{"id":232,"date":"2015-01-03T21:05:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T21:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/?p=232"},"modified":"2015-04-20T11:47:46","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T10:47:46","slug":"tbbt-terrible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/tbbt-terrible\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Bang Theory is the worst TV show ever made"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just when you thought my hot takes couldn’t get any more topical… BOOM! (Or should I say… BANG!?).<\/p>\n

I hinted before<\/a>\u00a0that I don’t think much of TBBT (The Big Bang Theory), and I’d like to take some time explore why that actually is. Also\u00a0I’m super self-indulgent and this is my blog so you can shut up.<\/p>\n

I’m sure everyone knows what TBBT is, but just for the sake of completeness, here’s a summary: it’s about nerds<\/span>. Yup, that’s it. Hilarity ensues. Because lol nerds right.<\/p>\n

Despite this being a dumb premise, it’s insanely popular. Wanna guess the average viewing figures for the most recently aired series?\u00a019.9 million<\/strong>. Yup, almost 20m people think the show is the greatest. And it just… isn’t.<\/p>\n

Yet it’s a staple of many people’s lives. I see it on every other Facebook profile I look at (along with the ubiquitous\u00a0Family Guy<\/em> *shudder*), and it’s rare to ever find someone who shares my opinion. It’s shown over and over again on e4 and I even have a housemate who will happily watch it on repeat forever.<\/p>\n

I did however manage to find one article<\/a> on Salon.com that shared my reservations. Written by Emily Gould, here’s a choice quote:<\/p>\n

Most of the show\u2019s humor revolves around characters saying layperson-incomprehensible things that have to do with science, but in the middle of ordinary situations, like \u201cwell that\u2019s like the difference between a photon and a neutron!\u201d This could work well, I think, once or twice. This show has been on the air since 2007.<\/em><\/h6>\n

And I pretty much agree 100%. The two main sources of humour on the show are 1) Sheldon’s awkwardness, and 2) the nerds saying science things. For now,\u00a0I’ll focus just on (2) – the science.<\/p>\n

It’s great that there’s a show on TV that celebrates science. However, it does so in the lamest and most unoriginal way possible: making fun of nerds. Here’s a transcript from the pilot episode:<\/p>\n

PENNY
\nUm, me, okay, I\u2019m Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know.<\/h6>\n
SHELDON
\nYes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the Sun\u2019s apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations and the time of your birth somehow effects your personality.<\/h6>\n
PENNY
\nParticipate in the what?<\/h6>\n

The problem is that Sheldon has a perfectly valid point. Astrology is stupid and anyone who believes in it is stupid. But the joke here isn’t that Penny is stupid (though sadly her main role in the show is to be an dumb, attractive blonde – c’mon guys, seriously?), it’s that Sheldon is a massive nerd.<\/p>\n

My point is that while the show could be great as a platform for helping educate people and breaking down illogical things people do, it chooses to do so via a character who is the butt of his own jokes. So we simply perpetuate the idea that intelligence is a bad thing, to be treated with scorn. The same people who are laughing at Sheldon are likely those who believe in astrology themselves. All they’re getting out of this is a confirmation of their own prejudice. It’s entirely anti-progressive.<\/p>\n

It also feeds into a sad cheapening of science in popular culture. Of course, we should be doing everything we can to promote science in popular culture, but there’s right and wrong ways of doing it.<\/p>\n

The worst example I can think of for this is stuff like those terrible Facebook pages about how much people “love science.” Example –<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Firstly, that isn’t really science – it’s mathematics. That’s nitpicking I know, but it’s still annoying. Secondly, the word “EPIC” basically can’t be used in any serious context by anyone anymore. And thirdly, this kind of #content reduces science to fun facts, cool pictures, and – at its worst – mere clickbait. Science isn’t all flashy and attractive people making things explode, it’s laborious, methodological repetition and experimentation. There’s nothing sexy about the scientific method and a great deal of science is really not that interesting to the layperson.<\/p>\n

Today’s headline story on the famous science journal\u00a0Science<\/em>? “Mosquito genomes:<\/strong>
\nMultiple Anopheles mosquito genome sequences reveal extreme levels of mixing.<\/strong>” I wonder how many likes\u00a0that<\/em> got on Facebook.<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with TBBT though? Well, it’s my concern that we’re missing the point of science, and TBBT reveals the actual views\u00a0of the majority. People aren’t really interested in science, they like cool stuff they can share with their friends. Sheldon is a glimpse into what it might actually be like to come face-to-face with science proper and we simply laugh at him.<\/p>\n

But that’s just an aside really to my main point: the show just isn’t that funny.<\/p>\n

There’s a number of criticisms I’d like to make of the show, so I’ll just jump right in. To begin with, the characters are one-dimensional and not interesting. We’ve already covered how Sheldon is just a mouthpiece for awkward science talk and Penny is there to push back the cause of feminism. There’s also Raj, who’s there to let the writers get away with vaguely racist material from time to time. Sigh.<\/p>\n

And they’re just written badly. One of my favourite things to watch is footage on Youtube of TBBT with the laugh track removed.<\/p>\n