Here’s a link to Chuck Lorre’s Vanity Card Archives, starting with the first episode of the series. (He does explain a little of why the show is what it is; that it’s in opposition to forty years of people sitting on couches and exchanging witty banter.)
The Big Bang Theory is one of those shows I binge-watch over and over; I’ve seen all of the episodes numerous times (and am currently partway through S4, again). I’ve never felt that either the nerdiness or Barry’s speech impediment were exaggerated; I actually work with someone who talks just like Barry. His speech is No Big Deal in-universe: sure its effects are sometimes humorous (though sometimes not as humorous as the writers would like), but I don’t think it’s ever really addressed directly – except during one episode when Sheldon makes fun of Barry by imitating his impediment, and Barry calls him out on it (a rare serious moment). To me it’s just part of the character, and so far it isn’t bothering me in SFTSTU.
What speech impediment?
< golf clap >
Wait until Biggus Dickus hears of this!
That’s the kind of thing I meant. Having an annoying dorky guy with a speech impediment kinda feels like punching down in a way that has gone out of fashion in current entertainment (thankfully).
I wasn’t losing sleep over it but I kind of feel better that they acknowledged that once. I guess it’s also good that it’s just not a big deal. It’s just the way he talks.
They could do a story in a universe where everyone talks like Barry, or in a universe where Barry talks like everyone else.
Maybe there is a country called Barryland and they all speak Barryish. Which is exactly like English but with his speech impediment.
Bawywand.
Iwonicawy it’s a sociawist countwy.
Even that turned out to be the setup for a joke. Barry was teasing Sheldon about having to retract a paper he wrote, so Sheldon teased him back about his speech impediment. When Barry acted hurt, Sheldon took it back, to which Barry responded “Of course you do! You’re the retractor!”
But it was a joke at Sheldon’s expense, not Barry’s.
The show never treated Barry’s impediment as ridicule-worthy: the only jokes along those lines were occasional “misunderstandings” about what he said (which often weren’t very funny, but were never mean-spirited). The one time someone did make fun of it was the example I provided.
Barry is a complete tool, but in the show that has nothing to do with how he talks*. He’s just a nerdy jerk who happens to have a speech impediment.
*Insert pop pscyhology about how having an impediment could make him act like a jerk as a self-defense mechanism, yadda yadda yadda…I think he’s just a buttwad. 
There was also a joke about Alexa being unable to understand Barry’s request for “westawwants in the awea,” but it was combined with a joke where Howard mimicked Raj’s accent and fooled Alexa’s voice recognition, so really it mocked Alexa more than the characters.
Well, Episode 6 was certainly…an episode. More entertaining than watching the Dodgers lose, at any rate.
I think it was a mid-season “revisit the plot arc to remind audiences what’s going on” episode.
I was waiting for them to realise they’d have to give milk and be slaughtered for meat, though.
I thought they would explore what Raj said about there only being s few hundred years left and what that meant for their great-grandchildren, though he used a lot more greats. So a very short lifespan?
He mentioned I think 20 generations. Which is around 400 to 500 years.
It seems like this and last week are just experiments to see if a single repeated gag can carry a whole episode.
So maybe not so far off.
As for that, if everyone’s an herbivore, no one’s being slaughtered for meat and probably no one is drinking milk.
Cows might be the carnivore alphas in that universe.