Things can be tough, let people enjoy the things they enjoy. It brightens there day as long as there healthy.
Good for you that you think that way :). Fuck that show though. I can’t stand the unfunnyness and misogyny in it
Problem is the misogyny (and racism, and queerphobia, and ableism and so on) in it doesn’t stop when the show ends, it makes the people watching think it’s ok, or worse - funny, normalising it. Hell, even this post is defining it as “healthy”, which is so fucked up, because who exactly is that content “healthy” for?
So while I’m all for letting people enjoy what they enjoy, doing so uncritically, and/or refusing to hear when people tell you that something you enjoy is harmful to others (which misogyny, racism, queerphobia, ableism, and so on normalised in the media are) is when you go from “enjoying” to “supporting” and even “actively contributing”, no longer “harmlessly” enjoying something, and I will judge you for that (edit to clarify: we all consume harmful trash entertainment, it’s unavoidable, it’s about acknowledging that it’s harmful trash and not buying in to it, rather than insisting it’s “healthy” or “harmless” despite all evidence to the contrary)
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Nah, this show is terrible and if you disagree I’m not so sure you deserve happiness.
Bazinga
Who hurt you
Oh, stop. It’s a sexist, homophobic, unfunny shit pile.
sheldon bazinga’d my dog
bazooka
To be fair, every corporate enterprise I engage with by any terms regards me as an antagonist it must catch and parastize and engages routinely in dark patterns to trick me into its barbed snares.
A better question is, who doesn’t hurt you?
It’s a shorter list.
It was Big Bang Theory.
nah im a certified hater
Same, it’s an objectively bad show.
Bojangles
laugh track
laugh track plays for way too long and too loudly
actors awkwardly stand quietly, waiting for laugh track to end
If hating brings you joy in these dark times…
I am neutral on the show. I don’t hate it, nor do I love it. can you explain to me what’s so bad about it? it seems like a generally unremarkable show to me
There is nothing particularly bad about it. It triggers Reddit-type people because it’s a show about nerds where every joke is “haha, he’s a nerd!”.
yeah I did my own research on it (I clicked two YouTube videos) in the 3 hours since I posted that and now I kinda hate it for mysogeny and transphobia lol but I can kinda see the “haha, he’s a nerd” hate too lol but tbh besides the transphobia and mysogeny I think it’s a fine show tbh would put it on as something less painful to watch than the news when hanging out with my parents
Where’s the misogyny and transphobia?
I’m not sure I’d call the whole show transphobic, however I only remember two or three times they mentioned transgender people on the show and it was always in a bad context.
One time Sheldon and Leonard were discussing how Penny was an improvement in almost every way over the previous tenant next door who was a tall muscular black transsexual (that’s the word they used). Another time Howard told a story where he hooked up with someone only to find out that they were a pre-op transsexual, which got him an “Oooohh” of pity from the audience/laugh track.
It’s funny because she has a penis.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Not sure about the transphobia, but it is definitely on the sexist side. The whole premise starts out with dumb hot girl being hounded by smart inept nerd and friends. This of course continues in various ways and lets not forget Howard.
I do wonder though, this was pretty much the point of the comedy. Shining a light on stuff like that.
Most older shows don’t perform well with more current ideals in mind. Media should be viewed in the context of its time and people were generally less aware of how harmful certain portrayals could be.
Invited to the Ball before?
I wouldn’t define it as safe and happy when it’s full of toxic masculinity.
It’s a show for bullies. To enjoy laughing at caricatures of people people they never respected or understood.
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So full of it. The show definitely became aware of it nearer the end of the shows run but it was too little too late.
I know this will sound pretentious as fuck, but as someone who got a physics degree and knows some shit, BBT drives me fucking nuts with its relentless pandering. Nerd culture isn’t even nerdy anymore since being a nerd implies being some kind of outcast. When the outcasts become the majority, they’re no longer outcast.
Gimme old Star Trek episodes for comfort TV any day.
As someone who got a physics degree and knows some shit, the first couple seasons are not too bad. The physics/math jokes are mostly fairly accurate, and those shows happened as nerd culture was getting mainstreamed. The first Avengers movie were several years away. I can’t really say whether the series had a part in this mainstreaming, but at the least it was in the Zeitgeist.
I grew up in the north Italian province. Being a nerd didn’t make you an outcast, but definitely an odd one.
The first couple seasons came out while I was doing my bachelor (i.e. the equivalent of undergrad) and with its caricature of some quirks I could recognize in many of my friends and colleagues, it made me feel at least acknowledged.
Then it got progressively worse as they kept looking for more and more ways to drag it on, lost those qualities I found positive, and I really gave up not too long after that.
Edit: I still need to point out that Star Trek TNG is peak comfort TV, together with maybe The West Wing or some Doctor Who.
Glad someone said it.
Season one or two are actually pretty decent. As the show continued, it doubled down on the minor stereotypical qualities of each character and made that feature their entire personality. It’s a pretty normal outcome for any television show, particular across comedy and sitcoms, when the qualities in question are “has autism/aspbergers” and “doesn’t know how to treat people like they’re human”, it quickly becomes a show focused on punching down. Before long, the plot breaks down to the more socially competent characters “fixing” nerds and nerd culture as it continually reinforces the stereotypes that the first couple seasons, sure, poked fun at, but in equal measure challenged the validity of.
At some point the show stopped being a comedy about nerd culture and shifted to actively mocking, not even nerd culture, but the entire culture around academics and intellectualism. It shifted to bullying, validated on your television screen, by showing you time and time again how horrible these socially awkward nerds are, and how difficult they make life for others.
And after all that it is full circle back into no, they didn’t challenge the validity, they abused the tropes so s thoroughly that it became known as one of the worst shows in history
I’m honestly not sure what season of the show I’ve seen. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of an episode or two. Maybe it was a positive thing early on, and I think it could be a better show if it were a little more earnest, but the little exposure I had to it was decidedly negative.
Nerd does not imply outcast. It simply means someone who is obsessed with subject matter. Nerd culture is definitely nerdy and never won’t be.
Despite the show’s embarrassing cartoonish portrayal of nerds it isn’t miles from reality.
My problem with every bit of it that I’ve seen, is that they try to make their characters every type of nerd all at once. That’s not how it works. People are obsessed with a couple niche things, they are nerds about their little area. All the characters on BBT are into, like, everything that non nerd people find nerdy. It’s absurd. No one is like that.
And from what I’ve seen, it has a tone of laughing at nerds, not laughing with them. Maybe that changes from season to season, but what I saw was enough. Just a very grating show to watch that feels like it was made for people who have that one nerdy niece or nephew that they don’t really understand but hey, this must be what they’re like with their friends!
Nerd does not imply outcast.
Hmm. I guess it does not. But the show (at least occasionally,I haven’t seen much of it) implies the nerdy folks are ostracized from the more “normal” ones when they make some quip that no one but them (and the audience obviously) understand. Though, I suppose that could also be because Sheldon is an immense prick as well as a nerd. Something else that does not endear me to the show.
Perhaps, but for older nerds like me, that outcast experience is an essential part of nerd identity.
Younger nerds and geeks, who are now embraced, never went through that shit, and have in my mind a fucked up perspective on what it means to be one.
I’m an older nerd. Thank fuck nerds can just enjoy things now. Frankly, if you think nerds need to go through being ostracised, I think you have a fucked up perspective.
Perhaps closer than Revenge of the Nerds was…
Literal rape scene in that movie framed as romantic, lol. That movie is a trash fire.
BBT isn’t nerd culture, it’s nerdface.
As someone who lived with people who fetishized intelligence and used it as an excuse for toxic behavior the show is an uncomfortable reminder of that period in my life. Not just because of the characters themselves but due to the people I knew back then that would watch it
The problem with BBT was making a stereotype caricature out of being a need or having aspergers, and then assholes get to call you Sheldon cause they think they’re funny.
No, the problem is how misogynistic Leonard is but they portray him as an adorkable guy to be loved.
I had no issue with this show for a while until someone pointed out how overtly perverted many of the main cast are. The laugh track and ‘adorkable’ aspect really throw you off, but once you see it…
Yeah, it’s fucking creepy.
Me then: BBT is trash
Me now: still trash, like, it was always really bad. You’re allowed to like trash. I encourage you to like trash. If you learn to love trash then the world is full of wonders. But we’re not gonna pretend it’s good out of some sense of politeness.
Use a picture of Larry David, a person who created TWO hilarious comedy shows, to promote a garbage sitcom? Nah.
You know a show is trash when a character saying some jargon is somehow a laugh line
Then watch Parcs and Rec. Or Scrubs. Or even Friands.
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is just horribly unfunny, maybe it’s just because it’s so old it’s not relatable anymore. Or maybe it’s because Seinfeld is a pervert that rapes teenagers, idk.
Oh shit is it really that bad? I only watched like the first couple of episodes a while back and they were alright. Definitely liked it more than bbt tho
Seinfeld is hilarious.
It was just so popular and unique that everything after it tried to do the same thing and we all got used to seeing this type of humor everywhere. There is a whole TV Tropes page about this called Seinfeld is unfunny.
It’s still funny though. If you just pick up a random episode halfway through, you probably won’t find each moment-to-moment interaction to be side-splitting. However, if you know the characters, you’re just waiting to see which petty societal norm is going to turn into a whole ordeal - like George and Jerry disagreeing about whether moviegoers should pick up their own trash after a movie showing or something. Of course, the hilarious part is when George inevitably loses the perfect relationship with a beautiful woman because her father worked as a movie-theater cleaner and was never home for his family due to inconsiderate movie goers. He leaves his junior mints on the ground, she storms out, and we see Kramer walking into the movie theater with a metal detector as he scours the floor for valuable trash as part of his new side hustle.
It’s not a real episode but that’s basically the formula and it just works. You are waiting to see how shitty and petty they can be while living up to your expectations of them as characters. You know they never learn a life lesson or gain any true moral clarity. Oh, and my wife especially loves that they frequently do little gags and call backs to previous episodes.
Lol that really sounded like a real episode, you should just do a modern remake dude
The show itself is just meh, it’s so old it’s not relatable anymore and I didn’t consider it funny in the 90s even. Seinfeld is a perv irl though, he was dating a literal teenager when he was like 40 and nothing really came of it.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve rewatched Scrubs. Such a great show!
IMO BBT is just nerd mockery dressed up like nerd humor.
It’s bullying. It’s people who aren’t like me and my friends going “this is you. this is what you’re like.” It’s satire without love for the thing it’s satirizing.
I like to say that BBT is a stupid show about smart people, while Arrested Development was a smart show about stupid people.
You made that up, eh?
No. I just like to say it.
As long as you remember that Sheldon is a sociopath and not autistic, it’s fine.
At the start of the show, he could have been autistic too…
“These aren’t real nerds! They make us all look dumb!”
Other than Sheldon’s quirks, I’ve always felt like the characters were just like my friends and I and this sentiment that permeated Reddit always just felt like people who very much are like Sheldon were the ones taking the most offense at the show.
Bazinga!
Later seasons really flanderized some aspects of the characters, but I always fondly remember one scene where The Gang is assembling a new TV stand for Penny’s apartment and someone questions the airflow it offers. So they immediately start designing a water-cooling system for her TV.
I know people like that. I am people like that.
Your friends are sexist homophobes?
While they have done some pretty unsavory things involving Penny being the butt of many jokes that border on sexist, I can’t think of a single example of homophobia from the show.
That’s kinda surprising. The trans episodes are usually a double whammy on trans and homophobia
This reeks of projection. You can’t dislike this thing I like if you do you are like that weird guy that is sexist on the show you don’t like!!! You sir sound like Sheldon.
It’s still trash, but some people like trash I guess.
Before I enjoy my next guilty pleasure song, show, whatever, I’ll try to remember this and think to myself:
Time to commune with my inner raccoon.
