying 😉
That’s one of the reasons I think neurodivergents identify so strongly with him. I might be smarter, or better at some things than someone else, but it definitely doesn’t mean I’ll be more successful than they are.
My wife actually love BBT and got me watching it. I still hate laugh track sitcoms, and as a Super Nerd a lot of things irritated me, but overall it’s not nearly as bad as I was expecting from all the meme hate.
Still, the meme is not wrong, Data had a fine positronic brain, sure, but He can kill a motherfucker when necessary.
I found big bang theory a lot more palatable if you consider it as an unreliable narrator story, with penny as the narrator. It’s not what actually happened, but what Penny remembers about it. All the geeky/nerdy stuff gets filtered. Only the surface, superficial stuff gets remembered, and even that is distorted. That is why it plays on stereotypes so much.
My wife likes BBT, I’ve learnt to tolerate it at best.
I did grad school in planetary science while BBT was airing. I hated it. I could go hang out with my friends and have much funnier nerdy convos. “I’ll buy you a beer if you can prove to me that the electron exists.” – one of my favourite remembered starts to many hours of drinking one day.
My dad watched BBT and was pretty convinced it was a documentary of my life, or close enough. I told the above story to my dad, and it did nothing to dissuade him.
The last part of your comment is what I’ve loathed about it. A lot of people assume it’s like a reality for anyone who is into sci-fi or any bit tech savvy and I know it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. Especially when people are like “omg you’ll love BBT. It’s so like you.”
My biggest memory regarding BBT was the time I was hanging out with a GF family and when her mom’s friend asked her how she’d been doing/what was going on with her life she mentioned that she had been playing D&D with some of her friends (no details about it or anything just that) and her mom’s friend immediately started cackling “IT’S JUST LIKE BIG BANG THEORY!”. Really cemented my disdain for the show knowing what kind of person enjoyed it.
Our hate comes from within. We all watched it with such naive hope for far too long before realizing that we were the punchline.
The disappointment that gets through in the memes is the disappointment we feel in ourselves.
Just the same, this is completely on brand for Sheldon’s interpretation of the character. He finds one aspect of the character he identifies most with, and completely ignores the ones that he doesn’t.
I cannot take laugh tracks anymore. They just annoy the fuck out of me. If you ever get a chance and you like the show, the European version of MAS*H without the laugh track was a revelation. The people responsible for the laugh track didn’t understand when the show was actually trying to be funny half the time.
That’s true for some shows with laugh tracks, but I don’t agree about MAS*H. Especially since it was shot knowing there would be no laugh track in Europe. The pauses aren’t there. That’s one of the reasons the laugh track doesn’t work on that show.
It’s a show I loved to hate when it aired, but watching the occasional episode here or there with my gf I’m finding that it gets a few chuckles out of me.
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