I agree that that “joke” was lame, but there are others that are pretty good.
In one scene, Penny gives a gift to Sheldon, and it turns out to be Leonard Nimoy’s napkin from the restaurant that Penny works in.
Sheldon says: “I possess the DNA of Leonard Nimoy? Do you realize what this means? All I need is a healthy ovum, and I can grow my own Leonard Nimoy!”
Which by itself is funny, given the ecstatic enthusiasm Sheldon delivers it in, but Penny’s response to Sheldon’s statement is hilarious:
Penny: “Hey, all I’m giving you is the napkin Sheldon!”
Another funny scene: Begins at time 4:41 of this clip and ends at 2:17 of this clip
Overall, the show is medium-funny, but as long as they are not concentrating on how annoying Sheldon is, there are some very funny moments.
It’s about geeks who happen to be physicists, not physicists who happen to be geeks–the point is the comic-book collecting/video game playing/SF convention going type lifestyle. They are scientists simply because that’s the rock-star job of that world, not because it’s what 1) most geeks are like or 2) what most scientists are like.
I think part of it is there are so few comedies today that it looks good by comparison.
I think when a show is supposed to be “about” something, people with an “in” on that “something” are overly critical, 'cause they are too busy focusing on the mistakes.
Like with That 70s Shows, if you lived through the 70s you could see how much of it was just wrong, totally wrong, and the jokes were not about what it was like in the 70s but rather what people think the 70s were about.
Jim Parsons (Sheldon) is one of the most gifted physical comedians working today. It’s a shame he hasn’t won an Emmy already. He can get more laughs as Sheldon with a glance than most actors can with a monologue and yet he doesn’t ham. Sheldon’s combination of complete innocence and complete obnoxiousness is also unique. (“Oh no… she’s up there jumping on the bed” and his febrile “Mommy smokes in the car and Jesus says it’s alright but we can’t tell Daddy!” flashback were two highlights for me.)
It’s like Schrodinger’s cat: if you put a physics PhD in a box and leave him there until he might be dead, an entire world of normal people won’t give a shit unless they can use that physicist in superposition to nail Penny. If you understand the concept, it doesn’t matter if it is funny.
I’ve only seen one episode of BBT, and while I don’t go quite so far as the OP, I can’t say I LIKED it. I’d watch it again if there was nothing better on (which is how I ended up watching it in the first place), but I sure wouldn’t seek it out.
I got a few laughs, but, tellingly, they weren’t from the episode’s main character, or the major secondary character of the episode.
The episode involved Sebastian - I think the unlikable dude - trying to befriend another scientist at the school (?) he worked at, in order to get access to…some machine or another. I missed the first few minutes, and later on, he only referred to it as ‘the machine’.
Anyway, Sebastian’s attempts at making friends…were just painful to watch. The wall climbing scene could have been entertaining if both he and the other scientist (who talked wike Ewmew Fudd) hadn’t been so annoying. But it wasn’t. The scene with him trying to make friends with the little girl? I actually chose that point, deliberately, to go get something to eat.
It was Raj who got the biggest laugh from me, and even that wasn’t more than a couple chuckles. When Sebastian was saying he couldn’t maintain 5 friendships, so he had to drop one: ‘Oh, please, let it be me!’
We consider it “summer filler” for the most part. I laugh at them; not with them.
They whole Penny thing…I’m not buying it. In real life, if any one of those guys came a’knocking, she’d crouch down on the floor silently, waiting for their feet shadows to go back across the hall.
As the others have said, being a physicist might make you dislike the show. However, I have a friend who’s an astrophysicist - Angua on this board - who I’m pretty sure likes the show. The characters do remind me of some of my geekier friends, though caricatured, of course.
@Tengu: didn’t you notice that the scene with him trying to befriend the little girl was a Frankenstein parody? Or did you notice but still not think it was funny? It worked for me.
I like smart-guy sarcasm much more than Sheldon’s infinite supply of neuroses, and while I understand the latter is “funnier” in a broad comedic sense, it’ll likely be what ultimately drives me away from the show.
The lame/incorrect physics references I can forgive. However, I’m sometimes bothered by how they often blur the line between experimental and theoretical physics.
One of my good friends (who happened to be in my undergrad program) introduced me to the show.
It’s just silly! And I think Sheldon is hilarious.
I think the key is to not get hung up on how they’re unrealistic. I wonder if anthropologists got angry at Ross’ portrayal in Friends…
While the characters are all unrealistic, I do find it funny how often I’ll see glimpses in them that are true to life. It’s almost as if they’re the combination of all the geekiness I’ve seen throughout school put into four people. In fact, there was a joke in one episode that Sheldon didn’t know what to get Leonard for his birthday and then got excited about a wireless n-band router. Normally, that joke wouldn’t have been that funny for me except that I bought myself one for my birthday 2 years ago!
So anyway… physics PhD student here that likes the show.
Like I said, I deliberately chose to be elsewhere during that scene, so if there was anything about it that indicated it was a Frankenstein parody other than an adult (in stature, in any case) man approaching a little girl and trying to befriend her, I missed it.
As it was the scene was just creepy on a level that approaches the original quantitatively, though of a distinctly different quality. And what I saw was painful to watch, I can’t imagine the rest being any less so.
Sheldon (thanks for the correction) pegs my ‘creep’ meter in the scenes where he’s not doing something that looks like something incredibly skeevy…in this scene he IS. And, even knowing it’s not what it looks like, it’s…kind of slimy feeling.
