There’s no pleasing some people. :rolleyes:
This is an interesting thought. I haven’t the faintest as to why he can’t talk in front of AFF since no body but Sheldon (and hell even Sheldon) has even the slightest interest in her. I would like to see an instance where he has to talk to a girl who’s just all kinds of ugly and have Howard say something to the effect of “oh lord…her too? her?!?!” or something.
Hah. Me, too.
They had the perfect opportunity to cure Raj at least as far as Penny goes and they muffed it, going instead for the joke (which was excellently delivered by Cuoco). Time for some blunt-force trauma to the nads as an alternative cure.
It’s the kind of problem that can usually be cured with classic desensitization therapy.
Since he can talk to women when he just thinks he’s been drinking, there are plenty of SITCOM-plausible ways to cure his. Just take him to Placebos-R-Us.
Really? Few weeks back they were concerned about and or debating whether or not Penny has a drinking problem. :eek:
They did it on the train episode with non-alcoholic beer.
As far as being just a sit com not to be “taken seriously” … many, maybe most (maybe the vast majority, I would not know, I only have watched a few enough to know) sit coms are just sit coms. Actual characters that are internally consistent, with growth that makes sense, is the mark of an exceptional sit com, or more to the point, of an exceptional writing team. Those exceptional sit coms are much more enjoyable to some of us as they hook us in to actually give a fuck about the characters and what happens to them next, sit-comic as they may be.
This sit com is clearly not to be one of those exceptional sit coms. And some of us had hopes that it would be.
It can still have good moments and evoke a smile here and there. Enough of them to get me to keep watching it by themselves? I dunno … for another episode or so maybe. Maybe not.
I can’t remember, have they established whether or not Raj’s ‘utter douche’ drunk personality is also a placebo effect? 
Re: Curing Raj’s Selective Mutism.
Cross between Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer talk show with Trannies!
Nitpick fail.
As well as talking to Sheldon, the character of AFF is also talking to us - the audience. If she had just said:
“For someone who has a machine that can travel anywhere in time and space, the Doctor sure does have a thing for modern-day London”
then we wouldn’t know which doctor she was talking about. Doctor Who fans might know but they have to aim at the general audience to at least some extent. The joke may have failed because a sizeable chunk of the audience wouldn’t have got it.
Telling a joke on TV is always a balance between making it funny but also maximising the number of people who will understand it. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of the humour to make it more accessible. If you were telling that joke to me then you could have just said “the Doctor” and I’d have got it but telling it on TV means you have to take into account all the people who aren’t that familiar with Doctor Who.
Another nitpick fail is the Cardiff thing - it may be filmed in Cardiff but it’s often set in London
Yeah, but it’s very easy to make the line work for everybody - for example “I like ‘Doctor Who’ but, for someone who has a machine that can travel anywhere in time and space, the Doctor sure does have a thing for modern-day London”
Nah. That just makes it even clunkier. These are some reasons why from off the top of my head:
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Jokes are a work of art. They need to be as economical as possible in terms of number of words while still getting the essential humorous part across. They already had to make it clunky by having Amy say “Doctor Who” instead of just “the doctor”. Your version just makes it even clunkier.
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You introduce the subject of the joke at the beginning thus ruining the surprise aspect. Jokes work best by having a set up line and then having a surprise punchline. The subject of the joke has to come at the end - after the set up.
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Your version would mean she has to say the word “doctor” twice which is bad from a poetic point of view. Just doesn’t scan well. Would make it clumsy.
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The joke is a one liner. One liners need to be short, pithy and to the point. They divided it into two sections which is about as long as you can have a one liner. Your amendment would involve three sections - too long for a one liner. They managed to keep it as a one liner while having to make one small concession to the viewing audience - calling him Doctor Who.
I think they considered all this. That’s why I don’t think it is a genuine nitpick - it wasn’t a mistake. They thought about it and considered all the options. They realised they were going to have to make it clear they were talking about Doctor Who so they had to do this in the least obtrusive way possible. They have to consider things like the flow of the dialogue, the economy of the joke, the accessibility to the general audience etc. Ideally you wouldn’t make any concessions but in reality you have to with TV jokes.
The only way they could have got round it would have been if they’d shown us what they were watching on the TV so we knew it was Dr Who but they don’t tend to do that on BBT
They could have had Sheldon do the nitpicking about it. I think the writers cared more in the earlier seasons, only to have people complain and nitpick about ever more obscure and trivial things. I can understand why the decided to screw appeasing the Comic Book Guys of the world.
You could be right.
No—all Indian men are like that. 
One further point to the Doctor nitpick: Not every Whovian is an ass about that particular point. I know I’m not. I’ll cheerfully say “Doctor Who” when I mean “The Doctor”. Even more so when I know it pisses someone off 
My point wasn’t that Amy should’ve said “the Doctor”. It was that if Sheldon was going to spend his next line docking her Doctor Who fan points anyway, it should be for her actual Doctor Who-related error, which there’s no way in hell his character would’ve let pass uncommented.
…although, now that I think about it from the other perspective: really? In a line immediately following a reference to a show called “Doctor Who”, even if the viewer thinks that’s the character’s name, you think referring to somebody called “the doctor” would be confusing? Which doctor would she be talking about, Doogie Howser? Do you envision millions of befuddled people sitting on their couches, asking “Doctor? Wassat now? Who’s this ‘doctor’?”
(To which someone would ideally be on hand to answer: “Exactly.”)
I think this is something that BBT often doesn’t handle too well. They keep trying to give some explanation as to what a joke is referencing, but do it in a way that’s annoying for anyone that did get the joke, and doesn’t suddenly make the joke funny for anyone that didn’t. One character will make a mildly amusing reference to theory x, and the other character will basically just tell the audience “Look! They just made a reference to theory x”, which doesn’t help anyone that got the joke, and doesn’t usually make the joke suddenly become funny to someone that hadn’t.
(Not that this was the formula for this particular joke, but I just tend to find in general that they don’t always seem to handle the accessibility vs. humour of jokes very well)