OT: Sens Lounge LXXVIII | The Big Bang Theory Is Objectively Terrible Edition

[YouGotAStuGoing]

I'd say HIMYM:Friends::BBT:Seinfeld

Quality-wise, nowhere near... but at their core, they're both shows about nothing featuring one very strong central character, a few peripheral-but-still major characters, and an ensemble of guest stars/bit players.

I also never liked Ted and honestly didn't care how his life ended up. Just an absolutely terrible character. Not sure how such a successful show was centred around him.

I think I might be due for a Friends rewatch. Haven't seen it in a few years now but I still have all the DVDs.

Ted was a total whiner. I stand by what I said about a good show needing the main man to be relateable, and I think everyone can relate with the desire to find love. But the way they played it was way over the top and unnecessary. Nobody is that irritatingly whiny about it in real life.

Ditto on the Friends re-watch. After I'm done with P&R it's next on my hit list.

Right as school starts.

Awesome.

 

[Caeldan]

Honestly one of the greatly underrated comedies I think in this decade has been Happy Endings.
Only got three seasons, which was unfortunate - I think the way they ended it was a bit odd, but all three seasons I felt generally were pretty strong and they had a good couple more left if allowed.

 

[2CHAINZ]

It's not unreasonable to expect a sitcom to have character development. Look at Friends, Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle, Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond, 3rd Rock, MASH... Characters were stereotypes to a certain extent, sure, but they were more than that. Characters became caricatures of themselves over time, but they didn't start out nearly as caricaturized as BBT's characters did. Predictability tends to be more or less unavoidable the longer a show goes and the more of it you're exposed to, but letting BBT's one-dimensional character creation off the hook simply because it isn't a high-production mini-series is far too facile an argument and ignores many examples of why that doesn't have to be the case.

To have Sheldon for example go from 0 understanding of sarcasm to making jokes, and to go from 0 emotion to showing emotion is huge growth for that character. Raj to go from not being able to talk to girls unless drunk to talking to girls is growth. Howard even though I don't like it, to go from unreasonable expectations towards women to getting married is growth. Leonard is the only one who really has shown no growth other than landing Penny. How is the growth shown in this show between its characters any different than say HIMYM ? I can't compare to the shows you mentioned because I have not watched all of their episodes.

 

[StefanW]

I am personally a huge fan of Burning Love. The first season was one of the funniest things I've ever watched on TV. Sadly the running joke wore thin, and the second and third seasons did not come close to living up to the first. Still worth the watch.

 

[MainDotC]

Can we start preseason plz

 

[YouGotAStuGoing]

To have Sheldon for example go from 0 understanding of sarcasm to making jokes, and to go from 0 emotion to showing emotion is huge growth for that character. Raj to go from not being able to talk to girls unless drunk to talking to girls is growth. Howard even though I don't like it, to go from unreasonable expectations towards women to getting married is growth. Leonard is the only one who really has shown no growth other than landing Penny. How is the growth shown in this show between its characters any different than say HIMYM ? I can't compare to the shows you mentioned because I have not watched all of their episodes.

The "progression" you refer to wasn't exactly progression: it was more like sudden character shift. It was the writers re-writing the characters to fit the storyline rather than help them adapt to it.

Take Amy Farrah Fowler: she's introduced as essentially Sheldon in girl form. Two episodes later, she's giggling and calling Penny her bestie.

Raj being able to act like a normal human being only because they went to the "needs to get drunk" well one too many times is not growth.

Howard... yeah, I'll give you Howard. His progression was fairly well done. Ditto with Bernadette, although the whole "just like Howard's mother" thing was a stretch.

And Penny? She went from an aspiring actress working at the Cheesecake Factory to... oh. Hm. Well, at least she's not shallow anymore... oh. Well, she, uh... cut her hair one or more times?

As for Sheldon, he's the least progressed of them all. His character is an idealized character whose perfection is irritating. He's a genius know-it-all who shoves his intellect in everyone's face. He's able to maintain a girlfriend despite never showing significant affection or particular interest. He frequently upstages everyone by his mere presence. All he does is get himself into awkward, uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations then plays it off with a Bazinga or a poorly-timed scientific reference. And everyone laughs because hahah, oh Sheldon, what a zany kook.

Seriously. Tell me calling a cat "zazzy" fits in with his persona even one iota. His personality, if you want to call it that, is constantly being changed and adapted just for laughs. Which is fine. But character development it is not.

 

[Qward]

How I Met Your Mother is way more this decade's Friends than BBT could ever hope to be.

Spoilers below, do not read if you're not caught up on HIMYM and/or Friends.
[SPOIL]Group of friends hang around a drinking establishment in New York. An on-again-off-again relationship, a laughable goofball ladies man, a know-it-all geek who ends up teaching a profession he loves, a neurotic mother-like figure who's good at cooking, and a lovable goofball who has the best catch-phrases and one-liners.

And the mother could be likened to Phoebe in the sense that they're both quirky, off-beat, and enjoy playing music and odd stuff like pretending evolution is just a theory or that an English muffin is a tap-dancer. Plus, they both helped the know-it-all-geek end up with the girl in the end, either through questionable plane terminology or providing "closure."[/SPOIL]

Boom. Lawyered.

The only thing that HIMYM and friends have in common is that they both take place in New York and often meet in a local gathering spot.
Your mother comparison is a stretch.


Friends was about 6 friends, BBT is about 6 friends, HIMYM is about 1 guy looking for love and his 4 friends are along for the ride.

BBT and Friends both take place in apartments that are across from one another. The main apartment is the gathering point for all the friends, rarely venturing to the other one.

Penny/Leonard = Monica/Chandler neighbors falling in love. Friends had to deal with consequence of that relationship as to where is Rachel going to live once Mon and Chandler move in together. BBT is addressing that issue this season.

Penny is a combination of Joey and Rachel. Promiscuous, not overly intelligent, poor, struggling actor, waitress.

Howard fulfills Chandlers role of making fun of everyone.

I am not saying BBT was based of Friends, it's not. It is actually based on a European comedy show. They are not spot for spot the same. They can't be. But they are much closer to being the same than HIMYM is.

 

[DrakeAndJosh]

Oh and it's a complete joke that Amy Poehler doesn't have an emmy.

 

[BonkTastic]

I think BBT is actually quite funny, and this is coming from someone who generally does not watch TV and loathes sitcoms.

I am not a science-y type person at all, so I dont give weight to the argument that people who don't like it don't understand the science joke. I think it is more about people not understanding nerd culture.

As someone who has grown up (since the early 80s) playing tabletop RPGs (D&D), video games, collecting comics, obsessing over sci-fi and fantasy movies/TV, going to Cons, etc - this was the first show where I felt like the characters on the show represented the same kind of social-lifestyle I had. I think its possible that people don't get the show because they dont get quite understand the quirks and jokes about their nerdyness.

Clerks was the first movie that I felt did the same thing, albeit Clerks was way more graphic in their approach. Plus it had the hockey which has always been another love of mine.

I don't know, man... I'm pretty nerdy - D&D, MtG, tabletop boardgames, comics, roadtrips to GenCon, etc... and I think it's a pretty poor representation of the scene.

I think some of the character types in the show are definitely based on guys you'd see at a place like GenCon - Sheldon is an Alpha Nerd, the guy from Roseanne is the group's meek voice of reason, the tag-along guy who knows he's the tag-along guy, and the foreign kid. I get it. I just think you need more than that. A show can't sustain itself for more than... oh, three episodes maybe... based on just lampooning a personality type. To me, it comes off like a show written about nerds from the perspective of a guy who once hung out with nerds for a few hours.

I don't know. I don't like that it tires to represent itself as Nerd culture. I think it tries to pander itself to nerd culture, sure, but does a poor job reflecting all but the most stereotypical "mom's basement" caricatures.

 

[Qward]

The "progression" you refer to wasn't exactly progression: it was more like sudden character shift. It was the writers re-writing the characters to fit the storyline rather than help them adapt to it.

Take Amy Farrah Fowler: she's introduced as essentially Sheldon in girl form. Two episodes later, she's giggling and calling Penny her bestie. The change was over a full season, not two episodes. Especially since she was introduced at the end of a season.

Raj being able to act like a normal human being only because they went to the "needs to get drunk" well one too many times is not growth. Raj has outgrown this problem through pain of heartbreak.

Howard... yeah, I'll give you Howard. His progression was fairly well done. Ditto with Bernadette, although the whole "just like Howard's mother" thing was a stretch. They only do that in 3 episodes. She has changed the most of all the people on the show. Mainly because she wasn't meant to be a full time cast member.

And Penny? She went from an aspiring actress working at the Cheesecake Factory to... oh. Hm. Well, at least she's not shallow anymore... oh. Well, she, uh... cut her hair one or more times?
She has grown a lot. You will see big changes in her this season. Well you would if you watched the show.

As for Sheldon, he's the least progressed of them all. His character is an idealized character whose perfection is irritating. He's a genius know-it-all who shoves his intellect in everyone's face. He's able to maintain a girlfriend despite never showing significant affection or particular interest. He frequently upstages everyone by his mere presence. All he does is get himself into awkward, uncomfortable or unfamiliar situations then plays it off with a Bazinga or a poorly-timed scientific reference. And everyone laughs because hahah, oh Sheldon, what a zany kook. This one bothers me the most. If you really watched the show you would have seen big changes in Sheldon. There was even an episode where he mentioned that one day he may engage in a sexual relationship with Amy. The reason he has "kept" her is because she loves his quarks and his an intellectual equivalent to her. You can see her struggles as she tries to be patient with him and you see her snap when she can't take it anymore which forces minor growth in Sheldon.

Seriously. Tell me calling a cat "zazzy" fits in with his persona even one iota. His personality, if you want to call it that, is constantly being changed and adapted just for laughs. Which is fine. But character development it is not. Moments like that are an insight into Sheldons psyche. He puts on the "I am more evolved than you" persona but in brief moments you see the man that missed his childhood because he was in University working on complex physics problems when other kids his age where playing little league.

thoughts in bold.

 

[Mr Invidious]

Make sure you get a protective case. Possibly waterproof. For... incidents.

Let's switch waterproof to liquid proof.

...

 

[CanadianHockey]

Oh and it's a complete joke that Amy Poehler doesn't have an emmy.

Yes. Parks is phenomenal and gets seemingly little recognition.

Also, Louis CK deserves more awards-love for his work on Louie.

 

[Micklebot]

thoughts in bold.

I think we've (HFSens that is) put far too much effort into criticizing/defending BBT. You either like it or you don't.

It will never be a [quote ] smart [/quote] show, but to me it seems as though some are critical of it because that's what all the hipsters are doing or in retaliation to a subset of the masses being over the top about how great they think it is.

It's a show on tv; it's better than some of the tripe networks feed us (like any form of reality TV imo, good god how on earth does anyone watch big brother?) and worse than some of the other stuff.

 

[CanadianHockey]

I think the similiarities in terms of cultural impact and character development(or lack thereof) are worth of making the equivalence.

I don't think it's fair to compare the two on character development. Character inertia was intentional in Seinfeld, and in some ways was integral to the premise of the show. BBT, on the other hand, was just mediocre at developing its characters, who were relatively flat to begin with. Some characters changed too quickly, and others didn't have significant ways to grow (ie Raj can only develop insofar as he becomes less awkward around women).

Anyway. I didn't mind BBT in the earlier seasons. Just feel they didn't have a strong direction they wanted to take the series or the characters, so it dropped off pretty quickly.

 

[Micklebot]

Yes. Parks is phenomenal and gets seemingly little recognition.

Also, Louis CK deserves more awards-love for his work on Louie.

I still haven't caught any of Louie, but louis CK's previous attempt at a sitcom, Lucky Louie, was phenomenal imo. I'm a little disappointed in the complete lack of originality in the title of his shows though. Seriously, wtf.

 

[MainDotC]

Trying the Tofurky Beer Brats as previously suggested by another OT'er.

 

[CanadianHockey]

I still haven't caught any of Louie, but louis CK's previous attempt at a sitcom, Lucky Louie, was phenomenal imo. I'm a little disappointed in the complete lack of originality in the title of his shows though. Seriously, wtf.

I haven't seen Lucky Louie. Everything I've read on it has pretty much said Louis was stifled by the network's insistence on a traditional sitcom formula. With that said, I know the actress who played his wife, Pamela Adlon, is a regular on Louie. She and Louis seem to have good chemistry.

 

[Micklebot]

I haven't seen Lucky Louie. Everything I've read on it has pretty much said Louis was stifled by the network's insistence on a traditional sitcom formula. With that said, I know the actress who played his wife, Pamela Adlon, is a regular on Louie. She and Louis seem to have good chemistry.

Lucky Louis was definitely stifled by the network, but still well worth watching. I wasn't as disappointed with finding out that it wasn't getting another season as I was with Firefly, but I sure wasn't happy about it (despite the fact it was cancelled before I even watched an episode).

 

[Harbinger]

Wow, that side bar is ugly as hell. What idiot thought that was a good idea?

 

[McManked]

...

Have you heard the story?

 

[Baby Ryan]

Finally went to the Chiro today, already started treatment. So excited for the upcoming weeks.

 

[Super Cake]

An nhl team in Las Vegas huh? If that did really happen, i would definitely watch them. They would be my western team.

 

[BonkTastic]

An nhl team in Las Vegas huh? If that did really happen, i would definitely watch them. They would be my western team.

The article in question in case anyone wants a source.

Sources close to the situation have indicated Las Vegas is a done deal, the only thing to be determined being which owner will be entitled to proclaim that he brought the first major league sports franchise to Sin City.

If they're expanding to one city, you know they'll expand to two, NFL-style (because a 31-team league is just weird and lopsided). Seattle probably has the 2nd team if this is the case, with Quebec City being the backup location in case a franchise needs to be moved?

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

It's not unreasonable to expect a sitcom to have character development. Look at Friends, Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle, Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond, 3rd Rock, MASH... Characters were stereotypes to a certain extent, sure, but they were more than that. Characters became caricatures of themselves over time, but they didn't start out nearly as caricaturized as BBT's characters did. Predictability tends to be more or less unavoidable the longer a show goes and the more of it you're exposed to, but letting BBT's one-dimensional character creation off the hook simply because it isn't a high-production mini-series is far too facile an argument and ignores many examples of why that doesn't have to be the case.

MASH....now there was a show. It could go from slapstick humor, downright stupid scenarios and teen-like horseplay, to the most serious, gut-wrenching & heartbreaking scene on television. The scene where Radar tells them Henry Blake died in the chopper crash, the final 'goodbye' scene in the last episode...amazing.

All In the Family was amazing for that, too. They don't make characters like Archie Bunker anymore. When Edith had breast cancer, or when Archie came home after she died and finds her slipper in the bedroom....damned hard to watch.

I think BBT was somewhat innovative the first season or two, simply for having nerds as the main characters. It was pretty rare, up to that point, having average-looking, smart, nerdy characters driving a show. It became very stale very quickly though.


And cool sidebar thingie. (Even cooler that it disappears once you're browsing in the threads.)

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

The article in question in case anyone wants a source.



If they're expanding to one city, you know they'll expand to two, NFL-style (because a 31-team league is just weird and lopsided). Seattle probably has the 2nd team if this is the case, with Quebec City being the backup location in case a franchise needs to be moved?

Sweet!

Balances out the conferences, and adds more players to the league. Having the talent spread out in the league a bit more will produce more errors on the ice, meaning (hopefully) more scoring chances and goals. *crosses fingers*