The Big Bang Theory: worth continuing?

Cafe Society
1

My wife and I recently decided to watch this show, having never seen it before. My wife hadn’t ever been interested, because she assumed it would be all about a group of guys trying to have sex with a dumb blonde. I was just indifferent; I was aware that the show existed, but didn’t feel motivated to check it out. But that is true of all TV shows.

A couple of my wife’s friends told her the show is really good, so we decided to give it a shot.

After six or eight episodes, she said “Yup, this is playing out just like I thought it would.” I could see her point. “But some shows take their time to find their footing, so I’m going to give it a chance.”

We’re now almost done with Season 2. We think the biggest, but not the only, problem is Howard. His character’s only purpose is to provide a steady stream of sexual harassment towards Penny. It isn’t funny. On the flip side, the interactions between Penny and Sheldon are awesome. That’s probably the only thing that’s kept us engaged so far.

However… there was an episode where Penny (rightly) went off on Howard about his rampant sexual harassment, and he went home in misery. My wife said “heh, but somehow this will be her fault.” Sure enough, Leonard told (not asked) Penny she had to apologize, so the guys could do a robotics competition. Penny had nothing to apologize for, and said as much, but in the end she caved. I thought for sure my wife was going to say “Done!!” after that episode. But she didn’t.

Then there was the one where the guys took a train to San Francisco, and Summer Glau was on board. That one was an interesting showcase in going from funny to cringeworthy to funny to cringeworthy. Sheldon was on the phone with Penny, walking her through getting a flash drive in his apartment, which was hilarious. Then they cut to Howard harassing Summer Glau, which was not at all funny, and quite embarrassing. Then back to Sheldon and Penny, and so on. I thought for sure my wife was going to say “Done!!” after that episode. But she didn’t.

Then last night, we watched the episode where another young woman moved into the apartment above the guys. They fell all over themselves doing things for her, as she took advantage of them. Penny called her out on it at the end of the episode, and they wound up rolling around on the floor fighting. My wife said “oh my god, you have got to be kidding me.” I thought for sure my wife was going to say “Done!!” after that episode. And she did.

So anyway, sorry for the long-winded post, I just wanted to explain where we’re coming from. As I said earlier, we find the interactions between Penny and Sheldon to be delightful. But other than that, the show leaves a lot to be desired.

So my big question is, will it get any better? Is there any reason to make a case to my wife why we should continue on? Or will it just be more of the same?

2

AFAICT, there was never a satisfactory explanation for why the Penny character would ever actually love somebody like the Leonard character, weak, whiny, and insecure as he was.

3

It has its highs and lows, but it gets better. Especially after Howard hooks up with Bernadette. Skip Season 11 entirely.

4

TBBT is a show I enjoyed, but just barely. It has a lot of drawbacks, the main one being the laugh track which never stopped grating on my nerves.

But it had a few things going for it too. The science background makes it a bit smarter than other sitcoms (low bar, I know), and there are some Easter Egg jokes to find. The characters do grow and change. And there are some clever moments and good guest stars later on.

5

Your wife has watched plenty of episodes to decide whether it’s worth continuing. If she doesn’t like it now, I doubt watching the show is going to get any more enjoyable. Like most sitcoms, it’s stupid, filled with behavior most of us wouldn’t accept in real life, but it can be entertaining enough to pass some time.

Are you watching several episodes in one sitting? I have a working theory that programs which weren’t designed for binge watching suffer from showing multiple episodes all in a row.

6

There isn’t actually an 11th Commandment that says anyone has to watch the show. Plenty of TV fare exists that you and your wife might enjoy.

As for Howard’s “sexual harassment”, Penny puts him down quite effectively.

7

I only watch it because I think Howard is hot.

8

“Penny as sex object” never really completely goes away, but it certainly becomes less of a focus as the series goes on. After the 3rd season the neckline of her wardrobe goes up at least a half inch every year.

Not that I was paying any attention to that. :upside_down_face:

9

I watched most of the show’s run because I found it “watchable” (for the most part) and in a certain mood might even upgrade that to “It has its moments.” And also because my older daughter liked it all the way through.

I would have preferred to let it just be a show about a nerdy guy who has a crush on the hot chick across the hall, let that run its course until they get married or Penny moves back to Nebraska for some reason or signs a major studio contract that makes the relationship impossible . . . or whatever . . . and then call it a wrap after three seasons.

But that’s just me. I would agree with Odesio, though, that if someone isn’t hooked after two seasons, maybe it’s time to move on.

10

I started watching it at some point during the third season or so because within a few weeks of my getting my diagnosis of Apsergers, I read an article about the character of Sheldon being on the spectrum, which I totally saw. I recognized that the show was ultimately about a person with a big social impediment learning to accept the world as it was and to change to accommodate others (the Penny/Leonard stuff was, in that reading, the secondary plot). But I just stopped finding it funny at a certain point. These guys were nerds about everything: they all spoke Klingon; they played every single video game imaginable; they followed every franchise. The portrayal of fan culture was so scattershot I couldn’t even relate to the callouts to my own community. Whenever there was a plot thread of genuine human concern (like Raj throwing in the towel on dating and telling his parents he was open to an arranged marriage), it would be tempered with all the inanities around it.

I was ready to pack it in late in the run; it became a hate-watch for me, because I’d hung in that long, I figured I’d watch to the end to see how things turned out.

11

That show was uneven at best. It did have some good moments - Will Wheaton guests stars a few times and those shows were always good.

But the cringe parts have a tendency to be really cringy. When Amy (Sheldon’s love interest) is first introduced, she is portrayed as having some weird sexual crush on Penny, which is just odd and annoying.

There’s no reason for you to stick with the show - even when it’s good, it’s not THAT good. And when it’s bad, it’s really bad.

12

But this show changes significantly in seasons 3 and 4 with the introduction of Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik’s characters. I find it very hard to watch the early seasons knowing how much the characters (especially Howard) will change.

13

If your wife’s main objection is Howard’s creepiness, that does get toned way down/redirected towards Raj once Bernadette shows up. And Amy Farah Fowler was a huge addition to the show - Mayim Bialik is a great comedic actor.

14

The show does change over time as characters start pairing off. Howard eventually gets a girlfriend, and has to shape up. And Penny does date one of them, which means the other guys back off after a bit. The show seems to become more about the relationship between the characters over time.

That said, I really only ever caught the show sporadically. So I noticed some bigger changes over time, but also didn’t see a lot of episodes. It was still on broadcast TV, after all.

The big gripe I have seen other make is that it uses so many nerdy stereotypes, depicting nerds the way outsiders would, despite the show’s theme seeming to be that it is a pro-nerd show. I’ve actually heard it called “nerd blackface” before.

But the clips I find on YouTube, and then the episodes I’ll sometimes watch to understand the clips don’t bother me on that front. And they tend to be later seasons.

Still, there’s a video called “the adorkable misogyny of Big Bang Theory” that tears apart all the misogyny, and a follow up by a trans YouTuber who pointed out how bad the trans misogyny is–though that at least is mostly confined to a few episodes or one-off jokes.

15

Her character also suffered from the same thing that plagues a lot of long-running shows, namely that the concept of the character obviously changed. In Amy’s first appearance, she basically talked and behaved like a monotonous asexual robot, which is why Sheldon agreed to continue their first date. By the time the next season rolled around, she was speaking normally and revealed herself as a person with sexual needs and desires. It happened with the guys as well: the very first episode had a scene in which Leonard and Sheldon go to donate to a sperm bank, and Sheldon later says “Today we tried masturbating for money.” Then he’s portrayed as being more or less non-sexual until Amy comes onto the scene several seasons later. As sitcom continuity goes, it’s not as bad as the Vanishing of Chuck Cunningham, but you can see the writers were making it up as they went.

16

For the first few seasons the showrunner was Chuck Lorre, who was coming off the “triumph” of Two-and-a-Half Men. I think he left with season five. The show noticeably lost a lot of its creepiness when that happened.

17

I suggest skipping the season when Leonard was involved with Raj’s sister Priya. Priya was to TBBT what Cousin Oliver was to The Brady Bunch.

Howard does get better over time but what made the show was Sheldon. If you like his schtick you’ll like the show, if not you won’t.

18

Hah! That’s pretty clever.

The one-dimensional exaggerated nerdiness did have some usefulness in raising my son, however. We watched the show as a family when my son was growing up, and whenever he (the nerdiest of nerds since he started talking, currently in a good way - he’s a Ph.D candidate in condensed matter physics now) said or did something exceptionally thoughtless toward the feelings of others, we’d say, “Right, Sheldon” or “don’t be like Sheldon.”

In other words, the parody that was Sheldon was not a half-bad teaching tool to show how unintentional thoughtlessness appears to others.

19

I won’t argue that you’re wrong, since it’s a matter of opinion anyway. Me, I didn’t find Howard to be a very likable or interesting character from the get-go, and he didn’t change enough to win me over.

Well, maybe he did change enough to win me over in the last couple of seasons. But I don’t know. By then, I was gone.

20

Yeah, Harold got a long term gilfriend, who became is wife and then he became a father. None of that really changed him into a real human being until the last season or so.

Personally I thought a lot of the fun went out of it around the time Amy/Bernadette became main characters. Nothing to do with the characters themselves but just the jokes started to get flat and stale all round.If that correlates with Lorre leaving the show mentioned upthread, that’s probably the reason.