Thanks for the replies, everyone. Seems like a mixed bag of options… I would expect nothing less. 
I forgot to mention in my OP: as the parents of a 23-year-old autistic woman, we can definitely identify with Sheldon. The portrayal isn’t perfect, but it’s damn good.
I like that too.
The only character that we are specifically told their age in the show is Sheldon, who is supposed to be nine when Young Sheldon begins. Young Sheldon begins as being set in the year 1989, so Sheldon was born in 1980. He is thus supposed to age from 27 to 39 over the course of The Big Bang Theory. Leonard, Howard, and Raj are apparently a little younger. I think of the show as being about four guys who are socially retarded despite being very smart at the beginning of the series. In their late 20s, they are about as socially intelligent as most people are in their late teens. Gradually they grow up during the series. By the end, Howard is married with two children, Leonard is married and expecting a baby, and Sheldon is married. (We’re told in the narration for Young Sheldon that Sheldon and Amy eventually have children.) Raj isn’t married, but he’s gotten past his fear of talking to women and dated a few women. He isn’t married and doesn’t have a girlfriend as the show ends, but for a guy in his late 30s that isn’t so rare.
And how many other television shows cast a scientist to play a scientist for one of the main characters in the show?
How many sitcoms feature scientists as main characters to begin with?
Howard is an engineer.
And he took Sarah Michelle Gellar to the Nobel ceremony!
Thanks for your thorough research there, but I repeat - Mayim Bialik is an antivax nutjob.
Her claims to be otherwise when criticized were just as unconvincing as others who try to backtrack on their bullshit by claiming not really to be antivax in principle, who say that the issue is controversial and a personal decision, that they just object to the number of vaccines or to the evidence-based timing of vaccinations based on their crunchy feelings of what’s truthy. Per the WaPo article I linked upthread,
she has offered quotes such as one to People magazine in 2009, saying “we are a non-vaccinating family.” While Bialik has long fought back against the anti-vaccine label, this video was the most in-depth defense yet. “I have never once said that vaccines are not valuable, not useful or not necessary — because they are,” she said, adding her children did receive some vaccinations, which she delayed for reasons she doesn’t want to share publicly.
Per Wikipedia
In a 2009 interview, Bialik said of her family: “We are a non-vaccinating family, but I make no claims about people’s individual decisions. We based ours on research and discussions with our pediatrician, and we’ve been happy with that decision, but obviously there’s a lot of controversy about it.”[93] In October 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she said that though she had not received a vaccination in 30 years, she planned to be vaccinated against both the flu and the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that “As of today, my children may not have had every one of the vaccinations that your children have, but my children are vaccinated.”[94] Bialik has also said that her children were not vaccinated at the time of her 2012 book Beyond the Sling , but that they have since received a “delayed” vaccination schedule.
And, again cited in the WaPo article, she exploits the fact that she is a well known public figure who is a neuroscientist to promote other pseudoscientific bullshit for money.
For me, it’s almost impossible to get into a sitcom by watching some random episodes. They’re designed to advance the characters bit by bit show after show until they grow into people whose foibles you instantly understand when they’re put into a weird jokey position. If you don’t understand why they are acting the way they are, then the point is pretty much lost. They become unreal dummies doing stupid things for no reason. Well, there is a reason, but you would have had to watch umpteen earlier programs to get that. Starting in the middle is fatal.
She also hosted some Jeopardy. No one’s perfect.
This is no longer a valid defense when Taylor Swift exists.
But she couldn’t host Jeopardy. She’d do great on Price is Right.
Because she’s a down-to-earth billionaire who knows what a gallon of milk costs?
Yeah, the host of P is R is told the prices.(maybe )She ain’t gotta study up.
Basically just be herself. I’m pretty sure all P is R hosts have done just that.
What no one has really talked about is that TBBT started out as a comedy about four nerdy geniuses who love gaming and sciency stuff, and the pretty girl who comes into their world (and is unimpressed by it,) then turns into a romcom about a bunch of social misfits - male and female - who navigate through relationships, both successfully and unsuccessfully.
That change split the fan base in two. Personally I think the original premise was wearing pretty thin by the time Bernadette and Amy showed up, and the comic acting of Mayim Bialik energized the rest of the cast to step up their own performances.
That’s fair and to be even more fair, I don’t like sitcoms in general. Was The Office a sitcom? It’s the only one that I liked as an adult.
I tried to watch The Office, but I had built up an aversion to shows that pretended to have a camera crew filming the “everyday lives” of people. And those particular people were creepy. I’m sure that viewers who stuck around for years found more to the show. I’d definitely classify it as a sitcom.
I’m a sucker for anything mockumentary and I loved the British version before the US one started.
Same here. Spinal Tap, Best in Show, The Office (both UK and US), etc. I don’t think there’s a mockumentary I haven’t liked.
It was called Big Bang Theory for a reason.
I tried my best to not believe that it was really intended to be such an infantile double entendre - physicists and girl with big boobs - but yeah…