I was very excited to see the American Reunion movie. I saw American Pie just after college and remembered it was quite funny.
Jim, Michelle, Oz, Heather, Stifler reunite for their high school...
I'll say one thing for it, it helped me get through all those nights shifts I used to have to do. E4 used to run this, HIMYM and the Inbetweeners in stacks; Which was great because the level of funny you got increased at the same rate as you got tired and needed a boost.
I have said it before and will keep beating this drum however. The IT crowd is the definitive Geek show.
At first we thought this show was a bit crappy , but the more you watch it the more the Geeky / nerdy humour appeals.
Did find this really cool item from the show.Its a replica of the Rubik's cube Tissue Box Cover that sits on the table next to "Sheldons Spot" - so cool and nerdy/Geeky
My girlfriend and her entire family like it so I gave it a shot. It's something to have on in the background when I'm cooking, but not something I can actively watch for 22 minutes.
The show has improved immeasurably once it started focusing equally on the female characters. Mayim Bialik in particular is an all-star, and they've been using her to tone Sheldon down to near-human levels of annoying.
The laugh track bothers me sometimes, but my wife is addicted to the show, so I end up watching it pretty regularly. It makes me laugh, but so does seeing people get hit in the crotch by stuff. There's no accounting for taste, especially mine. But I'm old, so I kinda don't care. I've also started watching HIMYM recently as well, thanks to Netflix, and I like that show as well. Honestly, it reminds me a bit of "Friends".
We should probably distinguish between a laugh track, which is canned laughter of the sort you might hear in early episodes of M*A*S*H, and "filmed before a live studio audience," which is what Big Bang is.
Granted, the show has garnered some gripes for how sweetened and loud the audience response often sounds. And sure, if the audience is packed with fans of the show, they're going to roar more loudly. But what you're hearing in most cases with the multi-camera sitcoms is actual real-person laughs.
The key to the show's success isn't that it makes fun of nerds but that it uses time-tested sitcom tropes that a lot of the audience is seeing for the first time. Most of the episodes may sprinkle some nerd references but are basically trading in conflicts that were in use at the beginning of the medium. Also most of the cast continues to be pretty good at the comic-timing thing. Cuoco in particular is underrated.
Essentially I enjoy the show because I enjoy the company. Can't really say that for, say, 30 Rock these days, sadly.
To bring the eternal Community reference into it: Community at its best can be seen as art. Big Bang at its best is good craft.
I can't watch it. I almost watched an entire epiosde when nothing else was on and wanted to laugh really badly. I even told my fiancee that I was going to give it a shot. I turned off my "cynical" switch and thought, "Ok, ok, I'll give this a try. It's very popular, maybe I'm missing something."
I didn't laugh once. The laugh track is very annoying and so are the characters. I just can't sit through any sitcoms nowadays. I'll watch Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, and to a lesser extent The Office and laugh more often than not, but shows like this and Two and a Half Men just make me cringe. The cookie-cutter jokes that get the laugh track treatment are kind of insulting to my intelligence.
I know I probably sound like a dick, but I just do not understand how people enjoy this crap. Parsons won an Emmy?! Yikes.
We should probably distinguish between a laugh track, which is canned laughter of the sort you might hear in early episodes of M*A*S*H, and "filmed before a live studio audience," which is what Big Bang is.
Granted, the show has garnered some gripes for how sweetened and loud the audience response often sounds. And sure, if the audience is packed with fans of the show, they're going to roar more loudly. But what you're hearing in most cases with the multi-camera sitcoms is actual real-person laughs.
Canned or with a giant LAUGH sign, it's abused.
The above clip has three average to well written jokes.
Quote:
Sheldon: Oh, well you can't blame me for jumping to that conclusion.
and
Quote:
Leonard: if science ever discovers another member of your species and you'd like some privacy I'd be more than happy to get out of your way.
and
Quote:
Sheldon: You want me to leave the apartment? You want me to go some place else and be... some place else?
These jokes are earned by the scene, given a nominal knowledge of the characters. They aren't great comedy, but they're clearly jokes.
The laughter kicks in after the following complete non-jokes. They barely even qualify as set up. They are, almost entirely, laughs based on "look at how nerdy Sheldon is."
"Great news, my mom sent me my old Nintendo 64."
"Break out the Red Bull, it's time to rock Mario, old school."
"Look, mom included the memory card. We can pick up right where I left off in 1999 when I had pernicious anemia."
"well, there's no problem, I have three controllers, the more the merrier." - This by the way, goes against everything we know about Sheldon.
"L: Why, what's so unusual about me having a date? S: Well, statistically speaking..." - This is just a clumsy tag to the joke that worked for the people that didn't get it the first time.
"I'm a published theoretical physicist with two PhDs and an IQ that can not be measured by normal tests... how much scarcer could I be?"
Canned or live (and it really, really sounds canned), it's abused.
I thought the first season of BBT was harmless fun. Nowadays, the problem is with Leonard. He's our viewpoint character and we're supposed to root for him, but he's developed into kind of a dick. It does help a bit that the female cast has been strengthened, but I still have no one to root for.
30 Rock, same problem. "Everyone is a psychopath except Liz" has turned into "Liz is the biggest psychopath of them all". Don't get me wrong, the show's misanthropy is one of its lures for me, but lately it's been stooping to a pretty crass level.
The laughter kicks in after the following complete non-jokes. They barely even qualify as set up. They are, almost entirely, laughs based on "look at how nerdy Sheldon is."
Or they could be laughing at the delivery of the lines. Even the legendary Chuckles the Clown eulogy doesn't read like much without Mary Tyler Moore's delivery of it.
Sorry guys, revoke my Chewer card if you will, but I don't get the hate. It's not Cheers but it's not Two and a Half Men either.
I see it as a reasonably amusing show that actually manages to stand foursquare for scientific logic and against creationism bullshit. That aspect hardly ever gets mentioned.
I was arguing about this with someone who'd fallen for the Community vs. Big Bang war. I said that Community, while sometimes brilliant, is something I really have to be in the mood for, whereas Big Bang is always there, like a comfortable blanket, which it seems is more along the lines of what I look for in TV comedy; I'm not saying that's the right or wrong thing to want from sitcoms, it just is what it is; that's just me. (I seem to have a radically different taste in movies — I do not look to them for comfort.) Anyway, I also asked him how many episodes of Big Bang he'd seen that allowed him to come to the conclusion that only idiots prefer it to Community. He said he couldn't make it through one episode. I said, well, there are ways in which I prefer Big Bang to Community, but I've seen all the Community episodes, which is more than you've seen of Big Bang. Point is, if one hasn't even seen an hour's worth of a show, one should probably just leave it at "I tried it, it wasn't for me" and not make generalizations about the people who do watch it. Which is a point that'd probably be happier over in the Nerd Offensive thread, but hey.
I see it as a reasonably amusing show that actually manages to stand foursquare for scientific logic and against creationism bullshit. That aspect hardly ever gets mentioned.
I am so sorry you live in a country where this is even a factor that needs to be considered.
Personally I just don't find jokes written by 50-something jewish LA screenwriters who heard the word 'anime' once to be all that relevant or incisive when it comes to lampooning, deconstructing and celebrating geek culture.
The show's also just not very funny. It's geek-Friends to Communitys US-Spaced.
I am so sorry you live in a country where this is even a factor that needs to be considered.
Yeah, me too.
The fundies like to fulminate about any supposedly "anti-Christian" pop culture, but Big Bang actually earns it, not by being ham-handedly sacrilegious but by being so off-handedly dismissive of anything outside the scientific method. It's not just Christianity, though; Raj and Howard are certainly not the most observant Hindu/Jewish guys who ever walked. Sheldon's mom is a born-again, but the ace up the sleeve is Laurie Metcalf, who's appealing playing anything, and she manages to suggest that Mrs. Cooper intentionally plays up the Christian stuff more when Sheldon's around so he'll be motivated to have his own life away from her and not live at home. Otherwise he might still be in Texas with her and Meemaw.
I'm not saying anyone should like the show. If you've watched it a time or two and it did nothing for you, fine. But because it's become part of the fabric of my after-work routine, I've seen enough of it to start finding interesting things in it. Overall I don't feel it's going to shake out as a classic or anything; it's kinda like that year in college when I got in the Fresh Prince habit. My taste in TV is probably kinda shit anyway. I can't get into any of the ongoing dramas, acclaimed as they are, because I hate having to come back every week for more of the story, and with stuff that's been on a few seasons it just looks like a daunting game of catch-up. I don't watch much TV but when I do it's burbling comfort food like Pawn Stars or Castle ... or Big Bang. With movies, books and music I'm all about being challenged by it; TV to me is corporate furniture to decompress in front of.
I'm not saying anyone should like the show. If you've watched it a time or two and it did nothing for you, fine. But because it's become part of the fabric of my after-work routine, I've seen enough of it to start finding interesting things in it. Overall I don't feel it's going to shake out as a classic or anything; it's kinda like that year in college when I got in the Fresh Prince habit. My taste in TV is probably kinda shit anyway. I can't get into any of the ongoing dramas, acclaimed as they are, because I hate having to come back every week for more of the story, and with stuff that's been on a few seasons it just looks like a daunting game of catch-up. I don't watch much TV but when I do it's burbling comfort food like Pawn Stars or Castle ... or Big Bang. With movies, books and music I'm all about being challenged by it; TV to me is corporate furniture to decompress in front of.
Within that context, yes, BBT is the perfect show for you really.
I've seen enough of it to start finding interesting things in it.
Same thing happened to an old flatmate of mine - it was on at a convenient time, she'd stick it on in the background and eventually started to really dig it. I probably would have watched it with her, except for Sheldon (nothing against Parsons, just that archetype tends to irritate the hell out me. I think he's good in the role.)
I enjoyed the first season of the show, but stopped watching after a while since I felt like they'd just started repeating themselves, it was just really bland and generic. This year though, my roommate has been watching it, so I've seen a lot of the recent episodes. The addition of the extra female cast members makes it a much better show. Bernadette and Amy give them a lot more stories they can go to, and I think both actresses do a good job. It's a mediocre show that's usually good for a few laughs, and Cuoco and Parsons both are very funny.
I've never gotten the hate either. It's not transcendent, but you could do a lot worse.
I tried it a couple times, and could never get past the first commercial break. The people are grating caricatures and the jokes are annoyingly obvious. It's like a bad SNL skit that won't end.
You probably could do a lot worse, but you could also do a lot better.
But yeah, I used to have more discerning taste in TV, particularly in ongoing dramas. Dunno what happened. Now I'll just veg in front of an American Pickers marathon.
If it makes anyone feel better, I was also a huge fan of Better Off Ted.
I don't watch The Big Bang Theory but saw in the New Posts lists that Sifl and Olly were mentioned. That is an example of some fine entertainment. Sorely missed.
