for GREAT science jokes: watch futurama. "The writing staff held three Ph.D.s, seven master's degrees, and cumulatively had more than 50 years at Harvard University. Series writer Patric M. Verrone stated, 'we were easily the most overeducated cartoon writers in history'."
If i'm remembering rightly they hid a lot of the sciencey deep cuts with more surface level jokes and i the background. They did it to a lesser extent in the simpsons too.
@@JimboDoomface Yeah, like the aleph-null plex. Which is the lowest order of infinity (you get it by just saying what the end of counting forever is. Which is lower than ‘true’ infinity
I had a coworker ask me "You don't watch the Big Bang Theory? I thought you were nerdy" And I was like "The Big Bang Theory isn't nerdy, it's nerdy for people who don't know anything about nerdy stuff"
yeah like i am not the audience, i am the subject matter not that you can't be both, but for example when watching the office, you can feel like both because the writers clearly worked in that 2000s 'we push paper for other people to push more paper' office
15:31 the Internet didn't suddenly breed hatred for the show, it just meant people that thought the same thing already were able to now know they weren't alone in those thoughts.
Yes, this. Also, how many episodes did she have to search to find them discussing Thor's hammer? I tried watching the show and it _never_ got that deep. The jokes were always, "Hey, did you know that *Dr. Who* exists? Also *Thomas the Tank Engine,* and the *Incredible Hulk.*" that was it... that was the joke. It was _actually_ worse than Family Guy, which is pretty impressive in a way.
You're right, but that argument could also be used for any online community in general and can easily lead to the misunderstanding that "there are no people who think a specific thing, if no online community exists for it" I'm 39 and never felt the urge to join an online community for any of my fandoms. My parents (68 and 72) don't even know *how* to join one 😅 I got invited to some occasionally and joined for a while, but lost interest in a matter of weeks, so I never felt like a part of it and am probably not perceived as such 🤷
The biggest issue Millennial nerds had with the show from the beginning was that it treated us and our cultural touchstones like tourist attractions to gawk at. The show always felt insincere and flat, with little love for the things they used as set dressing. 2007 is not some far-off time before the internet. I went to school with web administrators and LARP regulars. And some of them not only talked to, but were women. Shocking, I know. TBBT never felt like something that likes or even respects what the characters represent. They are flattened stereotypes of academia's more loathsome characters, yet enabled at every turn and presented like misbehaving puppies.
THANK YOU! Yeah, "You can't judge the show by modern standards." Ignores the fact that all these criticisms were levelled at TBBT *When it was released* not just 10-15 years later.
I've often seen 'nerds' complain about this but I've never heard physicists (from that generation) do. As far as I could tell, we all loved it. My longstanding take is that people who were not postdocs in physics thought the show was about them when it wasn't. Those academic stereotypes - we all knew and laughed about them before TBBT but here they were given a stage and the world could finally share in it.
Full disagree with the first point, *espeically* in comparison with its always sunny. The point in Sunny is that youre laughing AT the horrible people who think its okay to be offensive, whereas BBT wants you to laugh WITH the offensive jokes/characters
Yup, nobody wants to watch something that is trying to get the audience to sympathize WITH terrible people, we want to laugh AT the terrible people. Bad writing can ruin a show with a good premise.
I will say in the early seasons of always sunny there were some transphobia not just by characters but also by the show, but other than that they were pretty progressive usually, at least way more than big bang theory
@@magnushinge2358 Yeah, but the show did give their trans character a happy ending, and they made a public apology about it and made an effort to have their offensive comedy punch up since then, so. I mean, it doesn't change or fix it but they grew and handled it way better than a lot of these
never seen Sunny or even BBT but this was exactly why I loved jokes from The Office, especially S1 - it's funny cuz it's like "why is Michael such a clown, he's so stupid for saying/doing xyz"
while agree with the main points you made, my biggest problem is that it feels like it was written for the people who shoved nerds into lockers and peaked in high school
Yes!!! As a nerd, I felt like the show was laughing at people like me, not with people like me. The fact that these guys played Magic the Gathering, watched star trek or cosplayed was the whole joke.
@@KushKiki totally agreed. I think community is a much better example of a show for nerds. Even if it's a less 'nerdy' show, I think its way better at portraying quirky characters from a place of love rather than mockery
@@Dilmahkana But the executives tend to be, and they tend to have stake in the final decisions regarding script. I know the comment was about the writers, but there's a whole entire crew that is in charge of making a show, with the power resting in the hands of the people with the money to fund it, and the people who have "connections".
People who say labels are bad are never the people with labels. Before I had the label of autism my labels were ‘weird’ ‘annoying’ ‘picky’ and ‘sensitive’ it’s absolutely shocking to me that he WASN’T written to have autism given how overwhelmingly obvious it is
The thing is: You don't even have to know what autism is to write an autistic character. 1 in 36 people is autistic, about 3% of the population. Everyone knows a bunch of people with those traits and they are especially popular choices for fictional characters because it makes them interesting. A lot of screenwriters are autistic and don't know it and just write about themselves and the people in their lives (and typically a lot of your friends and family are also autistic if you are). I fully believe they didn't know that Sheldon is autistic and they thought they were just writing about a quirky guy. Then they found out that they were making fun of someone for something that is technically a medical condition for several seasons and didn't know what to do.
The conversation about the inauthenticity of laugh tracks was pre-internet, actually. There was a whole controversy in the 70s because shows were using canned laughter and critics were accusing those shows of lazy writing. Chuck Klosterman wrote about it in Eating the Dinosaur.
Sounds like a better Chuck than the one at hand See also for your point: M*A*S*H! The show that literally abused the laughtrack so hard that they were allowed to drop it altogether
Yes, people have pointed out their inauthenticity since they first existed, but, people have also pointed out their value. They've generally been viewed as ideal for comedies until very recently. It wasn't until a few sitcoms were successful without them that there began to be a backlash against them. I still feel the live studio audience with canned laughter to support as necessary is the optimal solution, as it's a lot more fun to laugh with a group than to laugh alone, and I can't always convince 50 of my friends to come watch reruns of classic sitcoms with me at all hours of the night.
Yeah, I remember plenty of people in my life saying that they hated sitcoms specifically because the laugh track was annoying, in the 90s/early 00s. I didn't mind it so much but I think they messed up if the canned laughter was supposed to be unobtrusive because I was constantly distracted by that one laugh at the end like "ha haaaaa~!"
I found the appearance of canned laughter intolerable on my first viewing of the first few episodes of the first season and definitely discussed it with other people. It feels like showrunners infantilizing the audience if they have to be told which parts of the script are the jokes. To a lesser degree, watching 24 was painful for me because it constantly seemed to inject forced dialog to tell the audience what was going on in case you had left the room for the last 15 minutes. I much prefer a show willing to sneak in a punchline that will go over people's heads on the first watch and just gets funnier on rewatch.
Community in my view was never insensitive, the Dean was always a pansexual man and they had him as a main character, and while they made jokes about him, they made jokes about everyone including jeff. The show in many ways took characters who seemed stereotypical and broke stereotypes and gave them lessons on their behavior. They also made a point of forgiving characters as long as they showed growth. The big bang theory to me seems more meanspirited, same with the early seasons of always sunny, and a lot of HIMYM
I also thought it was weird to name community as one of the examples. The only really offensive things I can remember are the bigoted comments that Pierce made and the point of those was to make fun of the people that shared those believes. Other than that I can only think of them using a transphobic slur for no reason in season 1. But I would definitely say that community is not an offensive show.
Honestly I think community is the antithesis of almost every point made in this video. It's not nearly as problematic with its humor, it's pop culture references actually ARE deep cuts or fictional in universe references that at least show a very deep intricate understanding of geek culture, while it doesn't have the "genius scientists" angle of BBT it also has at least a few kind of heady intricate episodes that you'd otherwise think most people wouldn't get and it even has Abed playing an autistic character, flaws and all, and not being an obnoxious terrible caricature
@@chezmix64 that is such a good way to put it, the antithesis. It proves that the way other shows acted was not a product of just their time but also the writers
I love in Community they went the exact opposite direction and pointed out Abed has Asperger’s and they move on with it. Fun fact: Harmon actually discovered he was autistic while researching for the character.
Another fun fact! The original version of this script included your fun fact and a small discussion of GOOD examples of autism in media! I also included a bad example… but Harmon writing Abed is, in my opinion, the best way to write autistic characters
I have to disagree with your first point. The big bang theory was always offensive to me. Maybe I felt that way becuase I'm Indian and neurodivergent, but it always upset me that THIS is what people are comfortable laughing at. The only difference nowadays is that other people have realized that these jokes are harmful.
I don't understand why it took so long for so many people to understand how horrible the show was in its sexism and racism. But considering it really is not an old show, you really can't excuse it like a show from the 70s or 80s. There were enough shows that were not as offensive and in bad taste. The writers for BBT just did not want to make better decisions.
@@Tom-cn4cmYou seem confused by the comment, as your response is weird. They know it’s a joke, that’s why they mentioned the word “joke”, and they’re also aware people laugh at it, as they also mention that.
As someone who was actually a nerd steeped in real nerd culture during the initial run of the show, the entire premise of the show felt like a mean spirited high school bully laughing at our culture and quirks, so I cannot agree with you for any of it being funny? It was entirely a laugh at the expense of the people depicted and not laughing along with them. The whole thing felt initially like a spectacle of "HAHA look at how stupid these supposedly smart nerds are". If it grew into something better that's nice, but it left a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who it was attempting to depict initially. And that was *at the time* rather than anything looking back. Criticisms of it being misogynistic aren't new either. As someone afab and in nerd culture it just pointed out how exclusively male stereotypical nerd culture seemed to be, which at that point had started to change, if it even was actually true to begin with.
Yep the common thread in anyone who used to think it was funny and now doesn't is the assumption that pop culture or scientific knowledge changed over the past fifteen years, as opposed to them just learning more about these things.
I agree with you 100% The early seasons were obviously laughing AT these pompous, dumb nerds and the animosity felt harsh. We were supposed to feel bad for Penny - trying her best to help these socially inept losers - she's our bimbo with the Heart of Gold, trying to teach these poor, stunted boys how to talk to women like the real grown ups they should be at their age. It was super mean spirited towards everyone it depicted, and I watched it for more seasons than I care to admit because I liked Johnny Galecki. It has imbued me with a certain anger. I spent years wanting to like it, and it just kept telling me why it hated me and everything I enjoyed.
I can agree that could be one take... But also don't find it to be that different than literally any other sitcom. Situational Comedy is the point and differentiation is the game. The writers found an area that hasn't been explored as much and then capitalized. I am a smart, nerdy person (male) but I realize that the joy of that moniker is exactly what the show kind of portrays, i.e. there are less smart nerdy people than not. And often ppl who are really intelligent and surrounded by other ppl who are also intelligent can kind of lose sight of that... Either on purpose or by accident.
I remeber when it launched here. I watched the first two episodes, hated the laughed at feeling and stopped. But at work it was all people talked about and it was horrible since it just made it even more isolating since I knew most of them had no idea about geek or need.
I think for a lot of young people, it's easy to fall into the trap of "you can't judge this too harshly because things were different back then." But as someone who was an adult when TBBT came out, people criticized it for the exact same reasons then. I was a nerdy college student when it came out, and not only did i dislike it, most people I knew also disliked it. The common feeling at the time is that it wasn't a show for nerdy young people, it was a show for boomers to laugh at nerdy young people.
I always said that the writers never made Sheldon canonically autistic because him being just a "quirky" neurotypical guy made their jobs easier: that way they could make Sheldon the butt of jokes without seeming like they where bullying the neurodivergent community, but also this way at any moment they could just give Sheldon character development moments of overcoming his neurotic traits by sheer power of how much the people in his life matter to him without having to go to therapy, or take medications, or get long treatments with the help and guidance of professionals, or worse, being unable to ever overcome an specific quirk because that's just how his brain is and nothing can be done to change it... but they definitively took a lot of inspiration from autistic people when writting Sheldon
This very much comes across as someone who was ten watching the show originally. You make good points, but these criticisms have always existed. It was always misogynistic. It was always shallow nerd representation. Lorre so obviously hated his characters, especially Penny. It's incredibly anachronistic to think these are just modern opinions. The Office wasn't as offensive, because the characters were meant to be more realistic. And people really were and are that dumb. We were supposed to say "oh I know a Michael, an Angela, a Stanley", and we were even supposed to grow to appreciate their pathos and identify with parts of their lives. But they weren't put on a pedestal like the characters in BBT, where we literally were told this character is smart, this character is dumb, etc.
Agreed. 2007 wasn't that long ago culturally. I'd say it isn't that people only now realize there is sexism, racism, etc. in the show (if only for laughs). It's just that people were more tolerant of it back then.
I really disagree "The office" is as problematic as TBBT. In the office we are supposed to laugh AT the characters being problematic and out of touch, and not agree and laugh at their problematic takes
Have you watched that retrospective about Married with Children? It talks a lot about a show with a pitch muddy as to whether you're supposed to laugh at the bigotry, or applaud the bigotry for the sake of the joke. I definitely know people who were laughing because they heard the backwards ideologies they were taught echoed in the show, whereas I thought it was funny/slightly cheap that most jokes weren't about timing and subversion but were about topics. Based on the one sentence you typed I think you'd like the watch, I think it was posted by Jose
I think that you're supposed to laugh at the characters being misogynistic in TBBT too, honestly. Like: they all get comeuppance for their sexism in the show, a lot of which is comedic violence at their expense.
@@Woynich The only time I remember such a thing happening is when Howard was confronted by Penny for awful behaviour towards her, for which she had to apologise by the end of the episode. Other times, it's mostly taken for laughs, if I recall.
@@Woynich i havent watched tbbt only those clips on shorts. when michael scott be misogynistic its because he is, its part of the character and youre supposed to hate it. because hes THAT kind of boss we all know and hate. so far from ive seen from tbbt they treat penny like she's inferior because she like pop culture, but you cant hate the characters for treating her like she's genuinely stupid! theyre nerdy scientists so they cant be wrong! is the vibe i get from it. (i can be wrong cuz i havent watch it)
As someone who was there when it launched and was the "correct" gender and age demographic it was targeting, it was still a bad and insufferable show even at the time. To the point where my friends and I would always ask who was actually watching the show.
THIS! Comedy is INCREDIBLY SUBJECTIVE. The reason theres "not a lot of explanations for why it's bad" is because you can't really explain why something isn't funny. Sometimes you can point at poorly structured jokes or bad comedic timing or problematic humor, sure, but many other times it just comes down to the fact that you just dont personally find it funny. The reason BBT in particular gets so much hate tho is because it was SUCH a popular show that went on for so long people who didn't find it funny and didn't understand what others found funny about it got along together over that fact and it just kind of spread from there. It's not because we're "looking back from a modern context" it's because we've always found it unfunny and are realizing that so many people feel the same way and very vocally bonding over that fact online
@chezmix64 Exactly. For some reason facebook think I love the show and is constantly shoving clip reels in my feed, and not once have I ever laughed at any of it.
I thought that I was the target demographic. I was a white, teenage boy who read comic books, played role-playing games, excelled in STEM and liked to watch sitcoms. I actively avoided the show after forcing myself to watch a few episodes. It wasn't even a passable show. It was an awful show.
I watched like the first three seasons and that was as much as I could stomach. I swear the writers must have had an ongoing competition of who could make Leonard the most insufferable man on TV.
As an autistic person myself, I can't stand Sheldon for a very simple reason: the punchline is always the same. We laugh at Sheldon whenever he misses a social cue, or whenever he gets mad because they changed his schedule, or when he gets too passionate for something in a weird way (yeah, autists like trains, isn't that funny?). I don't understand why neurotypicals find these things funny. For a lot of people, that's just the struggle of every day. Do we do the same for people with more visible disabilities? I'm not saying you can't make comedy about autism, just don't expect me to laugh when you do it in the most lazy, repetitive and boring way possible over and over and over.
@@keerya4179 It was funny for neurotypicals, it is that now, everyone is moralist... but when nobody pointed how offensive it was, everyone laughed, is like in the 90s, everyone was laughing at the typical stereotype of a gay man being the joke of a movie, and now most of occidental population including neurotypical people and heterosexual people, could argue that "it is a bad joke" but it is just the wave of occidental moralism... as Latin Americans say, "anyway, the hypotenuse"
@@InsomniacSwallow The public has always been moralist and cultivating a holier-than-thou-attitude. It's just that our morals have changed. The "problematic" of today is the "blasphemic" of yesterday, in the sense that people lament a problem, not because they care about solving it, but to publicly show their own "moral superiority" and elevate themself in society.
As an autistic person, I never had difficulty laughing at Sheldon's ineptitudes, despite having often had similar problems. That's ultimately the core of cringe comedy, which is what Big Bang Theory is - laughing because you sympathise with someone's apparent discomfort or social faux pas.
As someone on the spectrum what rubs me the wrong way about Sheldon is the statement they make about not pathologising him with a diagnosis, that feels like something right out of autism speaks, also cause it feels more like the writers knew that they would have to stop making jokes about his autistic tendencies and they just had no idea about how to joke about autism without it being mean spirited
I’m curious what you thought of the jokes as they were. Did you find them mean spirited or funny (or both)? When we got to that part of the video, I thought it maybe would’ve been better if the response was more along the lines of: We didn’t have autism in mind when we started writing Sheldon, we were just writing a certain character with certain traits. At this point, all we can say is that Sheldon has not received an autism diagnosis. Now I’m wondering if that would’ve been worse or if there was another option.
@@katyungodly I’m not one of the writers. The first “we” was just me writing conversationally as if those of “us” in this little thread had all watched the video together. The other “we”’s are words I was suggesting the writers could’ve said instead. So, those are me writing “as if” I were one of the writers in the imagined scenario where they said something else or they had asked me what they might say. The first “we” would more accurately be “I” since “you and the original commenter and I” did not actually watch this together.
What can you expect from people who find it "useful to utilize his aspergian traits but need to be able to move away from it if need" Jim Parsons said of the writers back in 2011 It's less that writers didn't know how to write jokes about autism without being mean-spirited. They just didn't want to have the responsibility to and thought insisting he isn't despite everyone reading it that way gave them a free pass. As for this video giving them the it-was-a-different-time pass: it was being talked about in season one. I've seen the show creators addressing it as early as 2009, a decade before the show ended.
You say context of when the show aired, but I remember the show being diverse when it aired. Especially with those in nerdy spaces. It's a situation where there is no love of the subject matter from the creators and it's just there to be made fun of. I feel the show just came from a more mean spirited place and suffers for it overall.
to mock something with love you have to understand and appreciate it first. the writers do not understand or appreciate nerd culture so they just mock it mean spiritedly. this content creator also doesnt understand or appreciate nerd culture if they are defending this heap publicly.
"If you watched these shows as they came out you probably would have had no issue with the content..." Sorry, but you're wrong on that one. A lot of people did. Anyone with critical thinking did, it was widely known that it was problematic at the time.
I think the "context" issue she raises is less societal than it is personal. Sure, sexism is more widely unacceptable now, so it looks bad in hindsight. But there were plenty of critics pointing that out then. I think the bigger issue is that much of the audience was younger and immature enough to not notice or not care about the the problematic behaviors and jokes (and lafftrack) the show ran on.
When the people who don't take the statement "Chuck said Sheldon isn't autistic" seriously include Jim Parsons, perhaps don't take that statement seriously. "I assumed he was, said I assumed he was, played him assuming he was. And though Chuck never confirmed, I was never directed otherwise"
As someone who was not 11 when BBT came out, I can tell you that a lot of us recognized then. I understand that this video is about your lived experience, but it's a mistake to claim/believe that it was everyone's. BBT was problematic in its time. No big surprise though. The show runner was Chuck Lorre. That's his thing. Ever seen 2 and a half men?
@@summerstars7031 Basically you have loser divorced brother who normally is punching bag of a show, despite him being kind of decent character. Real star is his brother who can't keep his pants on, drinks a lot and is successful (for some reason) party man who is always set on pedestal to admire. Then there is divorced one fat son Jake who interacts with both of these. Then there is fat old woman called Bertha that is maid for the party man, and she takes no nonsense from anybody - her employer inclueded. It's more or less similar mean nonsense like Family Guy, though far less offensive ... it's less mean spirited show then BBT too.
I can understand these critiques of BBT, but as a self-described nerd who was already an adult when the show started (and had just received an undergraduate degree in physics), I can forgive the necessity for writers to gesture at topics beyond their expertise, or for the show's implicit politics to be representative of the mainstream at the time (though that needn't really be the case). The reason I hated it from the first time I sat through an episode on the insistence of friends who said "you'll love this!" is that it *very* obviously (if somewhat subtly) is laughing at and decidedly not *with* nerds. Sure, it humanizes them a bit, but in a "oh look how cute and funny that is" kinda way. Fuck that in its entirety. I'll compare to Star Trek (something whose politics have always been ahead of their time even when some of the politics of the earlier entries are obviously dated and problematic) -- 90% of the characters (esp main characters) in Trek are huge nerds. It's not weird. It's not notable. It's not cute. It's not funny. They are just devoted to science and/or whatever other topics interest them. Star Trek treats nerdiness with respect and BBT *never* has. BBT is a zoo exhibiting nerds, not an invitation to participate with us.
See, I immediately bounced off the show when I first learned about it. My family are a bunch of non-nerds (mom won't watch anything that "isn't real." If she watched a superhero movie she'd keep asking "but why are they wearing capes and flying? That's not real!") and they all laughed at the quirkiness of the characters, they sounded just like me, apparently! I didn't watch cable TV back then. So I did watch an episode after hearing them talk about how much it reminded them of me, and it just felt like the joke would be setup: Wolverine, Green Lantern, Spock,lord of the Rings? Punchline: Penny going: You're so weird! It just felt... yeah, insulting and shallow. Like they wanted to reference nerdy things, but it was not written by nerdy people. This was in maybe 2011, 2012? So it wasn't with the benefit of hindsight, I just didn't really like the humor. It felt like it was mocking nerdy or geeky people. And then later I would learn the word neurodivergent and see how the community was the butt of jokes and I went "yeah, reminds me of the Big Bang Theory"
I disagree so much right off the bat with the idea that the show "aged badly." Its from 2007, not the 80s, and that defence doesn't even work for the 80s, especially with shows like Boy Meets World, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Golden Girls all coming out pre-2000 and all having problematic elements, but every single one of them aged significantly better than the Big Bang Theory. Even Star Trek, (especially TNG) which the show heavily references and draws from, aged infinitely better than big bang, despite its problematic elements. "Big Bang Theory wasn't problematic in 2007" is such a bad take to have
have to disagree with the point that the jokes "have to land" with the average viewer as well, have you heard of the Simpsons? it's popular with mathematicians and has a lot of jokes that only math nerds would understand, because it can accept that most people won't get them, but still makes them anyway
@@ampisbadatthis I can't tell if you're talking about Futurama or are just plain wrong. The Simpsons was popular because it made jokes that were not niche, just targetted to younger audiences; in fact, that's one of the reasons why Futurama was cancelled so many times, because it's audience was too niche in comparison to the Simpsons.
@Zulkak1357 they had mathematicians and scientists in their writers room, wym I should rewatch it? I'm not saying that all of their jokes are maths based, or high brow for that matter, just an example of how it is possible to accurately represent a field and not alienate the common viewer and still be wildly successful
@andalilbitqueer nope, Simpsons, I made that clear, just look up the Simpsons and maths (or for a specific moment, Homer Disproves Fermats Last Theorem) and see the vast amount of results talking about blink and you'll miss it moments or entire scenes and at least one episode dedicated to maths topics, albeit, most are tongue and cheek, but clearly still accurate
I'd like to point out something that is often overlooked. People often point out that this show is sexist and racist, but it's also fundamentally unkind. Those "friends" are constantly laughing at each other. Demean each other. If your friend demeans another, even if it was a good joke, the correct response is to not laugh and point out that it was not a kind thing to do. When I was younger I liked the show, but I also didn't have any real friends at the time because I was 12. Now when I watch it, I acknowledge that the mean jokes are funny and well crafted, but they're still mean. This isn't real friendship. Who in their right mind would want a friend like Sheldon or Wolowitz?
"Those "friends" are constantly laughing at each other. Demean each other." Sometimes I wonder if there are really close friends out there who have a 10ft pole up theirs arse and treat each other like colleagues who barely know each other.
I HATE the surface level pop culture references in BBT. I've never heard any of their jokes that couldn't be looked up easily. If they're real nerds, they should have brought up something like Deeter, or Rot Lop Fan, or Ch'p.
Right? For me it was how they'd always make jokes about how Aquaman sucks, which hasn't been the opinion of anyone who's read DC comics since at LEAST his harpoon-handed '90s days 😎
@@BranchingTangents Absolutely! Way too many people saw the lame Super Friends version, and then never read any of his comic appearances for decades afterwards. I HAVE read them, and l've thought Aquaman was cool since 1998. Justice League and Justice League Unlimited only furthered that love, because *their* writers had actually read the comics and wrote about an accurate Aquaman. An awesome ruler who knows sacrifice, and can stand up to a coup.
I always kind of felt like it fit into a certain part of the cultural zeitgeist of the time in that sense though. This show was on a time when stores were selling T-shirts with the Tardis, the Enterprise, and Serenity all thrown onto them, just trying to throw as much at the wall as they could and trying to see what would stick. The whole “understand this reference, audience?” type of thing was big then, for someone reason.
I really empathize with your perspective here. It's hard when you fall in love with something as a child without the required perspective and wisdom to view something critically, and then grow up to realize that it's actually low-quality content (whether that be due to the execution of the content, or the content itself being bigoted/ill-considered/etc.) and no one has sympathy for your enjoyment of and/or nostalgia for it. The urge to defend it is strong, because you feel like you're defending yourself, in a way. You recognize the issues, but you don't want to let go of the things you held dear since you were young. It's also worth noting that I, too, highly enjoyed this show in middle school, and followed it fairly closely to a point (not to the end, but to a point). That all being said...The Big Bang Theory simply isn't very good. We can call it subjective opinion or a change of context all we want, but it's difficult to make a real case for this show. You literally just have to watch it for yourself to see that the "offensive jokes" aren't even jokes. Comedy can most certainly be offensive, but there is an art to it beyond just saying offensive things and pressing the button to cue the audience to laugh (though the segment about the actual function of laugh tracks was legitimately interesting and a fair viewpoint, if underdeveloped). I don't think TBBT was ever interested in figuring that out, and as a result it comes off as just unapologetically sexist/racist/homophobic/etc. I understand you're basically just sharing your casual opinion and opening a conversation, and I wouldn't dream of holding you to the same standard as a professional essay writer, but that's a hell of a thing to gloss over as a product of the times. There's more I could say, but you're getting piled on enough and I don't care to contribute further. I just want to say, yes, you can like things that aren't good, and again, I have SO much empathy for being defensive when you like something that it seems like everyone else hates with a passion. There's just a very stark difference between "this is dated/has poor writing but I enjoy it anyway, to each their own" and "these characters can't go more than a minute without saying something bigoted and are framed as if we are meant to agree and find it funny as well, and I think it IS funny". A ten year old can say that, but a twenty-something has to learn to draw a line somewhere. It is what it is.
not a scientist, but I do have a literature degree, and when one of the jokes was "Sheldon states the plot of HG Wells The Time Machine" *laugh track* I knew then and there that I wasn't the target audience lmao
A lot of people are talking about the points about Sheldon (ableism/autism rep) and Penny (misogyny) but I want to point out something that I've only seen touched on by my fellow south Asians: the uncomfortable feeling of racist writing surrounding Raj. Personally I'm Indian and a few Indian creators have talked about how in the 2000s and even up until relatively recently on TV and in film Indian men (and god help you if you were looking for Indian woman rep because it was Kelly Kapoor and nothing else) were portrayed as "either Apu or Raj." Either the south asian/indian man runs a convenience store/hotel, or he's an immigrant scientist of some stripe, and in both cases they get harped on for having a culture incongruous with the white-american hegemony.
This even extended into kids shows, Disney Chanel or Nickelodeon often would have the "geeky, unattractive Indian kid" as a side character. Even as a kid without much knowledge about racism, I thought it was--at best-- boring and probably not very fun for the kids who had to play these characters.
@@hazeld3703 It wasn't fun for the indian kids watching, either. I was already a pretty geeky kid so I did see myself somewhat, but it just felt so mean and wrong for that to be how people see you. It becomes a sense of- is that all my family is- all I am- to people? Is my family the weird one that people whisper about? It's not the most derogatory or violent stereotype out there, but it is constraining, and it still hurts kids' self-image to see. It didn't help that that was the 2000s and being south asian/brown in general in the 2000s was a minefield. Kids would parrot islamophobia from the Iraq war to you regardless of who you were. People used to give me dirty looks because my name sounded traditionally arabic to the untrained ear...I was like, ten or twelve. A lot of people have these experiences. So at the time, to south asian kids, you were either Apu, Raj, or the Enemy of the State. That's something no kid should have to realize, the complete lack of choice between being the object of people's laughter- laughed AT, not WITH- or the object of their hatred.
My problem with these US series is not the nature of the jokes, but the overall mindset: It is very annoying to see how the character's storylines inevitably forces them to follow a path of "social normalization" - they marry, have kids, as if the series considered their antics like a "problem" to solve. In contrast, it is interesting to compare these american series with british ones, specifically the Big Bang theory with the IT Crowd - another series that shows a group of nerdy outcasts. They live in a world that is even more absurd than them, which makes the series way more subversive.
Pretty confident Roy and Jen both want to be socially normalised. The difference is that they fail. Because American humour is, ultimately, kinder. It wants it's characters to have happy endings. It's funny you bring up the IT crowd, because I always see it praised after criticism of TBBT, invariably criticism that's also applicable to the IT crowd, in a collective lack of self awareness.
@@HALLish-jl5mo that's another aspect of it, they fail indeed. And I guess the american "kindness" is what truly annoys me. It crowd is only brought up because it is about "nerds", so I guess it is easy to bring up. But when we see other UK sitcoms- From Father Ted to Spaced, we can often see an absurd, cruel world around the protagonists. So in a way, it morally forgives the failures of the characters to fit in, because it would make them humanely worse... We do see some successes, though, like when Moss become a Countdown Master... :-)
As someone who graduated high school with a terrible speech impediment during the early seasons of the show, I can tell you that Barry kripke was never a contextual issue.
I had a friend in highschool with a speech impediment as well and I agree. Barrys depiction was also the most uncomfortable to watch for me, especially because he was introduced as a side character and one could thus predict that he'd never have any "good" moments to make the audience be more empathic with him and his struggles 😕
I feel like you ignored THE two major issues with TBBT The first has been addressed in comments already, so Ill keep it brief (however it DOES have an impact on the second issue). The show, at least in the early seasons, was written as a show for "normal people" to point and laugh at the nerds. The second point I think is the most troubling. Howard, and to a lesser extent Raj and Sheldon, were absolutely awful people. To each other for sure, but most importantly towards women. The argument of "It was a product of its time" doesnt excuse the fact that Howard used a government satellite to spy on women sunbathing on their roof, then lied in order to break into their house. It also doesnt excuse Howard for putting a hidden camera in Penny's bedroom, or strapping a GoPro onto a remote controlled car and literally chasing Penny into her apartment to look up her skirt. Howard portrayed less like a "quirky nerdy incel" and more like a genuine sex pest and possible criminal. You seem to have fundamental misunderstandings with your comparisons between TBBT and Seinfeld, Friends, The Office, and Sunny in Philly. Sunny in Philly and The Office were spritual successors to Seinfeld in the sense that, the awful people were SUPPOSED to be awful people. You were supposed to laugh AT the awful people rather than sympathise with them. The series finally of Seinfeld was literally a trial that showcased all the awful things the 4 of them did over the years and ended with them sitting in jail for a year. Sunny in Philly was much more obvious about its intentions, and The Office made a distinction between characters you were supposed to like (Jim and Pam) those you were supposed to laugh at (Michael and Dwight). The problem with TBBT is not only that Howard is a borderline predator, but that Lenoard observes exactly how awful Howard is, and constantly enables his behavior. If Howard was the Barney (HIMYM) of the group, it would be slightly more understandable, but hes not. The show goes out of its way to excuse his sexual harassment by saying "Its okay, hes a nerd, he doesnt know any better". The absolute epitome of this (and the low point of the show as a whole) was the S2 episode 12 where Penny punches Howard. After MONTHS of harassing Penny and not taking several NOs for an answer, Penny FINALLY blows up and tells Howard just how creepy his behavior was, and sent him into a depressive episode. Then THE SHOW ITSELF sided with Howard, having Penny go into his bedroom and apologize for setting a proper boundary. And immediately after Penny explains why his behavior was not okay, Howard responds by trying to kiss her, resulting in the aforementioned punch that he 100% deserved. And after ALL OF THAT, Howard quips about believing that hes going to havr "pity sex" with Penny. Im not sure if youre aware of this, but casual sexual harassment isnt okay in 2024, nor was it okay in 2007. The fact that THE SHOW makes the victim be the first to apologize and sympathises with the predator speaks volumes. I watched every episode TBBT from season 1-9. Hell, I at one point had all seasons on blu-ray. Its okay to look at something you once loved and realize its not okay and never really was okay. Its okay to grow as a person and look with a critical eye rather than a nostalgic one. I couldnt care less whether the sciences is accurate or whether the laugh track is "stale". I care about glorifying predatory behavior.
As much as i think this is a competently made video essay I find myself disagreeing with the content at every turn. For context i have hated BBT since day one. It immediately struck me as a show where nerds are the butt of the joke but in really unfunny ways. I was in my mid to late twenties when the show began and on paper should be part of the target demographic but it felt like it was made to appeal to older audiences who wanted to laugh at geeks who read comic books and don’t know how to talk to girls. By that stage that stereotype was completely played out. That was around the time when nerdy was starting to become cool and BBT to me was behind the curve where Community was ahead of the curve. In the late 2000s the way both BBT and community was advertised on network TV put me off because both were promoted the same way. I only started watching Community a year ago and instantly became a huge fan and regret not watching it earlier. I’ve tried watching BBT to make sure i wasn’t missing out and I find it insufferable in the same way I find other Chuck Lorre shows to be. His sense of comedy just never connected with me. Oh and about the laugh track, the tides were shifting all the way back in the nineties. The Simpsons is the show i would cute as being most singularly responsible for the eventual demise of the laugh track. For me personally it opened my eyes to why laugh tracks are manipulative and unnecessary. Watching Golden era Simpsons in the nineties i was able to discover the jokes for myself and I valued them all the more because I was able to make the connections of what the joke actually was on my own without having a laugh track telling me what I’m supposed to laugh at. Yes I’m aware that the nineties was still a time when multi camera sitcoms were huge and that the biggest sitcoms of that decade had a laugh track and nobody complained. But rewatching episodes of Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier the thing i find most jarring is the laugh track. It got lost in the nostalgia but because the use of laugh track has fallen off since and i haven’t missed it I kinda forgot that those shows used a laugh track. With a well written show like Frasier the laugh track doesn’t stop the funniest jokes from landing but the laugh track doesn’t really add anything and the jokes would land just as well if not better if Frasier was made without a live studio audience. And i much preferred the newer breed of sitcom like arrested development and community and Malcom in the Middle and I’m glad that they made the multi camera sitcom seem bland and outdated. Which makes the decision to make BBT as a traditional multi cam sitcom in 2007 seem antiquated. I had always found it baffling that BBT has remained as popular as it was when its sucked so hard for a multitude of reasons.
So the one thing that ages poorly these days is the fact the characters that start dating lose their nerdy hobbies as the show develops (except Sheldon). In the first 3 seasons the main 3 men have hobbies and passions for contemporary nerdy activities, but abandon a lot of this starting with the wedding of Bernadette in season 3. The show starts to become a more normal sitcom after this point and the needs that don’t date after season 3 (rhaz and comic book store owner) start to devolve as characters compared to their friends who are dating. That part bugged me about the show beyound the misogyny (you can still be passionate for the things that make you, you while having a life with someone else or without someone else around.).
I always hated this aspect of the show. It felt like everyone was just being pushed into the mainstream for their character growth. Despite all the comforting trappings of cosplay and video games this is not a show with any affection for nerds.
i can’t speak on much of the offensive nature of jokes aside from the sexist ones, but honestly as someone who exists in the nerdy space that the show tried to portray, the sexist jokes although bad for the show to have aren’t far from what is actually said or believed in those spaces sadly. Constantly belittled by others in the spaces, or being given a favoured treatment in hopes of getting something in return; not good fun for a show but not far from how it is sometimes when you get men who actually don’t interact with women regularly
I agree and I think that actually points out, what makes this show so different from something like always sunny. Both shows have main characters that behave like assholes and includes a lot of offensive jokes but with always sunny the point is to call those kinds of people out and laugh at them but in Big Bang theory we are meant to be laughing with them when they say something offensive. If they wrote the show to call out that behavior and those people the jokes would hold up much better.
I think a big reason Big bang theory gets more criticism is because the laugh track is used in this sitcom. The way it's trying to reinforce certain bad jokes feels really manipulative. Lot of the other sitcoms you mentioned don't have this aspect and I do think especially in the office. The characters that say the worst things are written to be ignorant. They aren't written to be aspirational in any way, but it feels like the audience is often on board with all of the worst misogyny and racism that happens to be in Big bang theory because the laugh track goes off. Signaling and intention for there to be a joke. I think sitcoms without laugh tracks tend to age a little bit better because we're not always on the side of the person making the insensitive joke. Perhaps some of those it comes can be reframed to an extent.
I respect your differing opinion, but I disliked the show while it was running, and to me it has only grown worse in hindsight. How I Met Your Mother especially it's early seasons, can still make me laugh, because the characters are likeable, even though some jokes haven't aged super well. But I always found the characters on the Big Bang Theory to be absolutely insufferable. People sometimes compare me to Sheldon and it makes me want to jump out a window
Re: the laugh track - I think the bingewatch model of streaming also may have made the laugh track more apparent to newer viewers. I can absolutely see how listening to it for hours could get very annoying. Also, with regards to MASH's laugh track, the cast themselves actually banded together to get it removed completely in the later seasons because the show's tone had shifted so much to the dramatic that they didn't feel it proper to have it in anymore. I think the earlier seasons with the track are fine, it never bothered me, but I can see why they'd think that.
You can (or could, at least) also actually get the earlier seasons without the laugh track on dvd. It’s a menu option (idk if it’s on all disks or only special ones though) Plus I think mash aired in the us w/o the track (could be wrong on that one,, I’m very much American T-T)
yes uk aired initially w no laugh track and was considered too dark. the laugh track was limited but it wasnt something they ..."banded together to get rid of"..... it just didnt fit the feel of the show anymore. it also was only limited, it was never entirely removed.
I feel like the point about the geek references being of the time would stand up stronger if the show didn't run well into the same time as the Avengers Endgame hype. Like Sure in the early seasons nobody knew who Iron Man was, but the fact the show never updated its lexicon with the times made it more grating as it went on. Not to mention the Elon Musk worship...
This show is not "aged". The show is racist, sexist & ableist BECAUSE THOSE TYPE OF VIEWERS WILL LAUGH AT THAT! People who are hurt by the jokes and stereotypes will not watch, which is why the show started trying to appeal to wider audience a couple of seasons later. This show felt like it was stepping BACKWARDS in progression, which was thoroughly disappointing.
Personally, my reason to dislike The Big Bang Theory is that the comedy of the show is not about nerd and geek jokes, but instead the nerds and the geeks are the joke. To me, a good example is when they play Mystic Warlords of Ka'a... there is no actual game mechanics to be seen, instead it is more how a group of geeks, playing games like Magic the Gathering looks like, from the perspective of non-geeks who don't have a clue of what are those types of games. I believe the reason why many nerds and geeks do like the show, is because it has a lot of accurate references about nerd and geek subcultures all around. Objects related to superheroes, mentions to geek games, a board with actual chemical formulas, some famous scientific books laying around, geek hobbies, T-Shirts with some logos or phrases, perhaps even a special guest. To me, geeks are perhaps the group that loves easter eggs the most. The show gives them that, and it is likely that no other sitcom did something like that, at that level, before.
12:50 its not a criticism of there being pauses, it's supposed to show that without a laugh track queuing you up to laugh, it's hard to find the sow funny
If you cut off the laugh track, then you should also cut the pause. The pause is there so that the actors can wait for the laugh to subside, as explained in the video.
@@a.h.s.3006In fairness, even in the video she admits that without the laugh, it's sometimes difficult to tell what the joke was supposed to be. I also agree with that.
The thing is, I’ve seen clips of Seinfeld without the laugh track, and the jokes usually still land. When they don’t, you can at least tell that it was supposed to be a joke. Part of that is probably Seinfeld being a stand up comic instead of an actual sitcom actor, but either way, the point is that even without the show telling you it’s funny, it’s still funny.
You know, the old, always funny: Nerd statement #1 Nerd statement #2 Laugh Track I don't remember any dialog from the show, but if I had to recreate a sample, it'll be like: Why didn't they just beam the away team back? Remember, there was a Tachyon storm interfering with their instruments. *laugh track *
I think a huge part why i stopped liking big bang was the reruns. It seemed like there were 5 channels that constantly played the first 3 seasons, and as i got older the grossness of the misogyny was just repeated with no character growth. It was also a show i never really saught out, so i didnt see the later seasons, especially after moving out of my parents house and loosing cable tv.
Tbh there’s just a fundamental difference in how shows like Community and Always Sunny, and to a lesser extent The Office, handle offensive jokes compared to BBT. The main difference is that the other shows are funny - this covers a lot of blemishes. But it also comes from the fact that the person saying the offensive joke is usually either A) villainised, and it’s funny because of shock value of a bad person saying a bad thing or B) authentically feels like they are written as part of the group that is being joked about. It makes all the difference.
yeah when i was a white kid i never saw the sexism and racism in the show but now that i realize it it really taints the show especially in the early seasons
I honestly thought that Young Sheldon was a romanticized/mostly fictional recounting of Sheldon's childhood to make it look better for his book, because in Big Bang Theory, he has kinda extreme negative reactions to when Leonard and Penny are arguing and randomly trauma dumps on the other characters about his family or things that happened to him as a kid. But that's just what I thought.
Sheldon isn't autistic. He's a jerk. Huge difference. He's an authoritarian. It's not that he can't understand other people's emotions, he doesn't care. He doesn't WANT to be human. He wants to actually be the robot overlord of the world. That's not autism. Seriously, analyse BBT with understanding that Sheldon is the villain, penny is the hero and Lenard is the damsel in distress
@dazzlingdexter5060 yeah it's a comedy show. The villain has to actually be harmless or it becomes drama. Also everyone gets married at the end. He's the villain but not evil per say
@@zackwalker1789 you don't have to be autistic to love trains. You can just love trains. Rainman didn't like trains. He was fixated on baseball. And he actually was autistic.
I saw a lot of myself in Sheldon at that age, as a "gifted" autistic child. I think that was the first representation that i saw that felt, albeit flawed, relatable to my experiences and attitude. Finding out that they outright denied his diagnosis instead of just letting people have this autistic character if they wanted him to be one is just disappointing
I feel the same way, I think have more self-awareness and am more conscious of my actions impact on others than Sheldon, but boy some things really do hit home hard for me with him. From what I recall, one of the creators is on the spectrum, and didn't want to formally give him a label of autism because it would have made it much harder to not then get wrapped up in that diagnosis - I think if they had it'd have even more controversy too as would have had a bunch of autism-moms types up in arms that they're criticising him for autistic traits. I think they made it pretty damn clear that he is though, so I'm pretty comfortable just assuming he's probably autistic and taking him as one of our own :D
I was a gifted kid with undiagnosed autism & sometimes put into academic situations where I'd have to be with kids several years older than me. For this reason, I cannot watch Young Sheldon without feeling a little PTSD about it.
They couldn't acknowledge the diagnosis without admitting that their whole show was built on the idea of belittling and demeaning a neurodivergent character.
Is the show good? No. Did I like the show? Yeah. I think I have a little nostalgia factor. When my dad was sick and in the hospital all the time and my mom was with him, my kid would put on Young Sheldon and said it was their ‘comfort show’. We lived with my parents to help my disabled elderly mom take care of my dad. So I think the shows just are a thing from that time period in our lives. You nailed the issues and what made it a workable show, despite the flaws. It’s nice to see someone not hating on something that was popular just because.
"Something can be enjoyable without necessarily being good" is something I totally agree with. I always think of 100% Wolf as my favorite mediocre movie. It's not that good, but it's not like I'm laughing at how bad it is either. It's just very entertaining to me for reasons I cannot fathom
Honestly, what killed the show for me was the first Wisecrack video. I grew up loving Two and a Half Men, but something always kinda rubbed me the wrong way with Big Bang Theory. It was that Wisecrack video that made it clear to me: how inauthentic the jokes were. Removing the laugh track made it clear that Sheldon seemingly hated being around these people. The jokes weren't really about the science or nerd stuff involved, but just pointing out, "Hey look! Nerd shit! HAHAHAHAHA". But besides the Wisecrack video making me realize things, Sheldon was a major sticking point for me. I went to college and graduated while the show was airing and you know....I've met folks on the spectrum who were on the spectrum, and Sheldon would not survive in science. The dude does not collaborate well, and no matter how smart he is, he's also just an awful person, diagnosis or otherwise. And even if he was given an actual diagnosis, it shouldn't shield him from criticism that he's just kind of a bad person.
I think that's quite a harsh take on Sheldon. He's grating, he's annoying, but he never *MEANS* to be mean. He simply can't understand it. This is a fundamental part of his arch of his character, right up to the finale when he's accepting his nobel. While I won't pretend all autistic people think it's a good representation, a good portion do heavily relate to his struggles. As someone who's diagnosed, and with a number of friends on the spectrum too I actually think it's good to see some of the very real struggles with friendships/relationships portrayed, most importantly that he has friends who yes, get understandably annoyed and frustrated with his behaviour, but still fundamentally understand he's not a bad person.
@@dansgalaxy my wife and I work in academia and we've each published. Sheldon is an absolute caricature of an academic in the spectrum. If he were in real life, I highly doubt there'd be many other PIs who'd want to work with him. The dude is rather authoritarian. Science is all about cooperation and Sheldon's being on the spectrum might explain his behavior, but it doesn't justify it. There's plenty of folks on the spectrum who collaborate with other labs just fine no fuss, but Sheldon has had entire episodes about him looking down on women in STEM.
@@dansgalaxy "This is a fundamental part of his arch of his character" Many people who hate BBT are clearly used to 'normal' American sitcoms; where off-putting character's are artificially padded with charisma/quirkiness. I love BBT for being the exact opposite. Everyone takes the, painfully realistic, amount of time to work their shit out. And are permitted to be realistically frustrating and obnoxious all the way along.
There's a difference between bad and frustrating. Even when it was airing, I did laugh, but the amount of frustration outweighed the comedy for me. It always felt off, inauthentic... like you said, a show for geeks written by normal people... saved by the bell style exaggeration for cheap comedy rather than intelligent humour. I wanted to like it, but in a way I can't fully describe with words, it felt... "wrong"... Glad you can enjoy it, I still enjoy the Cosby show. But it feels to actual geeks like they're adding to our lifetime of bullying by mocking us in a way we don't actually relate to, and aren't interested in tolerating anymore. Well-made video, by the way! I know criticism can flood in without any positivity, so i at least wanted to say you did a solid job making this!
My problem with BBT is that they are so toxic to each other. Seriously, I would not want any of them as friends. I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive or I have different standards or if I'm right.
I feel like the expectation that "The guys are supposed to be smart and Penny is supposed to be dumb" does the writing of the show a disservice. It takes plenty of chances to show that even people who are scientists can be pretty dumb at points and there are plenty of ways where Penny is smarter than them. I think a lot of the jokes of the show are based on "People you perceive as or expect to be smart have their own flaws that make them pretty dumb in some ways". You're not supposed to think "Wow, Sheldon is a true genius who really gets life", but rather "Man, how can a guy like that be so damn dumb?"
The show was about making FUN of smart people. The actors were great. The Writing was good at making normal people feel like they were in on science jokes. The early jokes especially just insulted nerds. You were too young to see that.
TBBT isnt that far from the "I f'ing love science" and other pages that were famous on FB / Twitter / Tumblr at the time. The ones that got extremelly dogpilled with the "you dont love science, you're just looking at it's butt" jokes. It was a good way to make people interested in science, but it hardly had any kind of migration to any real science search. People just loved to be on the peak of the Dunning Krueger Effect.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nerd and a scientist like the characters in the Big Bang Theory. It was a comedy so I really enjoyed it as well. I actually like the laugh track because it's immersive, it gives you a sense of community at a time when I had nobody to laugh with in real life.
I think this is the first comment that actually supports the show having said that I can go to the show or just bad parodies of what it’s actually like to be nerdy scientist It was a struggle for people who didn’t know he was actually like to be either of those
I'm sure the show is fine. I just never personally cared for it. I tried to watch it with humor, but as a gay, black scientist none of the jokes felt good to me. They always felt mean, which is fine, but for someone else to watch and laugh at. I think "exclusionary" is the word I'm looking for. Meh, that's just my opinion.
Purely anecdotal but a friend of mine watched BBT from season one and I was roped into watching it too, and watched new episodes as they aired. I was 26 at the time, if that’s relevant at all. I complained then about the laugh track, as did several of my friends. I remember watching an edited version of a clip in 2008 with the laughing removed, too. You can still find Reddit posts from 2010 with similar clips. Also, being a nerd with nerd friends we all really looked down on the surface-level nerd talk. Like the segment where they talk about the absurdity of console names between the various generations of X-Box. It was old news to us by that point so the joke fell super flat. Anyway, that’s just some perspective from someone in the middle of the target demo experiencing the show and its evolution in real time
I have to disagree with some of it. I'm autistic like noticeable, so I need more support than others, and I'll never forgive how the Big Bang made people so comfortable laughing at autistic traits they say "well Sheldon isn't autistic" but they write him as autistic they may not mean it but the autistic traits are there and the traits are there to laugh at not as a "that's just how they are" it's like it's to mock autistic people the laugh track is there om cue when he misses the social cues when he awkward all the autistic traits he has are laughed at and also there's the actor of Amy Mayim Bialik is a Zionist she supports Israels genocide on Palestine she believes that Israel has a right to protect itself (Whitch it doesn't as its an apartheid state state) she can distinguish the difference between criticising the Israel and antisemitism and idk if she's gone to Hebrew school when she was younger but if she did then I can totally empathise and understand why she'd lean to Zionism that is a big part in a lot of Hebrew schools but she's older now and after being exposed to all the information there is and the evidence there is no excuse to still be supportive of a genocidal Settler colonial regime that is Israel big bang just has a lot of issues that make me personally uncomfortable watching it
I think the whole "I'm not X my mom had me tested." is intended as kind of a joke. Imagine the sort of person Sheldon's mom would have recruited to test him given her hyper-evangelical background. I think the implication was that Sheldon is actually atypical but undiagnosed.
Veeery interesting to see this comment section, because it's pretty objectively true that the show was a success. That means people watched it and enjoyed it... and yet it's nearly impossible to find anyone agreeing with the defenses stated or coming up with their own, just an occasional mention of themselves enjoying it. That leads me to the conclusion that BBT is hard to defend, a guilty pleasure of sorts. I'd be more interested in hearing what people like about the show rather than context for why it's disliked, but it would be hard to find someone being completely honest on what they like about it, rather than only saying the things they enjoy that the general public would find acceptable.
I was a geeky teen when it came out; not a physics nerd but definitely a bookworm and movie buff who ended up going to Film School (then to Grad school and currently planning to get my PhD when I get the funding for it). And what I enjoyed about it was how relatable the characters were: Sheldon being structured and missing social cues, Leonard wanting to be popular and socially accepted, Raj being shy… I identified with them and fell “seen”/understood, and even (partially) represented. As a woman, I’d have to say I found Howard pretty creepy and the representation of geeky/nerdy women was certainly lacking, especially in the first few seasons. A lot of people are saying that the humour was at the expense of the nerds but I never had that feeling, on the contrary: as an introverted bookworm with an anxiety diagnosis (and currently undergoing a neurodivergence assessment) I felt seen. A lot of people in the comments are saying the show presents the bad behaviour (sexism, homophobia, racism) in a good light but I always felt that this wasn’t the case, and that it was always pretty obvious and explicit that, for example, Howard was being a creep when he spied on women. Maybe it’s just me projecting my own moral views on the show, but I always felt it was similar to Married With Children, in which Al Bundy is sexist, misogynistic and fatphobic and pretty much every character in that show is a shitty person with no one to call them out but we the audience know better. That being said, I can now see that a lot of the jokes and the way they were delivered were inappropriate and offensive. When I rewatched the show as an adult I was able to detect things that I wouldn’t have included if I had been the showrunner or things that could’ve been done better in terms of making it clear that these actions are condemnable. But I can still find a lot of joy in the show and even more in Young Sheldon, which I think portrays all the characters in a more well-rounded and multi-faceted way.
@@ConstanzaRigazio Except you are meant to LAUGH at Al Bundy and Peggy and all others in that show. They were caricatures to laugh at. BBT on the other hand wants you to join their terrible awful characters and laugh at nerdy stuff instead. For a show that pretended to be for nerds, it was actively designed to mock nerds. And Howard being creep ain't just cutting it. In one episode Penny had to APOLOGIZE him for yelling at him and calling him a creep for spying at her, because his feelings were hurt. Oh I am sorry, mr creep please spy on naked women more next time. What type of logic is this ? Show wanted you to scorn Penny for 'overreacting' for being stalked ! Vile show.
Several previous replies touch on this, but TBBT was for the most part a show for normal people to laugh at the awkward nerds. Some nerds watched it, too, which shows how starved we were for representation at the time, while many resented it, for good reasons. Some other commenter imply that the show was also aimed at an older audience, but I can't confirm that. Either way, the people taking the time to not only watch a TH-cam essay about a TV show but then take the time to write a comment are probably not older people enjoying a TV show that makes fun of nerds and their strange behavior...
Leonard isn't a "Nice guy" though. On several points within the show he rejects Penny's advances because despite having feelings for her he doesn't want her to make mistakes or have sex with her under dubious circumbstances, like when she was drunk for example. I truly think that Leopnard's flaws in that regard and strictly related to the writers limited and transactional views on relationships. The show is very confidently wrong about a lot of things, like the supposed "plot hole" in Raiders Of The Lost Ark that is talked about as if it's an objective truth, or various other takes on science and geek stuff. Or that time when they had Elon Musk on the show and Howard was slobbing his knob like nobody's buisness. God that was horrible in hindsight...
It's telling that Leonards character is criticized for being a "nice guy", but the guys that Penny dates - or Penny herself - seem to be fine. What exactly is the criticism in the first place - that he's nice to Penny because he's romantically interested in her? Yeah, what an incel. I can't remember Leonard being unfriendly to women he's not interested in.
Exactly! Hell, Leonard is presented on multiple occasions not as a guy that tries to get into Penny's pants transactionally but as someone that genuinely wants to help her or console her or express affection for her because he's just that type of guy. If anything, if you really get into it, Leonard does things for people because of his mother. She both taught him to do stuff for her in a very particular manner to the point that as an adult he viewed tolerating Sheldon as his duty (because who else is going to?) AND she deprived him of affection on such a level that he's both needy about it AND makes it very well-known when he likes or loves someone. Because he doesn't want to leave people guessing like Beverly did to him until the later seasons in which she finally told him she experimented on him because she loved him and found him fascinating. Leonard is a very complex and compelling character in parts where the writers actually tried. It's early seasons Howard that makes me wanna puke. God, every time he spoke with women present I winked because it was always some incel-ass pickup line. The only thing missing was a meltdown after he got rejecting and calling Penny a bich.
I think the whole idea of not pathologizing is pretty hard when the label itself has a pathological stigma attached to it. The fact that it's a diagnosis, even the phrase "he HAS autism" implies a disease, a pathology. In 2007 this vocabulary would have stood out worse than the "dumb blonde" sexist jokes. Chuck has a history of foregrounding marginalized groups rooted in empathy and I think this is why so far I've loved shows he produced. In Mom, one of the main characters is a middle-aged alcoholic woman. In one sub-plot, she gets an ADHD diagnosis and it's just heart-warming. I can definitely imagine Sheldon coming out as autistic in 2022, refusing a medical diagnosis and everyone in the group going "duh". 1980s Texas healthcare, you know.
this video is really great. if i can give a little unasked-for advice, try not to rely so much on stock videos. you speak really confidently and intelligently, and if there wasnt any stock footage i would still be just as interested. your editing is really good with the use of videos and pictures from the actual show, and bts of the show etc. this was obviously well researched and really eloquently put, so ig just try not to be too afraid of losing the audiences interest if there isnt a new thing on screen every few seconds. loved this video and cant wait for more :]
Your point that BBT isn't a show for nerds actually brought me back to the days it was first broadcasted. It became the talk of the schoolyard, with my friend group quoting it all the time. I was probably the nerdiest of them but not that much of a nerd to be offended, but I remember thinking that my "friends" were acting like jerks when every discussion of the show ended with "LMAO, what dorky nerds they all are" Thank god our paths separated.
Any single sitcom with a laughtrack (so most old sitcoms) are creepy and cringe as F, if you deliberately remove them. Of course they are. That's like complaining a song has "too many weird beeping sounds" after deliberately listening to a censored version of a very explicit song. If you MODIFY something, you cant unironically complain about the Modified content..... because that's not how it envisioned.
Most jokes are context dependent and hence not inherently funny. Try watching some old stand-up for example. Besides that, the removal of the canned laughs adds a silence to the conversation. Next time you're talking to a friend and they make a joke, reference or light-hearted comment don't react to it, just stand there, maybe stare. How do you think that would go?
@@jimmjimms laugh is largely a social thing. so if you watch things alone in your house you will laugh a lot less than if you watch something alone vs with other people. Having said that, tbbt in particular uses a lot of laughs in situations that aren't jokes
7:44 They actually do that. One episode focuses around Sheldon having a massive disussion about the Joe Chill-being-caught debate, which to this day only people who actively read comics know about (because Joe Chill is basically non existant in the main stream big movie adaptions)
Well, I only recognize the Joe Chill name from Nolan's Batman Begins. I agree it's a reference that goes far beyond "surface level", but it's still not that far from mainstream
I never heard of any arguments against the show before and I like the show as well, but it was interesting to take a look outside of my bubble. Thank you 😁! (For context: I'm a 39 year old male IT guy with unspecified neurodiverse traits, that aren't enough for a finite diagnosis like autism, but enough to justify therapy for 9 months (by german healthcare laws)) BTW: My son is diagnosed with autism, instantly recognized Sheldon as autistic and never cared about what the show runners or anyone else said about the topic. It *can* be that easy 😅
EDIT: realistically I should've known the video would delve into Sheldon's undiagnosed autism before writing this and yeah, I get why it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not written authentically like a lot of the things in the show, likening it to being crazy is just awful and feeds into stigma around mental disabilities and the writers desire to back away from Sheldon canonically having a disability is very telling. It feels like they made the character with the idea that he's a very awkward nerd who doesn't fully understand people, without realising that a lot of the traits they gave Sheldon weren't of a nerd, but more closely aligned with Autism It's a show clearly written by people who aren't scientists, but more egregiously it's a show written by people who aren't all that big into Nerd Culture either. I've never really related to any of the characters despite being huge into my fandoms. And while I'm here, speaking as someone with autism, something about Sheldon's depiction of disability, doesn't feel authentic or sit right with me, can't put my finger on it
The problem isn’t that the show is insensitive. The problem with TBBT is that the jokes are lazy. They portray what writers think a geek looks like and invites people to laugh at that caricature. For example, when a physicists slips in a shower they don’t say anything about friction coefficient; they just said they slipped. The writers make fun of geek culture (whatever that means) without understanding said culture. Compare it to IT Crowd where characters are much more believable and jokes are rooted (especially in first season) from experiences that people in IT have in real life. Further, after a while you notice there’s only a couple jokes that keep repeating. Sheldon is funny because he doesn’t understand social situations. Rajesh is funny because he cannot talk to women. Howard is funny because he lives with his mother.
No bc this video is such a mess. I'm really not trying to be mean here and my intent is solely constructive. That being said, you probably shouldn't talk about race. Idk you, idk if you've ever done, like, a race reveal (?) or something, but it doesn't seem like you're prepared to discuss it. I'm gonna list some stuff off. ● "don't judge it based on modern values" is and will always be a poor argument. If something was racist then, it's still racist now. It hasn't "aged poorly," white people just decided to listen to minorities a little more. 99% of the time, racism is racism regardless of circumstance. The only exception imo is when someone, usually a child, doesn't know better. The writers knew the jokes were racist and they knew white audiences (the majority of viewers) liked it. ● The racism in the show is not called out more than other shows bc of the Nice Guy trope, it's called out bc the writers decided to make characters empty stereotypes for as long as they could get away with it before needing to actually write something of substance. Yes, racist jokes were more popular at the time. That doesn't change the fact that those other shows (even ones that predated it) at least tried to make those characters actual characters. Stanley from the office wasn't a 24/7 walking stereotype, he was a guy subjected to racist jokes. Barney's brother actually broke some stereotypes. Angela from boy meets world was a fully fleshed out, 3 dimensional character. BBT was just uniquely, happily racist. ● When discussing incels views on masculinity, probably don't use a picture of a black guy with a durag staring sensually at the camera. Maybe don't play into the stereotype that black men are sex objects. If you were making a comment on how incels fetishize and demonize black men, please say it with your words bc otherwise you're just doing what they are. ● "seeing things through the lense of the time they came out doesn't make them okay, but you need to criticize every other show" is genuinely goofy behavior. Your idea of context is "well everyone else was doing it ☝️🤓" and yeah, like other people in the comments are saying, that doesn't make the criticism of this show unfair, misguided, or lacking context. ● a big part of the reason the show gets hate for the laugh tracks (which were already heavily criticized for over a decade) is bc the show was genuinely using them as a crutch. If you didn't buy into the whole haha autism/haha misogyny/haha racism humor, then the show was just mean spirited. It fundamentally needed a laugh track of some sort bc so much of the material was the audience making fun of characters or the characters making fun of each other. ● it's so deeply ignorant to say "if I can enjoy the show despite all this, anyone can." Again, idk anything about you or your race so I could be totally off base here, but for the love of all that is holy, consider never saying that about something you fundamentally have no part in. If you personally have not been affected by something, you do not have the required information or experience to dismiss the thoughts and feelings of those that have. You can tell me the show's racism isn't a big deal to you and that's your perspective. ● "maybe to enjoy things, you need to let go of other people's influences" definitely is the conclusion you came to and it shows. This is reaaaaaaally giving "don't let the pc police bully you into hating what you love." It's giving "you can't joke about anything because everyone is too sensitive now." Again, I'm not saying this to tear you down or make you upset. I'm not saying you're racist or a bigot of any kind. Many of us here think you just don't have the context to talk about the context.
you can judge a show based off of modern values (and you should, because we all know what happens when we start ignoring the past) but in the same vein, its not like the writers could see into the future? they didnt know that in nearly 20 years time the culture and values of people would shift so dramatically, so completely differently that no-one could have seen it coming. Should they have made those jokes? of course not. Did they, because it was more prevalent at the time? yes, they did. So judging it through a modern lens is just critiquing something for not being made when values are different, which isnt controllable. and yeah, people these days get so, so caught up on following the main opinion of something that you should enjoy something you enjoy, regardless of other peoples beliefs (with a few caveats of course, im not advocating for people to bring back black-face because they 'enjoyed it'.) - you enjoy a show that has harmful sterotypes, but you ARENT continuing those sterotypes? good for you, more power to you. As long as you can recognise the faults of something you love and act on them, then theres not much of an issue. You should critique every show the same way? because dog-piling on one show because it did things over shows did is not very progressive, is it? Why does one show that made the same jokes and sterotypes let off the hook while another one is hated on with all respite because everyone talks about it? Of course it doesnt change the fact that it was bad, OP didnt say that. Going "hurrr durrr yeah, i portrayed you with a nerd emohi because i dont agree" is geniuenly goofy behaviour. ...so you are saying that if you havent expirenced something, you cant weigh in on it? So most people white people cant weigh on in racism apart from having "their perspective", most men cant bring up womens issues because, they arent women and can only have "their persepctive"? Someone could research an issue for years, know everything about it but because they arent personally affected by it, they should "never consider saying that"?
@mr.smoothiehuman I'm gonna respond to like two things bc I ain't reading all that. 1. I don't care if they didn't realize societal values would change. Racism is racism. I'm not upset bc "how were they supposed to know," I'm upset bc they knew damn well that, even at the time, they were actively making life worse for minorities. They didn't care about minorities, they cared about the white viewers who thought it was funny. Values changing over time does not undo what they did. "um akshually! would you not listen to an astrophysicist about astrophysics because they've never been to space ☝️🤓" nigga we are talking about someone who looks like they're barely out of high school. I have a sneaking suspicion they don't have a doctorate in the history of racism in the USA and can speak on it to a level that justifies them telling minorities to just get over it
Ok, so I'm a millennial (stop hissing). I was an adult when this show came out. I was it's target audience (I guess?). I watched it when it first came out, or tried to, about two seasons behind its initial release. I like a lot of shows now considered problematic and I stand behind them. I have an annual re-watch of SATC, for example, grew up watching Girlfriends, still fondly remember Will & Grace and don't think it was a bad representation of gay media for it's time, don't think anyone puts Baby in a corner, occasionally rewatch The Office and Parks and Rec, etc etc... I hate TBBT for a much simpler reason: I never found it funny. I didn't think it was when it was first running in it's first couple seasons and definitely don't think so now. The jokes are (in my opinion) overdone and cliche. The characters never develop all that much and aren't particularly loveable. The fake geek trope kind of sucks. That's why they don't get away with the more offensive content in the same way as shows like The Office do; they just don't have the comedic chops. I think the very fact that people don't raise the same stink when Michael Scott does something horrible, but get angry when Sheldon Cooper says something arguably less awful bears that out. TBBT just isn't funny, and Chuck Lorre will go down in history as a hack, albeit a successful one. Sorry.
Sorry child, you can’t just dismiss whether something is offensive or not. The fact is that big bang theory did have its own insensitivity well before they toned it down. It’s a self loving, ableist, racist, and misogynistic show. You have to just accept that it does taint the show. Love how you just try and ignore it
@@Tom-cn4cmnah, they entirely right. why defend this trash so at all? so much better stuff to watch. creators are trash, most of the actors are trash and most of all the show is trash.
_child_ was definitely a bit much, but there is a point that the video poster does not look to be in her late thirties so probably wasn't an adult in 2007 when tbbt appeared on the scene i personally didn't, and maybe i can't trust the people in this comment section, but i also can't make assumptions, the content of the show *does* feel worse than other ones released around the same time
Big bang theory gets hate because they're not funny, if anything you learn in this world is that you can get away with anything as long as you're funny
Big Bang Theory is just a normie show, the best example of this is that one Lyle Rath clip of him reacting to a BBT joke. Also these characters are pretty terrible, but show wants you believe thay these are good people. Until It's Always Sunny, where the characters are terrible and the show wants you to make think they're terrible. With that show wanting you to laugh at how terrible they are. For example, Sheldon, the show wants to make you like his because of his funny "quirks" that are just annoying and he's flat out evil at times. Like how Jim's cameo in Young Sheldon, he doesn't want to go and support his son's baseball game. Plus he's a flat out terrible represention of autism that just stigmatizes certain autistic tendencies. The show needed more straight man characters. Like in MTV's undergrad, where there's a characters who's just a casual nerd. With him telling the really nerdy character to "shut up" Also the sexist jokes and racist jokes in the begining of the season are just terrible. No excuse on being "aged" its terrible. Its like trying to excuse an anti-islamic joke from a movie that came out after 9/11 because it "aged"
I'm 100% sure that the writers didn't decide that Sheldon should have autism when they pitched the show, it may have accidentally come out that way because it's a very childish show that's written as a cartoon for toddlers but that's still an accidental coincidence because fictional characters are fictional therefore if it's not written to be ambiguous then it's not ambiguous
I don't think they intentionally chose it either, but I do think it says a lot that they looked at what would make a character a socially inept object of ridicule that would be easy to laugh at, and then ended up making a character with a lot of autistic traits. Especially in 2007, and how anyone who wasn't "normal" was treated back then. The show's meanspirited view on their own characters really shines through there
@@Ross516 its because they were writing a socially inept character that a socially inept audience could understand. He likes to get into childrens ballpits and yell catchphrases its pretty low brow
my biggest problem with big bang theory was that there isn't a 'moral' person that criticizes wrongdoing/sexism/homophobia/racism, the office has really racist moments, but everyone else in the office criticizes that person, in big bang theory there is noone that does that- it fits the setting of just a bubble of nerdy guys just all being together in their own world, but makes a lot of the jokes a lot more offensive than if there are characters that judge them for it.
i grew up with the big bang theory, and though it wasn't really something i went out of my way to watch, i'd watch it if it was on. i think it had it's funny moments, though it was definitely a product of its time and suffered as a result. the theme song is a banger tho.
I didn't find it funny back then. My main criticism is the jokes were cheap and under developed further highlighted by the laugh track. So it came across as lazy. It drew from nerd culture but the nerds weren't the target audience, personally I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing being able to laugh at yourself is healthy, but the quality of the jokes were low hanging fruit so the writing felt snide. Actual nerds around that time watched things like IT crowd and Community.
I think folks your age may really have a hard time getting how massive of a change the mainstreaming of geek culture has been. I’m roughly the age of the show’s characters (born 1979), and to put it in perspective, I recommend looking at how nerdy characters were portrayed in 90s sitcoms (particularly those aimed at young teens. I.e. my age at the time). Look at something like Family Matters or certain episodes of Saved by the Bell. The needs were a total joke, and not something anyone would have bet want to be.
im not quite sure about wether this is true. two and a half men has ALL of the flaws that you have mentioned big bang theory has. it has an over the top laugh track, misoginy all over it and dated references. Yet people still enjoy it to this day. I remember my parents complaining how big bang theory is the wish version of two and a half men. and i have to agree with them. two and a half men had such bangers of jokes, that people were ready to ignore the flaws. i think big bang theory just wasnt funny enough to stop the hate
Well Charlie still was moron to laugh at, and they had Bertha to point out his nonsense. BBT has no such Bertha character. Neither it has any innocent character like Jake there.
I really wish a lot more people would actually understand when you said; "your favourite movie is not necessarily the best movice you've watched." Only a tiny sub-section of the world population understands this, especially on twitter.
I'm not surprised that someone looking like a Tumblr user would cry over 'insensitive' jokes. Out of all the things you could have criticized, THAT is your starting argument?
The old concept that all humor comes at the expense of a victim is definitely true here, and there are plenty of people who watch TBBT that experience that in a way that they don't enjoy the humor. However, I've grown to understand that finding something funny that plays on negative stereotypes and agreeing with those negative stereotypes are two very different things. Sometimes, they're even opposed, where if you believe the stereotype, the joke isn't funny, but if you recognize it as a false stereotype it becomes hilarious. When it comes to TBBT, I personally find it funny, and I also find it trivial enough not to consider offensive. Those same stereotypes presented in other contexts are often quite offensive, but TBBT is so clearly a caricature that I don't feel it warrants any serious discussion of its moral values. I mean, there once was a sitcom called "Heil, Honey, I'm Home!" about the Hitler family and their Jewish neighbors, and it was funny (I'm not surprised it got pulled right as it premeired, but its still funny). Humor is weird, and quirky, and very personal, and no one should be judging anyone for finding something funny. Sometimes, humor just doesn't make logical sense, but isn't that kind of what makes it great?
for GREAT science jokes: watch futurama.
"The writing staff held three Ph.D.s, seven master's degrees, and cumulatively had more than 50 years at Harvard University. Series writer Patric M. Verrone stated, 'we were easily the most overeducated cartoon writers in history'."
If i'm remembering rightly they hid a lot of the sciencey deep cuts with more surface level jokes and i the background. They did it to a lesser extent in the simpsons too.
Futurama will always be the best sci fi show ever
@@MrPicunYT hell yeah
Unfortunately, while the show was really smart, that genius wasn't rewarded because it was repeatedly cancelled, precisely because it was too niche
@@JimboDoomface Yeah, like the aleph-null plex. Which is the lowest order of infinity (you get it by just saying what the end of counting forever is. Which is lower than ‘true’ infinity
I had a coworker ask me "You don't watch the Big Bang Theory? I thought you were nerdy"
And I was like "The Big Bang Theory isn't nerdy, it's nerdy for people who don't know anything about nerdy stuff"
Yes exactly this
Exactly what a nerd would say 👀
unrelated but I'm so happy to see a Nichijou profile picture!
@@rasberryiceify yes. he didn't deny being a nerd
yeah like i am not the audience, i am the subject matter
not that you can't be both, but for example when watching the office, you can feel like both because the writers clearly worked in that 2000s 'we push paper for other people to push more paper' office
15:31 the Internet didn't suddenly breed hatred for the show, it just meant people that thought the same thing already were able to now know they weren't alone in those thoughts.
I was eight when I got sick and tired of laugh tracks-it's what caused me to stop watching Scooby Doo.
Yes, this. Also, how many episodes did she have to search to find them discussing Thor's hammer? I tried watching the show and it _never_ got that deep. The jokes were always, "Hey, did you know that *Dr. Who* exists? Also *Thomas the Tank Engine,* and the *Incredible Hulk.*" that was it... that was the joke. It was _actually_ worse than Family Guy, which is pretty impressive in a way.
You're right, but that argument could also be used for any online community in general and can easily lead to the misunderstanding that "there are no people who think a specific thing, if no online community exists for it"
I'm 39 and never felt the urge to join an online community for any of my fandoms. My parents (68 and 72) don't even know *how* to join one 😅
I got invited to some occasionally and joined for a while, but lost interest in a matter of weeks, so I never felt like a part of it and am probably not perceived as such 🤷
The biggest issue Millennial nerds had with the show from the beginning was that it treated us and our cultural touchstones like tourist attractions to gawk at.
The show always felt insincere and flat, with little love for the things they used as set dressing.
2007 is not some far-off time before the internet. I went to school with web administrators and LARP regulars. And some of them not only talked to, but were women. Shocking, I know.
TBBT never felt like something that likes or even respects what the characters represent. They are flattened stereotypes of academia's more loathsome characters, yet enabled at every turn and presented like misbehaving puppies.
Yesss this.
A little off topic, but "Shocking, I know" made my day 😅
THANK YOU! Yeah, "You can't judge the show by modern standards." Ignores the fact that all these criticisms were levelled at TBBT *When it was released* not just 10-15 years later.
Exactly this. Thank you for saving me the time!
I've often seen 'nerds' complain about this but I've never heard physicists (from that generation) do. As far as I could tell, we all loved it. My longstanding take is that people who were not postdocs in physics thought the show was about them when it wasn't. Those academic stereotypes - we all knew and laughed about them before TBBT but here they were given a stage and the world could finally share in it.
Full disagree with the first point, *espeically* in comparison with its always sunny. The point in Sunny is that youre laughing AT the horrible people who think its okay to be offensive, whereas BBT wants you to laugh WITH the offensive jokes/characters
Yup, nobody wants to watch something that is trying to get the audience to sympathize WITH terrible people, we want to laugh AT the terrible people.
Bad writing can ruin a show with a good premise.
I will say in the early seasons of always sunny there were some transphobia not just by characters but also by the show, but other than that they were pretty progressive usually, at least way more than big bang theory
@@magnushinge2358 Yeah, but the show did give their trans character a happy ending, and they made a public apology about it and made an effort to have their offensive comedy punch up since then, so. I mean, it doesn't change or fix it but they grew and handled it way better than a lot of these
Honestly, I was always laughing AT the characters of TBBT. I knew guys like every single one of those characters, and it was catharsis to watch.
never seen Sunny or even BBT but this was exactly why I loved jokes from The Office, especially S1 - it's funny cuz it's like "why is Michael such a clown, he's so stupid for saying/doing xyz"
while agree with the main points you made, my biggest problem is that it feels like it was written for the people who shoved nerds into lockers and peaked in high school
Yes!!! As a nerd, I felt like the show was laughing at people like me, not with people like me. The fact that these guys played Magic the Gathering, watched star trek or cosplayed was the whole joke.
@@KushKiki totally agreed. I think community is a much better example of a show for nerds. Even if it's a less 'nerdy' show, I think its way better at portraying quirky characters from a place of love rather than mockery
Have you seen any writer of a TV show? They're 100% not jocks haha
Right? Lol @@Dilmahkana
@@Dilmahkana But the executives tend to be, and they tend to have stake in the final decisions regarding script. I know the comment was about the writers, but there's a whole entire crew that is in charge of making a show, with the power resting in the hands of the people with the money to fund it, and the people who have "connections".
People who say labels are bad are never the people with labels. Before I had the label of autism my labels were ‘weird’ ‘annoying’ ‘picky’ and ‘sensitive’ it’s absolutely shocking to me that he WASN’T written to have autism given how overwhelmingly obvious it is
The thing is: You don't even have to know what autism is to write an autistic character. 1 in 36 people is autistic, about 3% of the population. Everyone knows a bunch of people with those traits and they are especially popular choices for fictional characters because it makes them interesting. A lot of screenwriters are autistic and don't know it and just write about themselves and the people in their lives (and typically a lot of your friends and family are also autistic if you are). I fully believe they didn't know that Sheldon is autistic and they thought they were just writing about a quirky guy. Then they found out that they were making fun of someone for something that is technically a medical condition for several seasons and didn't know what to do.
Nah some of us have bad experiences with those labels. Your experiences aint universal
The issue is that Sheldon's "autism" seems to be a complete lack of empathy
The conversation about the inauthenticity of laugh tracks was pre-internet, actually. There was a whole controversy in the 70s because shows were using canned laughter and critics were accusing those shows of lazy writing. Chuck Klosterman wrote about it in Eating the Dinosaur.
Sounds like a better Chuck than the one at hand
See also for your point: M*A*S*H! The show that literally abused the laughtrack so hard that they were allowed to drop it altogether
That’s super cool! I’ll have to look into “Eating the Dinosaur” then
Yes, people have pointed out their inauthenticity since they first existed, but, people have also pointed out their value. They've generally been viewed as ideal for comedies until very recently. It wasn't until a few sitcoms were successful without them that there began to be a backlash against them. I still feel the live studio audience with canned laughter to support as necessary is the optimal solution, as it's a lot more fun to laugh with a group than to laugh alone, and I can't always convince 50 of my friends to come watch reruns of classic sitcoms with me at all hours of the night.
Yeah, I remember plenty of people in my life saying that they hated sitcoms specifically because the laugh track was annoying, in the 90s/early 00s. I didn't mind it so much but I think they messed up if the canned laughter was supposed to be unobtrusive because I was constantly distracted by that one laugh at the end like "ha haaaaa~!"
I found the appearance of canned laughter intolerable on my first viewing of the first few episodes of the first season and definitely discussed it with other people. It feels like showrunners infantilizing the audience if they have to be told which parts of the script are the jokes. To a lesser degree, watching 24 was painful for me because it constantly seemed to inject forced dialog to tell the audience what was going on in case you had left the room for the last 15 minutes. I much prefer a show willing to sneak in a punchline that will go over people's heads on the first watch and just gets funnier on rewatch.
Community in my view was never insensitive, the Dean was always a pansexual man and they had him as a main character, and while they made jokes about him, they made jokes about everyone including jeff. The show in many ways took characters who seemed stereotypical and broke stereotypes and gave them lessons on their behavior. They also made a point of forgiving characters as long as they showed growth. The big bang theory to me seems more meanspirited, same with the early seasons of always sunny, and a lot of HIMYM
I also thought it was weird to name community as one of the examples. The only really offensive things I can remember are the bigoted comments that Pierce made and the point of those was to make fun of the people that shared those believes. Other than that I can only think of them using a transphobic slur for no reason in season 1. But I would definitely say that community is not an offensive show.
Honestly I think community is the antithesis of almost every point made in this video. It's not nearly as problematic with its humor, it's pop culture references actually ARE deep cuts or fictional in universe references that at least show a very deep intricate understanding of geek culture, while it doesn't have the "genius scientists" angle of BBT it also has at least a few kind of heady intricate episodes that you'd otherwise think most people wouldn't get and it even has Abed playing an autistic character, flaws and all, and not being an obnoxious terrible caricature
@@chezmix64 that is such a good way to put it, the antithesis. It proves that the way other shows acted was not a product of just their time but also the writers
Community is a brilliant show. It loved its characters. The awkwardness was fun; not pointed and insulting.
And also Modern Family, that show fighted to show a couple of happy gay men and have them kiss on screen.
I love in Community they went the exact opposite direction and pointed out Abed has Asperger’s and they move on with it. Fun fact: Harmon actually discovered he was autistic while researching for the character.
I also love that when they're testing for who's a mentally ill, its revealed that they all are except abed lmao
@@zackwalker1789 I loved that episode
harmon was self diagnosed, no actual doctor diagnosed him
@@zackwalker1789 that wasnt for mental illness, that was for being psychopathic/having homocidal tendencies
Another fun fact! The original version of this script included your fun fact and a small discussion of GOOD examples of autism in media! I also included a bad example… but Harmon writing Abed is, in my opinion, the best way to write autistic characters
I have to disagree with your first point. The big bang theory was always offensive to me. Maybe I felt that way becuase I'm Indian and neurodivergent, but it always upset me that THIS is what people are comfortable laughing at. The only difference nowadays is that other people have realized that these jokes are harmful.
Exactly, and ultimately it is a 15 year old show not a 50 year old one.
I don't understand why it took so long for so many people to understand how horrible the show was in its sexism and racism. But considering it really is not an old show, you really can't excuse it like a show from the 70s or 80s.
There were enough shows that were not as offensive and in bad taste. The writers for BBT just did not want to make better decisions.
Same. As a young neurodivergent queer indian girl, I couldn't finish even the first episode despite 10 tries.
It’s a joke. Laughing at a joke is the whole point of a joke.
@@Tom-cn4cmYou seem confused by the comment, as your response is weird. They know it’s a joke, that’s why they mentioned the word “joke”, and they’re also aware people laugh at it, as they also mention that.
As someone who was actually a nerd steeped in real nerd culture during the initial run of the show, the entire premise of the show felt like a mean spirited high school bully laughing at our culture and quirks, so I cannot agree with you for any of it being funny? It was entirely a laugh at the expense of the people depicted and not laughing along with them. The whole thing felt initially like a spectacle of "HAHA look at how stupid these supposedly smart nerds are". If it grew into something better that's nice, but it left a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who it was attempting to depict initially. And that was *at the time* rather than anything looking back. Criticisms of it being misogynistic aren't new either. As someone afab and in nerd culture it just pointed out how exclusively male stereotypical nerd culture seemed to be, which at that point had started to change, if it even was actually true to begin with.
Yep the common thread in anyone who used to think it was funny and now doesn't is the assumption that pop culture or scientific knowledge changed over the past fifteen years, as opposed to them just learning more about these things.
I always hated this show, I’ve always called it ‘geek face’ because it’s like the popular crowd dressing up like geeks for Halloween. Ugh.
I agree with you 100%
The early seasons were obviously laughing AT these pompous, dumb nerds and the animosity felt harsh. We were supposed to feel bad for Penny - trying her best to help these socially inept losers - she's our bimbo with the Heart of Gold, trying to teach these poor, stunted boys how to talk to women like the real grown ups they should be at their age.
It was super mean spirited towards everyone it depicted, and I watched it for more seasons than I care to admit because I liked Johnny Galecki.
It has imbued me with a certain anger. I spent years wanting to like it, and it just kept telling me why it hated me and everything I enjoyed.
I can agree that could be one take... But also don't find it to be that different than literally any other sitcom. Situational Comedy is the point and differentiation is the game. The writers found an area that hasn't been explored as much and then capitalized. I am a smart, nerdy person (male) but I realize that the joy of that moniker is exactly what the show kind of portrays, i.e. there are less smart nerdy people than not. And often ppl who are really intelligent and surrounded by other ppl who are also intelligent can kind of lose sight of that... Either on purpose or by accident.
I remeber when it launched here. I watched the first two episodes, hated the laughed at feeling and stopped. But at work it was all people talked about and it was horrible since it just made it even more isolating since I knew most of them had no idea about geek or need.
I think for a lot of young people, it's easy to fall into the trap of "you can't judge this too harshly because things were different back then."
But as someone who was an adult when TBBT came out, people criticized it for the exact same reasons then. I was a nerdy college student when it came out, and not only did i dislike it, most people I knew also disliked it. The common feeling at the time is that it wasn't a show for nerdy young people, it was a show for boomers to laugh at nerdy young people.
I was teen when it came out and I can tell LOADS of teens in my area hated this show. It was popular only with old people.
I always said that the writers never made Sheldon canonically autistic because him being just a "quirky" neurotypical guy made their jobs easier: that way they could make Sheldon the butt of jokes without seeming like they where bullying the neurodivergent community, but also this way at any moment they could just give Sheldon character development moments of overcoming his neurotic traits by sheer power of how much the people in his life matter to him without having to go to therapy, or take medications, or get long treatments with the help and guidance of professionals, or worse, being unable to ever overcome an specific quirk because that's just how his brain is and nothing can be done to change it... but they definitively took a lot of inspiration from autistic people when writting Sheldon
very underrated comment! 👍
This very much comes across as someone who was ten watching the show originally. You make good points, but these criticisms have always existed. It was always misogynistic. It was always shallow nerd representation. Lorre so obviously hated his characters, especially Penny. It's incredibly anachronistic to think these are just modern opinions.
The Office wasn't as offensive, because the characters were meant to be more realistic. And people really were and are that dumb. We were supposed to say "oh I know a Michael, an Angela, a Stanley", and we were even supposed to grow to appreciate their pathos and identify with parts of their lives. But they weren't put on a pedestal like the characters in BBT, where we literally were told this character is smart, this character is dumb, etc.
Agreed. 2007 wasn't that long ago culturally. I'd say it isn't that people only now realize there is sexism, racism, etc. in the show (if only for laughs). It's just that people were more tolerant of it back then.
I really disagree "The office" is as problematic as TBBT. In the office we are supposed to laugh AT the characters being problematic and out of touch, and not agree and laugh at their problematic takes
Have you watched that retrospective about Married with Children? It talks a lot about a show with a pitch muddy as to whether you're supposed to laugh at the bigotry, or applaud the bigotry for the sake of the joke. I definitely know people who were laughing because they heard the backwards ideologies they were taught echoed in the show, whereas I thought it was funny/slightly cheap that most jokes weren't about timing and subversion but were about topics. Based on the one sentence you typed I think you'd like the watch, I think it was posted by Jose
I think that you're supposed to laugh at the characters being misogynistic in TBBT too, honestly. Like: they all get comeuppance for their sexism in the show, a lot of which is comedic violence at their expense.
@@Woynich unfortunately, that’s not what actually happened with the show, even if that was its intention
@@Woynich The only time I remember such a thing happening is when Howard was confronted by Penny for awful behaviour towards her, for which she had to apologise by the end of the episode. Other times, it's mostly taken for laughs, if I recall.
@@Woynich i havent watched tbbt only those clips on shorts. when michael scott be misogynistic its because he is, its part of the character and youre supposed to hate it. because hes THAT kind of boss we all know and hate. so far from ive seen from tbbt they treat penny like she's inferior because she like pop culture, but you cant hate the characters for treating her like she's genuinely stupid! theyre nerdy scientists so they cant be wrong! is the vibe i get from it. (i can be wrong cuz i havent watch it)
As someone who was there when it launched and was the "correct" gender and age demographic it was targeting, it was still a bad and insufferable show even at the time. To the point where my friends and I would always ask who was actually watching the show.
THIS! Comedy is INCREDIBLY SUBJECTIVE. The reason theres "not a lot of explanations for why it's bad" is because you can't really explain why something isn't funny. Sometimes you can point at poorly structured jokes or bad comedic timing or problematic humor, sure, but many other times it just comes down to the fact that you just dont personally find it funny. The reason BBT in particular gets so much hate tho is because it was SUCH a popular show that went on for so long people who didn't find it funny and didn't understand what others found funny about it got along together over that fact and it just kind of spread from there. It's not because we're "looking back from a modern context" it's because we've always found it unfunny and are realizing that so many people feel the same way and very vocally bonding over that fact online
old white people. thats who watch it
@chezmix64 Exactly. For some reason facebook think I love the show and is constantly shoving clip reels in my feed, and not once have I ever laughed at any of it.
I thought that I was the target demographic. I was a white, teenage boy who read comic books, played role-playing games, excelled in STEM and liked to watch sitcoms. I actively avoided the show after forcing myself to watch a few episodes. It wasn't even a passable show. It was an awful show.
I watched like the first three seasons and that was as much as I could stomach. I swear the writers must have had an ongoing competition of who could make Leonard the most insufferable man on TV.
As an autistic person myself, I can't stand Sheldon for a very simple reason: the punchline is always the same. We laugh at Sheldon whenever he misses a social cue, or whenever he gets mad because they changed his schedule, or when he gets too passionate for something in a weird way (yeah, autists like trains, isn't that funny?). I don't understand why neurotypicals find these things funny. For a lot of people, that's just the struggle of every day. Do we do the same for people with more visible disabilities? I'm not saying you can't make comedy about autism, just don't expect me to laugh when you do it in the most lazy, repetitive and boring way possible over and over and over.
Repeating the same joke in a loop almost sunds autistic.... But when is a bad/lame joke is just retarded.
It's not funny for neurotypicals either. It's funny for people that hate difference.
@@keerya4179 It was funny for neurotypicals, it is that now, everyone is moralist... but when nobody pointed how offensive it was, everyone laughed, is like in the 90s, everyone was laughing at the typical stereotype of a gay man being the joke of a movie, and now most of occidental population including neurotypical people and heterosexual people, could argue that "it is a bad joke" but it is just the wave of occidental moralism... as Latin Americans say, "anyway, the hypotenuse"
@@InsomniacSwallow The public has always been moralist and cultivating a holier-than-thou-attitude. It's just that our morals have changed. The "problematic" of today is the "blasphemic" of yesterday, in the sense that people lament a problem, not because they care about solving it, but to publicly show their own "moral superiority" and elevate themself in society.
As an autistic person, I never had difficulty laughing at Sheldon's ineptitudes, despite having often had similar problems. That's ultimately the core of cringe comedy, which is what Big Bang Theory is - laughing because you sympathise with someone's apparent discomfort or social faux pas.
As someone on the spectrum what rubs me the wrong way about Sheldon is the statement they make about not pathologising him with a diagnosis, that feels like something right out of autism speaks, also cause it feels more like the writers knew that they would have to stop making jokes about his autistic tendencies and they just had no idea about how to joke about autism without it being mean spirited
I’m curious what you thought of the jokes as they were. Did you find them mean spirited or funny (or both)?
When we got to that part of the video, I thought it maybe would’ve been better if the response was more along the lines of:
We didn’t have autism in mind when we started writing Sheldon, we were just writing a certain character with certain traits. At this point, all we can say is that Sheldon has not received an autism diagnosis.
Now I’m wondering if that would’ve been worse or if there was another option.
@billcox6791 why are you saying "we" as if you were one of the writers?
@@katyungodly I’m not one of the writers. The first “we” was just me writing conversationally as if those of “us” in this little thread had all watched the video together.
The other “we”’s are words I was suggesting the writers could’ve said instead. So, those are me writing “as if” I were one of the writers in the imagined scenario where they said something else or they had asked me what they might say.
The first “we” would more accurately be “I” since “you and the original commenter and I” did not actually watch this together.
What can you expect from people who find it "useful to utilize his aspergian traits but need to be able to move away from it if need" Jim Parsons said of the writers back in 2011
It's less that writers didn't know how to write jokes about autism without being mean-spirited. They just didn't want to have the responsibility to and thought insisting he isn't despite everyone reading it that way gave them a free pass.
As for this video giving them the it-was-a-different-time pass: it was being talked about in season one. I've seen the show creators addressing it as early as 2009, a decade before the show ended.
You say context of when the show aired, but I remember the show being diverse when it aired. Especially with those in nerdy spaces. It's a situation where there is no love of the subject matter from the creators and it's just there to be made fun of. I feel the show just came from a more mean spirited place and suffers for it overall.
to mock something with love you have to understand and appreciate it first. the writers do not understand or appreciate nerd culture so they just mock it mean spiritedly.
this content creator also doesnt understand or appreciate nerd culture if they are defending this heap publicly.
@@jimmjimmsthis video makes me slightly uncomfy lmao
@@elephorofonius me too lmfao
"If you watched these shows as they came out you probably would have had no issue with the content..."
Sorry, but you're wrong on that one. A lot of people did. Anyone with critical thinking did, it was widely known that it was problematic at the time.
😂😂 for who?
@@_UglyBarnacleclearly not you
I think the "context" issue she raises is less societal than it is personal. Sure, sexism is more widely unacceptable now, so it looks bad in hindsight. But there were plenty of critics pointing that out then. I think the bigger issue is that much of the audience was younger and immature enough to not notice or not care about the the problematic behaviors and jokes (and lafftrack) the show ran on.
Seinfeld and friends? The 2 most popular sitcoms of all time. You think all the people tuning in every week lacked critical thinking skills?
Or are you talking specifically about BBT? because the quote was about Seinfeld and friends
When the people who don't take the statement "Chuck said Sheldon isn't autistic" seriously
include Jim Parsons, perhaps don't take that statement seriously.
"I assumed he was, said I assumed he was, played him assuming he was. And though Chuck never confirmed, I was never directed otherwise"
I always felt that young Sheldon being decent makes bbt waaay worse
5:36 as a physicist, Sheldon's smugness when citing really unexceptional grad/undergrad textbook factoids felt unbearably forced.
As someone who was not 11 when BBT came out, I can tell you that a lot of us recognized then.
I understand that this video is about your lived experience, but it's a mistake to claim/believe that it was everyone's.
BBT was problematic in its time.
No big surprise though. The show runner was Chuck Lorre. That's his thing. Ever seen 2 and a half men?
I haven't. What happens in 2 and a half men?
@@summerstars7031 Basically you have loser divorced brother who normally is punching bag of a show, despite him being kind of decent character. Real star is his brother who can't keep his pants on, drinks a lot and is successful (for some reason) party man who is always set on pedestal to admire. Then there is divorced one fat son Jake who interacts with both of these. Then there is fat old woman called Bertha that is maid for the party man, and she takes no nonsense from anybody - her employer inclueded. It's more or less similar mean nonsense like Family Guy, though far less offensive ... it's less mean spirited show then BBT too.
I can understand these critiques of BBT, but as a self-described nerd who was already an adult when the show started (and had just received an undergraduate degree in physics), I can forgive the necessity for writers to gesture at topics beyond their expertise, or for the show's implicit politics to be representative of the mainstream at the time (though that needn't really be the case). The reason I hated it from the first time I sat through an episode on the insistence of friends who said "you'll love this!" is that it *very* obviously (if somewhat subtly) is laughing at and decidedly not *with* nerds. Sure, it humanizes them a bit, but in a "oh look how cute and funny that is" kinda way. Fuck that in its entirety. I'll compare to Star Trek (something whose politics have always been ahead of their time even when some of the politics of the earlier entries are obviously dated and problematic) -- 90% of the characters (esp main characters) in Trek are huge nerds. It's not weird. It's not notable. It's not cute. It's not funny. They are just devoted to science and/or whatever other topics interest them. Star Trek treats nerdiness with respect and BBT *never* has. BBT is a zoo exhibiting nerds, not an invitation to participate with us.
See, I immediately bounced off the show when I first learned about it. My family are a bunch of non-nerds (mom won't watch anything that "isn't real." If she watched a superhero movie she'd keep asking "but why are they wearing capes and flying? That's not real!") and they all laughed at the quirkiness of the characters, they sounded just like me, apparently! I didn't watch cable TV back then. So I did watch an episode after hearing them talk about how much it reminded them of me, and it just felt like the joke would be setup: Wolverine, Green Lantern, Spock,lord of the Rings? Punchline: Penny going: You're so weird! It just felt... yeah, insulting and shallow. Like they wanted to reference nerdy things, but it was not written by nerdy people. This was in maybe 2011, 2012? So it wasn't with the benefit of hindsight, I just didn't really like the humor. It felt like it was mocking nerdy or geeky people. And then later I would learn the word neurodivergent and see how the community was the butt of jokes and I went "yeah, reminds me of the Big Bang Theory"
I disagree so much right off the bat with the idea that the show "aged badly." Its from 2007, not the 80s, and that defence doesn't even work for the 80s, especially with shows like Boy Meets World, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Golden Girls all coming out pre-2000 and all having problematic elements, but every single one of them aged significantly better than the Big Bang Theory. Even Star Trek, (especially TNG) which the show heavily references and draws from, aged infinitely better than big bang, despite its problematic elements. "Big Bang Theory wasn't problematic in 2007" is such a bad take to have
have to disagree with the point that the jokes "have to land" with the average viewer as well, have you heard of the Simpsons? it's popular with mathematicians and has a lot of jokes that only math nerds would understand, because it can accept that most people won't get them, but still makes them anyway
@@ampisbadatthis I can't tell if you're talking about Futurama or are just plain wrong. The Simpsons was popular because it made jokes that were not niche, just targetted to younger audiences; in fact, that's one of the reasons why Futurama was cancelled so many times, because it's audience was too niche in comparison to the Simpsons.
@@ampisbadatthisI think you should rewatch the simpsons
@Zulkak1357 they had mathematicians and scientists in their writers room, wym I should rewatch it? I'm not saying that all of their jokes are maths based, or high brow for that matter, just an example of how it is possible to accurately represent a field and not alienate the common viewer and still be wildly successful
@andalilbitqueer nope, Simpsons, I made that clear, just look up the Simpsons and maths (or for a specific moment, Homer Disproves Fermats Last Theorem) and see the vast amount of results talking about blink and you'll miss it moments or entire scenes and at least one episode dedicated to maths topics, albeit, most are tongue and cheek, but clearly still accurate
I'd like to point out something that is often overlooked. People often point out that this show is sexist and racist, but it's also fundamentally unkind. Those "friends" are constantly laughing at each other. Demean each other. If your friend demeans another, even if it was a good joke, the correct response is to not laugh and point out that it was not a kind thing to do.
When I was younger I liked the show, but I also didn't have any real friends at the time because I was 12. Now when I watch it, I acknowledge that the mean jokes are funny and well crafted, but they're still mean. This isn't real friendship. Who in their right mind would want a friend like Sheldon or Wolowitz?
"Those "friends" are constantly laughing at each other. Demean each other."
Sometimes I wonder if there are really close friends out there who have a 10ft pole up theirs arse and treat each other like colleagues who barely know each other.
I HATE the surface level pop culture references in BBT. I've never heard any of their jokes that couldn't be looked up easily. If they're real nerds, they should have brought up something like Deeter, or Rot Lop Fan, or Ch'p.
Right? For me it was how they'd always make jokes about how Aquaman sucks, which hasn't been the opinion of anyone who's read DC comics since at LEAST his harpoon-handed '90s days 😎
@@BranchingTangents Absolutely! Way too many people saw the lame Super Friends version, and then never read any of his comic appearances for decades afterwards. I HAVE read them, and l've thought Aquaman was cool since 1998. Justice League and Justice League Unlimited only furthered that love, because *their* writers had actually read the comics and wrote about an accurate Aquaman. An awesome ruler who knows sacrifice, and can stand up to a coup.
I always kind of felt like it fit into a certain part of the cultural zeitgeist of the time in that sense though. This show was on a time when stores were selling T-shirts with the Tardis, the Enterprise, and Serenity all thrown onto them, just trying to throw as much at the wall as they could and trying to see what would stick. The whole “understand this reference, audience?” type of thing was big then, for someone reason.
I really empathize with your perspective here. It's hard when you fall in love with something as a child without the required perspective and wisdom to view something critically, and then grow up to realize that it's actually low-quality content (whether that be due to the execution of the content, or the content itself being bigoted/ill-considered/etc.) and no one has sympathy for your enjoyment of and/or nostalgia for it. The urge to defend it is strong, because you feel like you're defending yourself, in a way. You recognize the issues, but you don't want to let go of the things you held dear since you were young. It's also worth noting that I, too, highly enjoyed this show in middle school, and followed it fairly closely to a point (not to the end, but to a point).
That all being said...The Big Bang Theory simply isn't very good. We can call it subjective opinion or a change of context all we want, but it's difficult to make a real case for this show. You literally just have to watch it for yourself to see that the "offensive jokes" aren't even jokes. Comedy can most certainly be offensive, but there is an art to it beyond just saying offensive things and pressing the button to cue the audience to laugh (though the segment about the actual function of laugh tracks was legitimately interesting and a fair viewpoint, if underdeveloped). I don't think TBBT was ever interested in figuring that out, and as a result it comes off as just unapologetically sexist/racist/homophobic/etc. I understand you're basically just sharing your casual opinion and opening a conversation, and I wouldn't dream of holding you to the same standard as a professional essay writer, but that's a hell of a thing to gloss over as a product of the times.
There's more I could say, but you're getting piled on enough and I don't care to contribute further. I just want to say, yes, you can like things that aren't good, and again, I have SO much empathy for being defensive when you like something that it seems like everyone else hates with a passion. There's just a very stark difference between "this is dated/has poor writing but I enjoy it anyway, to each their own" and "these characters can't go more than a minute without saying something bigoted and are framed as if we are meant to agree and find it funny as well, and I think it IS funny". A ten year old can say that, but a twenty-something has to learn to draw a line somewhere. It is what it is.
not a scientist, but I do have a literature degree, and when one of the jokes was "Sheldon states the plot of HG Wells The Time Machine" *laugh track* I knew then and there that I wasn't the target audience lmao
A lot of people are talking about the points about Sheldon (ableism/autism rep) and Penny (misogyny) but I want to point out something that I've only seen touched on by my fellow south Asians: the uncomfortable feeling of racist writing surrounding Raj. Personally I'm Indian and a few Indian creators have talked about how in the 2000s and even up until relatively recently on TV and in film Indian men (and god help you if you were looking for Indian woman rep because it was Kelly Kapoor and nothing else) were portrayed as "either Apu or Raj." Either the south asian/indian man runs a convenience store/hotel, or he's an immigrant scientist of some stripe, and in both cases they get harped on for having a culture incongruous with the white-american hegemony.
This even extended into kids shows, Disney Chanel or Nickelodeon often would have the "geeky, unattractive Indian kid" as a side character. Even as a kid without much knowledge about racism, I thought it was--at best-- boring and probably not very fun for the kids who had to play these characters.
@@hazeld3703 It wasn't fun for the indian kids watching, either. I was already a pretty geeky kid so I did see myself somewhat, but it just felt so mean and wrong for that to be how people see you. It becomes a sense of- is that all my family is- all I am- to people? Is my family the weird one that people whisper about? It's not the most derogatory or violent stereotype out there, but it is constraining, and it still hurts kids' self-image to see. It didn't help that that was the 2000s and being south asian/brown in general in the 2000s was a minefield. Kids would parrot islamophobia from the Iraq war to you regardless of who you were. People used to give me dirty looks because my name sounded traditionally arabic to the untrained ear...I was like, ten or twelve. A lot of people have these experiences. So at the time, to south asian kids, you were either Apu, Raj, or the Enemy of the State. That's something no kid should have to realize, the complete lack of choice between being the object of people's laughter- laughed AT, not WITH- or the object of their hatred.
My problem with these US series is not the nature of the jokes, but the overall mindset: It is very annoying to see how the character's storylines inevitably forces them to follow a path of "social normalization" - they marry, have kids, as if the series considered their antics like a "problem" to solve. In contrast, it is interesting to compare these american series with british ones, specifically the Big Bang theory with the IT Crowd - another series that shows a group of nerdy outcasts. They live in a world that is even more absurd than them, which makes the series way more subversive.
Pretty confident Roy and Jen both want to be socially normalised.
The difference is that they fail. Because American humour is, ultimately, kinder. It wants it's characters to have happy endings.
It's funny you bring up the IT crowd, because I always see it praised after criticism of TBBT, invariably criticism that's also applicable to the IT crowd, in a collective lack of self awareness.
@@HALLish-jl5mo that's another aspect of it, they fail indeed. And I guess the american "kindness" is what truly annoys me. It crowd is only brought up because it is about "nerds", so I guess it is easy to bring up. But when we see other UK sitcoms- From Father Ted to Spaced, we can often see an absurd, cruel world around the protagonists. So in a way, it morally forgives the failures of the characters to fit in, because it would make them humanely worse...
We do see some successes, though, like when Moss become a Countdown Master... :-)
As someone who graduated high school with a terrible speech impediment during the early seasons of the show, I can tell you that Barry kripke was never a contextual issue.
I had a friend in highschool with a speech impediment as well and I agree. Barrys depiction was also the most uncomfortable to watch for me, especially because he was introduced as a side character and one could thus predict that he'd never have any "good" moments to make the audience be more empathic with him and his struggles 😕
I feel like you ignored THE two major issues with TBBT
The first has been addressed in comments already, so Ill keep it brief (however it DOES have an impact on the second issue). The show, at least in the early seasons, was written as a show for "normal people" to point and laugh at the nerds.
The second point I think is the most troubling. Howard, and to a lesser extent Raj and Sheldon, were absolutely awful people. To each other for sure, but most importantly towards women. The argument of "It was a product of its time" doesnt excuse the fact that Howard used a government satellite to spy on women sunbathing on their roof, then lied in order to break into their house. It also doesnt excuse Howard for putting a hidden camera in Penny's bedroom, or strapping a GoPro onto a remote controlled car and literally chasing Penny into her apartment to look up her skirt. Howard portrayed less like a "quirky nerdy incel" and more like a genuine sex pest and possible criminal.
You seem to have fundamental misunderstandings with your comparisons between TBBT and Seinfeld, Friends, The Office, and Sunny in Philly. Sunny in Philly and The Office were spritual successors to Seinfeld in the sense that, the awful people were SUPPOSED to be awful people. You were supposed to laugh AT the awful people rather than sympathise with them. The series finally of Seinfeld was literally a trial that showcased all the awful things the 4 of them did over the years and ended with them sitting in jail for a year. Sunny in Philly was much more obvious about its intentions, and The Office made a distinction between characters you were supposed to like (Jim and Pam) those you were supposed to laugh at (Michael and Dwight).
The problem with TBBT is not only that Howard is a borderline predator, but that Lenoard observes exactly how awful Howard is, and constantly enables his behavior. If Howard was the Barney (HIMYM) of the group, it would be slightly more understandable, but hes not. The show goes out of its way to excuse his sexual harassment by saying "Its okay, hes a nerd, he doesnt know any better".
The absolute epitome of this (and the low point of the show as a whole) was the S2 episode 12 where Penny punches Howard. After MONTHS of harassing Penny and not taking several NOs for an answer, Penny FINALLY blows up and tells Howard just how creepy his behavior was, and sent him into a depressive episode.
Then THE SHOW ITSELF sided with Howard, having Penny go into his bedroom and apologize for setting a proper boundary. And immediately after Penny explains why his behavior was not okay, Howard responds by trying to kiss her, resulting in the aforementioned punch that he 100% deserved. And after ALL OF THAT, Howard quips about believing that hes going to havr "pity sex" with Penny.
Im not sure if youre aware of this, but casual sexual harassment isnt okay in 2024, nor was it okay in 2007. The fact that THE SHOW makes the victim be the first to apologize and sympathises with the predator speaks volumes.
I watched every episode TBBT from season 1-9. Hell, I at one point had all seasons on blu-ray.
Its okay to look at something you once loved and realize its not okay and never really was okay. Its okay to grow as a person and look with a critical eye rather than a nostalgic one.
I couldnt care less whether the sciences is accurate or whether the laugh track is "stale". I care about glorifying predatory behavior.
As much as i think this is a competently made video essay I find myself disagreeing with the content at every turn.
For context i have hated BBT since day one. It immediately struck me as a show where nerds are the butt of the joke but in really unfunny ways. I was in my mid to late twenties when the show began and on paper should be part of the target demographic but it felt like it was made to appeal to older audiences who wanted to laugh at geeks who read comic books and don’t know how to talk to girls. By that stage that stereotype was completely played out. That was around the time when nerdy was starting to become cool and BBT to me was behind the curve where Community was ahead of the curve. In the late 2000s the way both BBT and community was advertised on network TV put me off because both were promoted the same way. I only started watching Community a year ago and instantly became a huge fan and regret not watching it earlier. I’ve tried watching BBT to make sure i wasn’t missing out and I find it insufferable in the same way I find other Chuck Lorre shows to be. His sense of comedy just never connected with me.
Oh and about the laugh track, the tides were shifting all the way back in the nineties. The Simpsons is the show i would cute as being most singularly responsible for the eventual demise of the laugh track. For me personally it opened my eyes to why laugh tracks are manipulative and unnecessary. Watching Golden era Simpsons in the nineties i was able to discover the jokes for myself and I valued them all the more because I was able to make the connections of what the joke actually was on my own without having a laugh track telling me what I’m supposed to laugh at. Yes I’m aware that the nineties was still a time when multi camera sitcoms were huge and that the biggest sitcoms of that decade had a laugh track and nobody complained. But rewatching episodes of Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier the thing i find most jarring is the laugh track. It got lost in the nostalgia but because the use of laugh track has fallen off since and i haven’t missed it I kinda forgot that those shows used a laugh track. With a well written show like Frasier the laugh track doesn’t stop the funniest jokes from landing but the laugh track doesn’t really add anything and the jokes would land just as well if not better if Frasier was made without a live studio audience. And i much preferred the newer breed of sitcom like arrested development and community and Malcom in the Middle and I’m glad that they made the multi camera sitcom seem bland and outdated. Which makes the decision to make BBT as a traditional multi cam sitcom in 2007 seem antiquated. I had always found it baffling that BBT has remained as popular as it was when its sucked so hard for a multitude of reasons.
So the one thing that ages poorly these days is the fact the characters that start dating lose their nerdy hobbies as the show develops (except Sheldon). In the first 3 seasons the main 3 men have hobbies and passions for contemporary nerdy activities, but abandon a lot of this starting with the wedding of Bernadette in season 3. The show starts to become a more normal sitcom after this point and the needs that don’t date after season 3 (rhaz and comic book store owner) start to devolve as characters compared to their friends who are dating. That part bugged me about the show beyound the misogyny (you can still be passionate for the things that make you, you while having a life with someone else or without someone else around.).
I always hated this aspect of the show. It felt like everyone was just being pushed into the mainstream for their character growth.
Despite all the comforting trappings of cosplay and video games this is not a show with any affection for nerds.
i can’t speak on much of the offensive nature of jokes aside from the sexist ones, but honestly as someone who exists in the nerdy space that the show tried to portray, the sexist jokes although bad for the show to have aren’t far from what is actually said or believed in those spaces sadly.
Constantly belittled by others in the spaces, or being given a favoured treatment in hopes of getting something in return; not good fun for a show but not far from how it is sometimes when you get men who actually don’t interact with women regularly
I agree and I think that actually points out, what makes this show so different from something like always sunny. Both shows have main characters that behave like assholes and includes a lot of offensive jokes but with always sunny the point is to call those kinds of people out and laugh at them but in Big Bang theory we are meant to be laughing with them when they say something offensive. If they wrote the show to call out that behavior and those people the jokes would hold up much better.
I think a big reason Big bang theory gets more criticism is because the laugh track is used in this sitcom. The way it's trying to reinforce certain bad jokes feels really manipulative. Lot of the other sitcoms you mentioned don't have this aspect and I do think especially in the office. The characters that say the worst things are written to be ignorant. They aren't written to be aspirational in any way, but it feels like the audience is often on board with all of the worst misogyny and racism that happens to be in Big bang theory because the laugh track goes off. Signaling and intention for there to be a joke. I think sitcoms without laugh tracks tend to age a little bit better because we're not always on the side of the person making the insensitive joke. Perhaps some of those it comes can be reframed to an extent.
I respect your differing opinion, but I disliked the show while it was running, and to me it has only grown worse in hindsight. How I Met Your Mother especially it's early seasons, can still make me laugh, because the characters are likeable, even though some jokes haven't aged super well. But I always found the characters on the Big Bang Theory to be absolutely insufferable. People sometimes compare me to Sheldon and it makes me want to jump out a window
Re: the laugh track - I think the bingewatch model of streaming also may have made the laugh track more apparent to newer viewers. I can absolutely see how listening to it for hours could get very annoying.
Also, with regards to MASH's laugh track, the cast themselves actually banded together to get it removed completely in the later seasons because the show's tone had shifted so much to the dramatic that they didn't feel it proper to have it in anymore. I think the earlier seasons with the track are fine, it never bothered me, but I can see why they'd think that.
You can (or could, at least) also actually get the earlier seasons without the laugh track on dvd. It’s a menu option (idk if it’s on all disks or only special ones though) Plus I think mash aired in the us w/o the track (could be wrong on that one,, I’m very much American T-T)
I meant uk,,, autocorrect T-T
yes uk aired initially w no laugh track and was considered too dark. the laugh track was limited but it wasnt something they ..."banded together to get rid of"..... it just didnt fit the feel of the show anymore. it also was only limited, it was never entirely removed.
I feel like the point about the geek references being of the time would stand up stronger if the show didn't run well into the same time as the Avengers Endgame hype. Like Sure in the early seasons nobody knew who Iron Man was, but the fact the show never updated its lexicon with the times made it more grating as it went on. Not to mention the Elon Musk worship...
I feel like everyone got the Elon Musk worship wrong until he started giving himself away so hard more recently.
This show is not "aged". The show is racist, sexist & ableist BECAUSE THOSE TYPE OF VIEWERS WILL LAUGH AT THAT!
People who are hurt by the jokes and stereotypes will not watch, which is why the show started trying to appeal to wider audience a couple of seasons later.
This show felt like it was stepping BACKWARDS in progression, which was thoroughly disappointing.
Personally, my reason to dislike The Big Bang Theory is that the comedy of the show is not about nerd and geek jokes, but instead the nerds and the geeks are the joke. To me, a good example is when they play Mystic Warlords of Ka'a... there is no actual game mechanics to be seen, instead it is more how a group of geeks, playing games like Magic the Gathering looks like, from the perspective of non-geeks who don't have a clue of what are those types of games.
I believe the reason why many nerds and geeks do like the show, is because it has a lot of accurate references about nerd and geek subcultures all around. Objects related to superheroes, mentions to geek games, a board with actual chemical formulas, some famous scientific books laying around, geek hobbies, T-Shirts with some logos or phrases, perhaps even a special guest. To me, geeks are perhaps the group that loves easter eggs the most. The show gives them that, and it is likely that no other sitcom did something like that, at that level, before.
12:50 its not a criticism of there being pauses, it's supposed to show that without a laugh track queuing you up to laugh, it's hard to find the sow funny
If you cut off the laugh track, then you should also cut the pause.
The pause is there so that the actors can wait for the laugh to subside, as explained in the video.
@@a.h.s.3006In fairness, even in the video she admits that without the laugh, it's sometimes difficult to tell what the joke was supposed to be. I also agree with that.
The thing is, I’ve seen clips of Seinfeld without the laugh track, and the jokes usually still land. When they don’t, you can at least tell that it was supposed to be a joke.
Part of that is probably Seinfeld being a stand up comic instead of an actual sitcom actor, but either way, the point is that even without the show telling you it’s funny, it’s still funny.
There were jokes in the big bang theory? That's news to me
the one from physics books everywhere something something spherical cow in vacuum tho its stolen
yeah that is stem folklore at this point, it's like a mythical animal
You know, the old, always funny:
Nerd statement #1
Nerd statement #2
Laugh Track
I don't remember any dialog from the show, but if I had to recreate a sample, it'll be like:
Why didn't they just beam the away team back?
Remember, there was a Tachyon storm interfering with their instruments.
*laugh track *
I think a huge part why i stopped liking big bang was the reruns. It seemed like there were 5 channels that constantly played the first 3 seasons, and as i got older the grossness of the misogyny was just repeated with no character growth. It was also a show i never really saught out, so i didnt see the later seasons, especially after moving out of my parents house and loosing cable tv.
Tbh there’s just a fundamental difference in how shows like Community and Always Sunny, and to a lesser extent The Office, handle offensive jokes compared to BBT. The main difference is that the other shows are funny - this covers a lot of blemishes. But it also comes from the fact that the person saying the offensive joke is usually either A) villainised, and it’s funny because of shock value of a bad person saying a bad thing or B) authentically feels like they are written as part of the group that is being joked about. It makes all the difference.
this video makes the big bang theory seem more intresting than it actually is
yeah when i was a white kid i never saw the sexism and racism in the show but now that i realize it it really taints the show especially in the early seasons
I honestly thought that Young Sheldon was a romanticized/mostly fictional recounting of Sheldon's childhood to make it look better for his book, because in Big Bang Theory, he has kinda extreme negative reactions to when Leonard and Penny are arguing and randomly trauma dumps on the other characters about his family or things that happened to him as a kid. But that's just what I thought.
Makes more sense not to mention the writers of Young Sheldon didn’t exactly want to write a bad childhood
Sheldon isn't autistic. He's a jerk. Huge difference. He's an authoritarian. It's not that he can't understand other people's emotions, he doesn't care. He doesn't WANT to be human. He wants to actually be the robot overlord of the world. That's not autism. Seriously, analyse BBT with understanding that Sheldon is the villain, penny is the hero and Lenard is the damsel in distress
This is an interesting take but Penny is freinds with Sheldon
I think he is autistic AND a jerk. They are not mutually exclusives but he does have many autistic traits
@dazzlingdexter5060 yeah it's a comedy show. The villain has to actually be harmless or it becomes drama. Also everyone gets married at the end. He's the villain but not evil per say
Young Sheldon starts off with him saying he's always loved trains. Ain't no fuckin way he's not autistic
@@zackwalker1789 you don't have to be autistic to love trains. You can just love trains. Rainman didn't like trains. He was fixated on baseball. And he actually was autistic.
I saw a lot of myself in Sheldon at that age, as a "gifted" autistic child. I think that was the first representation that i saw that felt, albeit flawed, relatable to my experiences and attitude. Finding out that they outright denied his diagnosis instead of just letting people have this autistic character if they wanted him to be one is just disappointing
I feel the same way, I think have more self-awareness and am more conscious of my actions impact on others than Sheldon, but boy some things really do hit home hard for me with him.
From what I recall, one of the creators is on the spectrum, and didn't want to formally give him a label of autism because it would have made it much harder to not then get wrapped up in that diagnosis - I think if they had it'd have even more controversy too as would have had a bunch of autism-moms types up in arms that they're criticising him for autistic traits.
I think they made it pretty damn clear that he is though, so I'm pretty comfortable just assuming he's probably autistic and taking him as one of our own :D
I heard that them denying it is because they knew it would be considered offensive to irl autistic people
I was a gifted kid with undiagnosed autism & sometimes put into academic situations where I'd have to be with kids several years older than me. For this reason, I cannot watch Young Sheldon without feeling a little PTSD about it.
They couldn't acknowledge the diagnosis without admitting that their whole show was built on the idea of belittling and demeaning a neurodivergent character.
@@patrickmuller7334 exactly
Is the show good? No. Did I like the show? Yeah. I think I have a little nostalgia factor. When my dad was sick and in the hospital all the time and my mom was with him, my kid would put on Young Sheldon and said it was their ‘comfort show’. We lived with my parents to help my disabled elderly mom take care of my dad. So I think the shows just are a thing from that time period in our lives.
You nailed the issues and what made it a workable show, despite the flaws. It’s nice to see someone not hating on something that was popular just because.
Young Sheldon was way better than big bang
"Something can be enjoyable without necessarily being good" is something I totally agree with. I always think of 100% Wolf as my favorite mediocre movie. It's not that good, but it's not like I'm laughing at how bad it is either. It's just very entertaining to me for reasons I cannot fathom
Honestly, what killed the show for me was the first Wisecrack video. I grew up loving Two and a Half Men, but something always kinda rubbed me the wrong way with Big Bang Theory. It was that Wisecrack video that made it clear to me: how inauthentic the jokes were. Removing the laugh track made it clear that Sheldon seemingly hated being around these people. The jokes weren't really about the science or nerd stuff involved, but just pointing out, "Hey look! Nerd shit! HAHAHAHAHA".
But besides the Wisecrack video making me realize things, Sheldon was a major sticking point for me. I went to college and graduated while the show was airing and you know....I've met folks on the spectrum who were on the spectrum, and Sheldon would not survive in science. The dude does not collaborate well, and no matter how smart he is, he's also just an awful person, diagnosis or otherwise. And even if he was given an actual diagnosis, it shouldn't shield him from criticism that he's just kind of a bad person.
I think that's quite a harsh take on Sheldon. He's grating, he's annoying, but he never *MEANS* to be mean. He simply can't understand it. This is a fundamental part of his arch of his character, right up to the finale when he's accepting his nobel. While I won't pretend all autistic people think it's a good representation, a good portion do heavily relate to his struggles. As someone who's diagnosed, and with a number of friends on the spectrum too I actually think it's good to see some of the very real struggles with friendships/relationships portrayed, most importantly that he has friends who yes, get understandably annoyed and frustrated with his behaviour, but still fundamentally understand he's not a bad person.
@@dansgalaxy my wife and I work in academia and we've each published. Sheldon is an absolute caricature of an academic in the spectrum. If he were in real life, I highly doubt there'd be many other PIs who'd want to work with him. The dude is rather authoritarian. Science is all about cooperation and Sheldon's being on the spectrum might explain his behavior, but it doesn't justify it. There's plenty of folks on the spectrum who collaborate with other labs just fine no fuss, but Sheldon has had entire episodes about him looking down on women in STEM.
@@GreekDudeYiannis still reeling at the idea that anyone could enjoy the putrid misogynistic garbage that was 2and a half men.
@@dansgalaxy "This is a fundamental part of his arch of his character"
Many people who hate BBT are clearly used to 'normal' American sitcoms; where off-putting character's are artificially padded with charisma/quirkiness. I love BBT for being the exact opposite. Everyone takes the, painfully realistic, amount of time to work their shit out. And are permitted to be realistically frustrating and obnoxious all the way along.
There's a difference between bad and frustrating.
Even when it was airing, I did laugh, but the amount of frustration outweighed the comedy for me.
It always felt off, inauthentic... like you said, a show for geeks written by normal people... saved by the bell style exaggeration for cheap comedy rather than intelligent humour. I wanted to like it, but in a way I can't fully describe with words, it felt... "wrong"...
Glad you can enjoy it, I still enjoy the Cosby show.
But it feels to actual geeks like they're adding to our lifetime of bullying by mocking us in a way we don't actually relate to, and aren't interested in tolerating anymore.
Well-made video, by the way! I know criticism can flood in without any positivity, so i at least wanted to say you did a solid job making this!
My problem with BBT is that they are so toxic to each other. Seriously, I would not want any of them as friends. I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive or I have different standards or if I'm right.
No no, you are 100 correct......they can be huge dicks to one another
I feel like the expectation that "The guys are supposed to be smart and Penny is supposed to be dumb" does the writing of the show a disservice. It takes plenty of chances to show that even people who are scientists can be pretty dumb at points and there are plenty of ways where Penny is smarter than them. I think a lot of the jokes of the show are based on "People you perceive as or expect to be smart have their own flaws that make them pretty dumb in some ways". You're not supposed to think "Wow, Sheldon is a true genius who really gets life", but rather "Man, how can a guy like that be so damn dumb?"
The show was about making FUN of smart people. The actors were great. The Writing was good at making normal people feel like they were in on science jokes. The early jokes especially just insulted nerds. You were too young to see that.
TBBT isnt that far from the "I f'ing love science" and other pages that were famous on FB / Twitter / Tumblr at the time.
The ones that got extremelly dogpilled with the "you dont love science, you're just looking at it's butt" jokes.
It was a good way to make people interested in science, but it hardly had any kind of migration to any real science search. People just loved to be on the peak of the Dunning Krueger Effect.
Bro thought they cooked 💀
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nerd and a scientist like the characters in the Big Bang Theory. It was a comedy so I really enjoyed it as well. I actually like the laugh track because it's immersive, it gives you a sense of community at a time when I had nobody to laugh with in real life.
That's sweet I watched and liked the show
I think this is the first comment that actually supports the show having said that I can go to the show or just bad parodies of what it’s actually like to be nerdy scientist It was a struggle for people who didn’t know he was actually like to be either of those
12:35 nope, the biggest critique is the adorkable misogyny.
I'm sure the show is fine. I just never personally cared for it. I tried to watch it with humor, but as a gay, black scientist none of the jokes felt good to me. They always felt mean, which is fine, but for someone else to watch and laugh at. I think "exclusionary" is the word I'm looking for. Meh, that's just my opinion.
6:25 Uhm, It's actually a FILM THEORY 😂
Purely anecdotal but a friend of mine watched BBT from season one and I was roped into watching it too, and watched new episodes as they aired. I was 26 at the time, if that’s relevant at all. I complained then about the laugh track, as did several of my friends. I remember watching an edited version of a clip in 2008 with the laughing removed, too. You can still find Reddit posts from 2010 with similar clips. Also, being a nerd with nerd friends we all really looked down on the surface-level nerd talk. Like the segment where they talk about the absurdity of console names between the various generations of X-Box. It was old news to us by that point so the joke fell super flat. Anyway, that’s just some perspective from someone in the middle of the target demo experiencing the show and its evolution in real time
I have to disagree with some of it. I'm autistic like noticeable, so I need more support than others, and I'll never forgive how the Big Bang made people so comfortable laughing at autistic traits they say "well Sheldon isn't autistic" but they write him as autistic they may not mean it but the autistic traits are there and the traits are there to laugh at not as a "that's just how they are" it's like it's to mock autistic people the laugh track is there om cue when he misses the social cues when he awkward all the autistic traits he has are laughed at and also there's the actor of Amy Mayim Bialik is a Zionist she supports Israels genocide on Palestine she believes that Israel has a right to protect itself (Whitch it doesn't as its an apartheid state state) she can distinguish the difference between criticising the Israel and antisemitism and idk if she's gone to Hebrew school when she was younger but if she did then I can totally empathise and understand why she'd lean to Zionism that is a big part in a lot of Hebrew schools but she's older now and after being exposed to all the information there is and the evidence there is no excuse to still be supportive of a genocidal Settler colonial regime that is Israel big bang just has a lot of issues that make me personally uncomfortable watching it
I think the whole "I'm not X my mom had me tested." is intended as kind of a joke. Imagine the sort of person Sheldon's mom would have recruited to test him given her hyper-evangelical background. I think the implication was that Sheldon is actually atypical but undiagnosed.
Veeery interesting to see this comment section, because it's pretty objectively true that the show was a success. That means people watched it and enjoyed it... and yet it's nearly impossible to find anyone agreeing with the defenses stated or coming up with their own, just an occasional mention of themselves enjoying it.
That leads me to the conclusion that BBT is hard to defend, a guilty pleasure of sorts. I'd be more interested in hearing what people like about the show rather than context for why it's disliked, but it would be hard to find someone being completely honest on what they like about it, rather than only saying the things they enjoy that the general public would find acceptable.
I was a geeky teen when it came out; not a physics nerd but definitely a bookworm and movie buff who ended up going to Film School (then to Grad school and currently planning to get my PhD when I get the funding for it). And what I enjoyed about it was how relatable the characters were: Sheldon being structured and missing social cues, Leonard wanting to be popular and socially accepted, Raj being shy… I identified with them and fell “seen”/understood, and even (partially) represented. As a woman, I’d have to say I found Howard pretty creepy and the representation of geeky/nerdy women was certainly lacking, especially in the first few seasons. A lot of people are saying that the humour was at the expense of the nerds but I never had that feeling, on the contrary: as an introverted bookworm with an anxiety diagnosis (and currently undergoing a neurodivergence assessment) I felt seen. A lot of people in the comments are saying the show presents the bad behaviour (sexism, homophobia, racism) in a good light but I always felt that this wasn’t the case, and that it was always pretty obvious and explicit that, for example, Howard was being a creep when he spied on women. Maybe it’s just me projecting my own moral views on the show, but I always felt it was similar to Married With Children, in which Al Bundy is sexist, misogynistic and fatphobic and pretty much every character in that show is a shitty person with no one to call them out but we the audience know better. That being said, I can now see that a lot of the jokes and the way they were delivered were inappropriate and offensive. When I rewatched the show as an adult I was able to detect things that I wouldn’t have included if I had been the showrunner or things that could’ve been done better in terms of making it clear that these actions are condemnable. But I can still find a lot of joy in the show and even more in Young Sheldon, which I think portrays all the characters in a more well-rounded and multi-faceted way.
@@ConstanzaRigazio Except you are meant to LAUGH at Al Bundy and Peggy and all others in that show. They were caricatures to laugh at. BBT on the other hand wants you to join their terrible awful characters and laugh at nerdy stuff instead. For a show that pretended to be for nerds, it was actively designed to mock nerds. And Howard being creep ain't just cutting it. In one episode Penny had to APOLOGIZE him for yelling at him and calling him a creep for spying at her, because his feelings were hurt. Oh I am sorry, mr creep please spy on naked women more next time. What type of logic is this ? Show wanted you to scorn Penny for 'overreacting' for being stalked ! Vile show.
Several previous replies touch on this, but TBBT was for the most part a show for normal people to laugh at the awkward nerds.
Some nerds watched it, too, which shows how starved we were for representation at the time, while many resented it, for good reasons.
Some other commenter imply that the show was also aimed at an older audience, but I can't confirm that.
Either way, the people taking the time to not only watch a TH-cam essay about a TV show but then take the time to write a comment are probably not older people enjoying a TV show that makes fun of nerds and their strange behavior...
Leonard isn't a "Nice guy" though.
On several points within the show he rejects Penny's advances because despite having feelings for her he doesn't want her to make mistakes or have sex with her under dubious circumbstances, like when she was drunk for example.
I truly think that Leopnard's flaws in that regard and strictly related to the writers limited and transactional views on relationships.
The show is very confidently wrong about a lot of things, like the supposed "plot hole" in Raiders Of The Lost Ark that is talked about as if it's an objective truth, or various other takes on science and geek stuff. Or that time when they had Elon Musk on the show and Howard was slobbing his knob like nobody's buisness. God that was horrible in hindsight...
It's telling that Leonards character is criticized for being a "nice guy", but the guys that Penny dates - or Penny herself - seem to be fine.
What exactly is the criticism in the first place - that he's nice to Penny because he's romantically interested in her? Yeah, what an incel.
I can't remember Leonard being unfriendly to women he's not interested in.
Exactly!
Hell, Leonard is presented on multiple occasions not as a guy that tries to get into Penny's pants transactionally but as someone that genuinely wants to help her or console her or express affection for her because he's just that type of guy. If anything, if you really get into it, Leonard does things for people because of his mother. She both taught him to do stuff for her in a very particular manner to the point that as an adult he viewed tolerating Sheldon as his duty (because who else is going to?) AND she deprived him of affection on such a level that he's both needy about it AND makes it very well-known when he likes or loves someone. Because he doesn't want to leave people guessing like Beverly did to him until the later seasons in which she finally told him she experimented on him because she loved him and found him fascinating.
Leonard is a very complex and compelling character in parts where the writers actually tried.
It's early seasons Howard that makes me wanna puke. God, every time he spoke with women present I winked because it was always some incel-ass pickup line. The only thing missing was a meltdown after he got rejecting and calling Penny a bich.
That’s why Malcom in the middle aged like fine wine.
I think the whole idea of not pathologizing is pretty hard when the label itself has a pathological stigma attached to it. The fact that it's a diagnosis, even the phrase "he HAS autism" implies a disease, a pathology. In 2007 this vocabulary would have stood out worse than the "dumb blonde" sexist jokes.
Chuck has a history of foregrounding marginalized groups rooted in empathy and I think this is why so far I've loved shows he produced. In Mom, one of the main characters is a middle-aged alcoholic woman. In one sub-plot, she gets an ADHD diagnosis and it's just heart-warming.
I can definitely imagine Sheldon coming out as autistic in 2022, refusing a medical diagnosis and everyone in the group going "duh". 1980s Texas healthcare, you know.
this video is really great. if i can give a little unasked-for advice, try not to rely so much on stock videos. you speak really confidently and intelligently, and if there wasnt any stock footage i would still be just as interested. your editing is really good with the use of videos and pictures from the actual show, and bts of the show etc. this was obviously well researched and really eloquently put, so ig just try not to be too afraid of losing the audiences interest if there isnt a new thing on screen every few seconds. loved this video and cant wait for more :]
Your point that BBT isn't a show for nerds actually brought me back to the days it was first broadcasted. It became the talk of the schoolyard, with my friend group quoting it all the time. I was probably the nerdiest of them but not that much of a nerd to be offended, but I remember thinking that my "friends" were acting like jerks when every discussion of the show ended with "LMAO, what dorky nerds they all are"
Thank god our paths separated.
Any single sitcom with a laughtrack (so most old sitcoms) are creepy and cringe as F, if you deliberately remove them. Of course they are. That's like complaining a song has "too many weird beeping sounds" after deliberately listening to a censored version of a very explicit song. If you MODIFY something, you cant unironically complain about the Modified content..... because that's not how it envisioned.
idk i think it proves the point that the jokes arent inherently funny and that people are laughing because of our brains wanting to follow the crowd
Most jokes are context dependent and hence not inherently funny. Try watching some old stand-up for example.
Besides that, the removal of the canned laughs adds a silence to the conversation. Next time you're talking to a friend and they make a joke, reference or light-hearted comment don't react to it, just stand there, maybe stare. How do you think that would go?
nah the pauses are proving that NO one is laughing unless there is a laugh track. a good show w a laugh track removed would still have YOU laughing.
@@jimmjimms laugh is largely a social thing. so if you watch things alone in your house you will laugh a lot less than if you watch something alone vs with other people.
Having said that, tbbt in particular uses a lot of laughs in situations that aren't jokes
@@andresfontalvo17 nah, I laugh plenty if Im watchin something alone, ...I have a sense of humor tho...
7:44 They actually do that. One episode focuses around Sheldon having a massive disussion about the Joe Chill-being-caught debate, which to this day only people who actively read comics know about (because Joe Chill is basically non existant in the main stream big movie adaptions)
Well, I only recognize the Joe Chill name from Nolan's Batman Begins. I agree it's a reference that goes far beyond "surface level", but it's still not that far from mainstream
I never heard of any arguments against the show before and I like the show as well, but it was interesting to take a look outside of my bubble. Thank you 😁!
(For context: I'm a 39 year old male IT guy with unspecified neurodiverse traits, that aren't enough for a finite diagnosis like autism, but enough to justify therapy for 9 months (by german healthcare laws))
BTW: My son is diagnosed with autism, instantly recognized Sheldon as autistic and never cared about what the show runners or anyone else said about the topic. It *can* be that easy 😅
"Why does this show get more hate than most?"
Its because of Bazinga. Its always been because of Bazinga.
BAZINGA! *laugh track*
I enjoyed the video! Great perspective and well delivered. Looking forward to the next one. Take care
EDIT: realistically I should've known the video would delve into Sheldon's undiagnosed autism before writing this and yeah, I get why it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not written authentically like a lot of the things in the show, likening it to being crazy is just awful and feeds into stigma around mental disabilities and the writers desire to back away from Sheldon canonically having a disability is very telling. It feels like they made the character with the idea that he's a very awkward nerd who doesn't fully understand people, without realising that a lot of the traits they gave Sheldon weren't of a nerd, but more closely aligned with Autism
It's a show clearly written by people who aren't scientists, but more egregiously it's a show written by people who aren't all that big into Nerd Culture either. I've never really related to any of the characters despite being huge into my fandoms. And while I'm here, speaking as someone with autism, something about Sheldon's depiction of disability, doesn't feel authentic or sit right with me, can't put my finger on it
The problem isn’t that the show is insensitive. The problem with TBBT is that the jokes are lazy.
They portray what writers think a geek looks like and invites people to laugh at that caricature. For example, when a physicists slips in a shower they don’t say anything about friction coefficient; they just said they slipped. The writers make fun of geek culture (whatever that means) without understanding said culture. Compare it to IT Crowd where characters are much more believable and jokes are rooted (especially in first season) from experiences that people in IT have in real life.
Further, after a while you notice there’s only a couple jokes that keep repeating. Sheldon is funny because he doesn’t understand social situations. Rajesh is funny because he cannot talk to women. Howard is funny because he lives with his mother.
Interesting review. The march of time changes many perspectives on content. Subscribed.
No bc this video is such a mess. I'm really not trying to be mean here and my intent is solely constructive. That being said, you probably shouldn't talk about race.
Idk you, idk if you've ever done, like, a race reveal (?) or something, but it doesn't seem like you're prepared to discuss it. I'm gonna list some stuff off.
● "don't judge it based on modern values" is and will always be a poor argument. If something was racist then, it's still racist now. It hasn't "aged poorly," white people just decided to listen to minorities a little more. 99% of the time, racism is racism regardless of circumstance. The only exception imo is when someone, usually a child, doesn't know better. The writers knew the jokes were racist and they knew white audiences (the majority of viewers) liked it.
● The racism in the show is not called out more than other shows bc of the Nice Guy trope, it's called out bc the writers decided to make characters empty stereotypes for as long as they could get away with it before needing to actually write something of substance. Yes, racist jokes were more popular at the time. That doesn't change the fact that those other shows (even ones that predated it) at least tried to make those characters actual characters. Stanley from the office wasn't a 24/7 walking stereotype, he was a guy subjected to racist jokes. Barney's brother actually broke some stereotypes. Angela from boy meets world was a fully fleshed out, 3 dimensional character. BBT was just uniquely, happily racist.
● When discussing incels views on masculinity, probably don't use a picture of a black guy with a durag staring sensually at the camera. Maybe don't play into the stereotype that black men are sex objects. If you were making a comment on how incels fetishize and demonize black men, please say it with your words bc otherwise you're just doing what they are.
● "seeing things through the lense of the time they came out doesn't make them okay, but you need to criticize every other show" is genuinely goofy behavior. Your idea of context is "well everyone else was doing it ☝️🤓" and yeah, like other people in the comments are saying, that doesn't make the criticism of this show unfair, misguided, or lacking context.
● a big part of the reason the show gets hate for the laugh tracks (which were already heavily criticized for over a decade) is bc the show was genuinely using them as a crutch. If you didn't buy into the whole haha autism/haha misogyny/haha racism humor, then the show was just mean spirited. It fundamentally needed a laugh track of some sort bc so much of the material was the audience making fun of characters or the characters making fun of each other.
● it's so deeply ignorant to say "if I can enjoy the show despite all this, anyone can." Again, idk anything about you or your race so I could be totally off base here, but for the love of all that is holy, consider never saying that about something you fundamentally have no part in. If you personally have not been affected by something, you do not have the required information or experience to dismiss the thoughts and feelings of those that have. You can tell me the show's racism isn't a big deal to you and that's your perspective.
● "maybe to enjoy things, you need to let go of other people's influences" definitely is the conclusion you came to and it shows. This is reaaaaaaally giving "don't let the pc police bully you into hating what you love." It's giving "you can't joke about anything because everyone is too sensitive now."
Again, I'm not saying this to tear you down or make you upset. I'm not saying you're racist or a bigot of any kind. Many of us here think you just don't have the context to talk about the context.
you can judge a show based off of modern values (and you should, because we all know what happens when we start ignoring the past) but in the same vein, its not like the writers could see into the future? they didnt know that in nearly 20 years time the culture and values of people would shift so dramatically, so completely differently that no-one could have seen it coming. Should they have made those jokes? of course not. Did they, because it was more prevalent at the time? yes, they did. So judging it through a modern lens is just critiquing something for not being made when values are different, which isnt controllable.
and yeah, people these days get so, so caught up on following the main opinion of something that you should enjoy something you enjoy, regardless of other peoples beliefs (with a few caveats of course, im not advocating for people to bring back black-face because they 'enjoyed it'.) - you enjoy a show that has harmful sterotypes, but you ARENT continuing those sterotypes? good for you, more power to you. As long as you can recognise the faults of something you love and act on them, then theres not much of an issue.
You should critique every show the same way? because dog-piling on one show because it did things over shows did is not very progressive, is it? Why does one show that made the same jokes and sterotypes let off the hook while another one is hated on with all respite because everyone talks about it? Of course it doesnt change the fact that it was bad, OP didnt say that. Going "hurrr durrr yeah, i portrayed you with a nerd emohi because i dont agree" is geniuenly goofy behaviour.
...so you are saying that if you havent expirenced something, you cant weigh in on it? So most people white people cant weigh on in racism apart from having "their perspective", most men cant bring up womens issues because, they arent women and can only have "their persepctive"? Someone could research an issue for years, know everything about it but because they arent personally affected by it, they should "never consider saying that"?
@mr.smoothiehuman I'm gonna respond to like two things bc I ain't reading all that.
1. I don't care if they didn't realize societal values would change. Racism is racism. I'm not upset bc "how were they supposed to know," I'm upset bc they knew damn well that, even at the time, they were actively making life worse for minorities. They didn't care about minorities, they cared about the white viewers who thought it was funny. Values changing over time does not undo what they did.
"um akshually! would you not listen to an astrophysicist about astrophysics because they've never been to space ☝️🤓" nigga we are talking about someone who looks like they're barely out of high school. I have a sneaking suspicion they don't have a doctorate in the history of racism in the USA and can speak on it to a level that justifies them telling minorities to just get over it
@@mr.smoothiehuman like can y'all just say you like problematic shit WITHOUT telling minorities to get over it and stop being so sensitive
I think this is a very fair and well balanced critique of the video
they show their face several times through the video, and they're at the very least white passing 😭
Ok, so I'm a millennial (stop hissing). I was an adult when this show came out. I was it's target audience (I guess?). I watched it when it first came out, or tried to, about two seasons behind its initial release. I like a lot of shows now considered problematic and I stand behind them. I have an annual re-watch of SATC, for example, grew up watching Girlfriends, still fondly remember Will & Grace and don't think it was a bad representation of gay media for it's time, don't think anyone puts Baby in a corner, occasionally rewatch The Office and Parks and Rec, etc etc...
I hate TBBT for a much simpler reason: I never found it funny. I didn't think it was when it was first running in it's first couple seasons and definitely don't think so now. The jokes are (in my opinion) overdone and cliche. The characters never develop all that much and aren't particularly loveable. The fake geek trope kind of sucks. That's why they don't get away with the more offensive content in the same way as shows like The Office do; they just don't have the comedic chops. I think the very fact that people don't raise the same stink when Michael Scott does something horrible, but get angry when Sheldon Cooper says something arguably less awful bears that out.
TBBT just isn't funny, and Chuck Lorre will go down in history as a hack, albeit a successful one. Sorry.
Sorry child, you can’t just dismiss whether something is offensive or not. The fact is that big bang theory did have its own insensitivity well before they toned it down. It’s a self loving, ableist, racist, and misogynistic show. You have to just accept that it does taint the show. Love how you just try and ignore it
lol take a chill pill
@@Tom-cn4cmnah, they entirely right. why defend this trash so at all? so much better stuff to watch. creators are trash, most of the actors are trash and most of all the show is trash.
Harry, you don't need to sell it to me.
"yeah, you are a child so your opinion is WRONG!"
_child_ was definitely a bit much, but there is a point that the video poster does not look to be in her late thirties so probably wasn't an adult in 2007 when tbbt appeared on the scene
i personally didn't, and maybe i can't trust the people in this comment section, but i also can't make assumptions, the content of the show *does* feel worse than other ones released around the same time
Big bang theory gets hate because they're not funny, if anything you learn in this world is that you can get away with anything as long as you're funny
Big Bang Theory is just a normie show, the best example of this is that one Lyle Rath clip of him reacting to a BBT joke. Also these characters are pretty terrible, but show wants you believe thay these are good people. Until It's Always Sunny, where the characters are terrible and the show wants you to make think they're terrible. With that show wanting you to laugh at how terrible they are. For example, Sheldon, the show wants to make you like his because of his funny "quirks" that are just annoying and he's flat out evil at times. Like how Jim's cameo in Young Sheldon, he doesn't want to go and support his son's baseball game. Plus he's a flat out terrible represention of autism that just stigmatizes certain autistic tendencies. The show needed more straight man characters. Like in MTV's undergrad, where there's a characters who's just a casual nerd. With him telling the really nerdy character to "shut up"
Also the sexist jokes and racist jokes in the begining of the season are just terrible. No excuse on being "aged" its terrible. Its like trying to excuse an anti-islamic joke from a movie that came out after 9/11 because it "aged"
I'm 100% sure that the writers didn't decide that Sheldon should have autism when they pitched the show, it may have accidentally come out that way because it's a very childish show that's written as a cartoon for toddlers but that's still an accidental coincidence because fictional characters are fictional therefore if it's not written to be ambiguous then it's not ambiguous
I don't think they intentionally chose it either, but I do think it says a lot that they looked at what would make a character a socially inept object of ridicule that would be easy to laugh at, and then ended up making a character with a lot of autistic traits. Especially in 2007, and how anyone who wasn't "normal" was treated back then. The show's meanspirited view on their own characters really shines through there
@@Ross516 its because they were writing a socially inept character that a socially inept audience could understand. He likes to get into childrens ballpits and yell catchphrases its pretty low brow
my biggest problem with big bang theory was that there isn't a 'moral' person that criticizes wrongdoing/sexism/homophobia/racism, the office has really racist moments, but everyone else in the office criticizes that person, in big bang theory there is noone that does that- it fits the setting of just a bubble of nerdy guys just all being together in their own world, but makes a lot of the jokes a lot more offensive than if there are characters that judge them for it.
i grew up with the big bang theory, and though it wasn't really something i went out of my way to watch, i'd watch it if it was on. i think it had it's funny moments, though it was definitely a product of its time and suffered as a result. the theme song is a banger tho.
I didn't find it funny back then. My main criticism is the jokes were cheap and under developed further highlighted by the laugh track. So it came across as lazy. It drew from nerd culture but the nerds weren't the target audience, personally I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing being able to laugh at yourself is healthy, but the quality of the jokes were low hanging fruit so the writing felt snide. Actual nerds around that time watched things like IT crowd and Community.
The thing that always annoyed me was just Sheldon in general, I feel like he just kinda got whatever he wanted without ever suffering consequences.
I think folks your age may really have a hard time getting how massive of a change the mainstreaming of geek culture has been.
I’m roughly the age of the show’s characters (born 1979), and to put it in perspective, I recommend looking at how nerdy characters were portrayed in 90s sitcoms (particularly those aimed at young teens. I.e. my age at the time). Look at something like Family Matters or certain episodes of Saved by the Bell.
The needs were a total joke, and not something anyone would have bet want to be.
> The needs were a total joke, and not something anyone would have bet want to be.
So just like in The Big Bang Theory.
Banger thumbnail and solid editing for such a small channel. Great work!
im not quite sure about wether this is true. two and a half men has ALL of the flaws that you have mentioned big bang theory has. it has an over the top laugh track, misoginy all over it and dated references. Yet people still enjoy it to this day. I remember my parents complaining how big bang theory is the wish version of two and a half men. and i have to agree with them.
two and a half men had such bangers of jokes, that people were ready to ignore the flaws. i think big bang theory just wasnt funny enough to stop the hate
People stopped enjoying when Charlie left in the middle of the show.....
People stopped enjoying when Charlie left in the middle of the show.....
Well Charlie still was moron to laugh at, and they had Bertha to point out his nonsense. BBT has no such Bertha character. Neither it has any innocent character like Jake there.
I really wish a lot more people would actually understand when you said; "your favourite movie is not necessarily the best movice you've watched." Only a tiny sub-section of the world population understands this, especially on twitter.
I find your distaste for good comedy to be problematic
I'm not surprised that someone looking like a Tumblr user would cry over 'insensitive' jokes. Out of all the things you could have criticized, THAT is your starting argument?
The old concept that all humor comes at the expense of a victim is definitely true here, and there are plenty of people who watch TBBT that experience that in a way that they don't enjoy the humor. However, I've grown to understand that finding something funny that plays on negative stereotypes and agreeing with those negative stereotypes are two very different things. Sometimes, they're even opposed, where if you believe the stereotype, the joke isn't funny, but if you recognize it as a false stereotype it becomes hilarious.
When it comes to TBBT, I personally find it funny, and I also find it trivial enough not to consider offensive. Those same stereotypes presented in other contexts are often quite offensive, but TBBT is so clearly a caricature that I don't feel it warrants any serious discussion of its moral values. I mean, there once was a sitcom called "Heil, Honey, I'm Home!" about the Hitler family and their Jewish neighbors, and it was funny (I'm not surprised it got pulled right as it premeired, but its still funny). Humor is weird, and quirky, and very personal, and no one should be judging anyone for finding something funny. Sometimes, humor just doesn't make logical sense, but isn't that kind of what makes it great?
Love this essay, well made and good reasoning. I disagree with basically all of it but I think you did a great job nonetheless