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.
I watched it for a time because other friends and coworkers did and it gave us something to talk about. But, generally speaking, I found the characters to be kinda awful people and while on the surface seemed like my friends and myself, they were at best poor approximations. The show was very clearly making fun of them most of the time, filled with horrible laugh tracks that prompt the viewer… I eventually just couldn’t stand it anymore and left. Honestly, I had forgotten about this show.
Around that same era there was a show called Community that was full of weird people and great storrytelling and was damn near the opposite of the Big Bang. Community is a show I still rewatch from time to time.
I like it a lot.
But I think they dragged it a bit too long.
In one word: Why?
The autism representation is what happens when a writer has never met another person before.
Fairly accurate sociopath representation though.
If a show requires a laugh track to tell its viewers when to laugh, then it lacks substance enough to cause it without.
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.
It’s fun to watch clips where people removed the laugh track. The “jokes” really fall flat.
I refer to it as geek culture black face.
As a nerd I loathe that show, it’s vapid. You nailed it.
“Nerdface” I have called it.
Wow, that’s incredibly succinct and accurate.
This is a great way to put it! Totally agree
Never seen it but parents did , it’s horrid !
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.
I really like it. It has some nice jokes and I enjoy it quite a lot when I see it
