I refer to it as geek culture black face.
As a nerd I loathe that show, it’s vapid. You nailed it.
I’m a Nerodivergent geek, I had lots of people tell me “you will love this show” so I watched some and now I wonder how those people really see me. So that’s kinda fun.
Yeah, that’s what I told my grandmother when she wanted me to watch it. It was like the show was portraying nerds as other people see them when we start gushing about a niche interest.
This is a great way to put it! Totally agree
I loved it for the first 3 seasons. Then they turn it into the usual couples sitcom and lost all its appeal.
I liked the dynamic of having all main characters “fail” in life. Penny failed as an actress, Leonard failed in dating Penny, Howard failed as a playboy, Raj failed talking to women and Sheldon failed at social integration. They were all adorable losers that had fun while losing. For me it kinda was giving a lot of hope, like you don’t have to succeed in life to have a good time.
Then they made them all winners, they all became rich, and achieve all their goals. And all hope was lost. And the message was “you better succeed in life” which was depressing.
The “laughs” all felt from the outside. There was very little humor aimed at the people who would self identify as nerds and way more “haha look at these nerds and how quirky they are” set ups. Sure there are misogynist asshole nerds but usually they need to grow beyond that to find friends and partners. As far as I could tell none of them did. Sheldon and Howard were still super sexist, Leonard was still passive and whiny, but the story pushed forward foisting “perfect matches” on them.
Throughout the whole thing there was very little actual geek humor, and it felt denigrating to actual nerds.
The show isn’t for nerds. It’s for people who believe they are a nerd because they like sci-fi
I’ve always maintained it’s for non-nerds who want to laugh at cultures they’ll never understand. For convenience, all known nerd stuff is crammed into all characters.
deleted by creator
If a show requires a laugh track to tell its viewers when to laugh, then it lacks substance enough to cause it without.
I absolutely agree. You can find some parts of the show with the laugh track removed on YouTube, and it’s amazing to realise how unfunny the jokes really are.
The autism representation is what happens when a writer has never met another person before.
Fairly accurate sociopath representation though.
It made people with either mental or emotional or social dysfunction the butt of pretty much every joke.
Haha, he’s awkward.
Haha, he has a weird family dynamic.
Blegh.
It gave the audience the opportunity to laugh at ostensibly intelligent and educated people for enjoying nerd culture.
I honestly think it’s an abomination.
First season or two was alright. Not great, but alright. Early on, it felt more like a show made for nerds. There were lots of niche references to nerd culture that the casual viewer wouldn’t catch. They intentionally kept them niche and vague, because they knew that’s the kind of shit nerds love.
But as the series progressed and they began aiming at a wider audience, the references were aimed more at the casual viewer. It shifted from a show that was for nerds, to a show that was making fun of nerds. The viewership shifted away from former nerds, and suddenly it was the former bullies watching it instead.
It truly lost itself when it became a relationship drama. At that point it was just a bland milquetoast sitcom with one-liners and “will they won’t they” types of writing. Name a sitcom and you can probably think of a few solid jokes from it… But that isn’t really true for BBT. It didn’t really have any solid memorable scenes, because they all eventually blurred together.
Usual Chuck Lorre series lifecycle. Many are pretty good, for their 1st, 2nd, seasons. Then they should die gracefully.
I love it. Watched it when it aired and catch reruns once in a while. I don’t watch a lot of the reruns but do watch them from time to time.
Aged like a first-class bottle of milk.
oh boy, i do love me some disgusting amounts of misogony such as that show… shows.
It started out great but ended up just being mostly sex related humour, not science.
It fucking sucks. Also, i’m tired of being compared to Sheldon Cooper. I’m surprised there aren’t more fellow autists shit talking this show.
I watched two episodes before bouncing off hard. No idea how it got as popular as it did, because the jokes were just low effort and lazy.
I really like it. It has some nice jokes and I enjoy it quite a lot when I see it
In my opinion, it’s not as bad as people claim it to be, but It’s far from being great as well.
I think it was easier to watch when it came out, but from memory I enjoyed it. I remember thinking the show was kinda accurate regarding nerdy references (compared to other movies and series of the time) and I thought it was cool.









