I really can’t stand Johnny Galecki’s acting in the BBT. Otherwise, I don’t have any strong feelings towards the show either way. I’ll tune in from time to time, but mostly just because Kaley Cuoco is cute. I find myself laughing more during How I Met Your Mother, though - another show I only really watch because it airs constantly and I find one of the lead actresses attractive (Allyson Hannigan).
Why not?
I don’t know delirium’s issue with it, but he seems to be overacting a lot, and he has a lot of annoying traits. He’s probably trying to emphasize certain parts of the character, but it comes off in an uncomfortable way for me. It’s hard to put into words, though.
it’s an exaggeration people.
What? A sitcom with characters that exaggerate? What’s next? Those bastards.
Does that automatically make it funny or good?
Yeah, pretty much. I just find the way he plays the character to be annoying. The last couple seconds of that Penny’s Gift to Sheldon video pretty much sum it up for me, though his stupid face bothers me in most of his reaction shots throughout the clip as well.
When Galecki overdoes the whiny, nasaly tone to his voice, it is rather irritating. I haven’t really followed the show’s entire run, but he seemed to do this more in the earlier seasons and has mellowed it out a bit since then.
I already defended the SHOW on those grounds. But overacting is still bad. It’s not exaggerated…it’s something different than that.
I agree with Freezer, though…it’s worse in the first season.
Where are all these amazing sitcoms without overacting/exaggerated acting? All of the sitcom darlings that have been proposed as superior to BBT have their fair share of it as well: Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Community. Granted, I’ve only seen 2-3 episodes of HIMYM and Community, but they both had over-/exaggerated acting.
Community I enjoyed, but I don’t get the love for HIMYM. Half of the characters are so flat I doubt I could see them edge on, and the other half are way over-exaggerated, and generally not in a funny way.
For one the entire cast of HIMYM is good - besides Ted who is merely okay - so you can have episodes about any of the characters and you don’t get the whole “oh nuts it’s a _____ episode!” Plus the show nails the believability of all the characters friendships which is something that most shows can’t even really establish all that well.
I think Ted’s great.
Come on, he has the hardest job on the show. He has to be the lens which everybody sort of have to relate to, and die-hard romantic for the show’s main theme to hang out on, and the connection that binds everyone together even when they’re off doing their own thing.
That Josh Radnor has played up his douchey aspects and his romantic aspects well against the rest of the cast, and that he’s been saddled with so many episodes that his character really has very little direction left to go isn’t really the fault of the actor. Josh Radnor does a great job amongst everyone, who as mentioned, is already fantastic to begin with.
I must have caught the only lame episodes, then, because I thought Hannigan and the dude playing her husband both sucked, hard, the other chick seemed pretty generic, and Neil Patrick Harris, who I normally like a lot, was kind of eye-rollingly bad.
For reference the episode I most recently caught that I can remember was one in which the principal attraction was Robots vs Wrestlers.
The Dude playing Hannigan’s husband… you should watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Theory about comedy: the best comedies are the ones that treat their characters with the most empathy and humanity. AD, P&R, The Office (not so much anymore), Community… all shows that take the humanity of their characters as seriously as the joke. As ridiculous as Tobias or GOB Bluth is, Tobias’ lack of self-awareness and GOB’s incredible neediness are kind of poignant.
I’d probably have to watch more BBT to see how those characters hold up, but I mostly saw stock types.
Yeah, that was a bad season in general.
Season 2 and 3 are the series highlights, (aren’t they all.) and the most recent season 7 still seems to have some life to it, but 5 and 6 are considered the series low point and a random sampling of them would not leave a good taste in your mouth.
Himym benefits from watching from the beginning, because once the character’s stories becomes clear, it’s easier to ride along with the rest of the jokes. Also, it has one of the most consistent continuity among TV shows in general and definitely sitcoms in particular.
I agree with this, and BBT’s character’s are actually treated with some degree of empathy and humanity, (even if it’s just the actor’s choice playing them.) Yet even so, i still can’t really watch the entire series because I don’t find the jokes funny.
It makes it a standard sit-com. Sit-coms are always about characters whose behavior is exaggerated, at least most of them. If they weren’t they would be terribly uninteresting and boring.
Not surprisingly, you’ve missed my point. Just because American sitcom conventions allow for crazy exaggeration on the part of the actor, doesn’t mean exaggerations are therefore always funny. Quite the opposite, in my opinion.
And you can still over-exaggerate a characters mannerisms to the point of merely being irritating. That’s not only possible, but based on the snippets of horrible mainstream sitcoms that I’ve accidentally seen, it’s apparently par for the course.
I also disagree that exaggeration is inherent in the sitcom form in order for it to be funny. It’s a crutch for unfunny writers, or hammy actors. 70s sitcoms like Taxi or Barney Miller or early MAS*H didn’t have to resort to such nonsense, and people still thought they were funny.
70s sitcoms like Taxi or Barney Miller or early MAS*H didn’t have to resort to such nonsense, and people still thought they were funny.
I think those shows had their exaggerations and stereotypes like any other comedy. Many sitcoms of that style do have a serious character or the ability to allow their characters to play situations seriously. And that does only work with good writing and acting.
And the base of most sitcoms is to take an every day situation, exaggerate the hell out of it and the characters reactions to it and hope the audience goes along for the ride.
FTFY.
The “exaggerate the hell out of it” part is not inherent to the sitcom. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You don’t have to have caricatures instead of characters.