I can’t figure out how ironic I was being here. Terrible show. Decent gif.
I don’t think, in total, it’s a terrible show. Some of the past episodes are genuinely charming and sometimes funny. Recent episodes however have been charmless and make me think the show has reached its end of life and needs to be put down.
The Big Bang Theory but the audience is a bird screaming into a cup
This sums up my feelings.
Except the show got super boring too.
Still love it. It was really weak early this season but it got better. I am laughing more now.
I have never quit watching the show but it has really slid into a stereotype of itself the last few years. But since I do get a few good laughs with every show i keep watching it.
I never had any issues with the content or portayals of geeks, though the general sexism annoyed me. Still, enjoyed it for a number of years.
Gave up on it a couple of seasons ago, though, when I just started getting bored with it. The characters had fallen into caricatures of themselves. “Here’s where Sheldon gets upset about someone sitting in his spot on the couch.” Yawn.
I haven’t watched since season 7, I remember the comic book store fire. I do recall enjoying it up till then.
I think criticisms of BBT apply to most sitcoms honestly. And there’s nothing particularly worse about BBT except that it’s more noticeable for people.
As sitcoms get old they tend to cover the same material over and over again only with a different mix of characters.
True. The Simpsons had a gazillion characters, but they eventually went on for so long, even they started covering material over and over eventually.
I was going to say Futurama came out of the trap. I thought its last three seasons were its most creative. But that’s not really fair. They only had 9 or 10 seasons total. I’m sure if they had gone on long enough, they would fall into the same trap too.
Never! Futurama is the best animated sitcom ever, and would not have made those mistakes.
You know its just a good show to watch when you have 20 minutes to waste and want a laugh or two. But very little gets accomplished over the course of an entire season.
Finished up season 8. Howards Mom, The Sheldon-Hofstadter paper, Comic Book Store rebuilt, engagement/breakup stuff. That’s pretty much the entire season summarized. Also at first I hated Penny’s short hair, but by the end of the season I liked it. Now I have to wait till next season to see if she changes it again! Heh.
It’s okay, like any show that’s been on this long it’s worn out its own welcome quite a bit and while they’ve done much to switch up the dynamic, it’s still a half hour sit-com. I usually get at least one good laugh out of it at the least though, and with only 4 episodes left I’ll see it through, but unlike something along the lines of a Parks and Rec or Frasier (to name just a few) it’s not something I’m going to binge again down the road.
I mean in fairness, it’s only a pretty modern concept that anything at all gets done or accomplished in a sitcom.
Can you imagine looking for plot progression in something like Three’s Company? I mean other than, “Suzanne Summers is pissed so Jack needs to go to a hospital to get a shot oh hey the nurse ends up being the new roommate.”
It’s actually kind of funny now that I think about it - in most old sitcoms/television shows, plot advancements all occurred within a single “special episode.” Very little was foreshadowed and developed over time. Oh, hey, Edith’s dead.
Which sitcoms did have plot advancements?
Friends, I guess? They changed the character dynamics over time and who was in love with who, and who knew about it, and who lived where. That was the sum total of the changes on Frasier over time as well, meaning where Daphne’s relationship was with Niles in any given season. I’m trying to think, but I don’t think Malcolm in the Middle made too many changes despite being a single camera show. Same with Modern Family, except for the fact that Haley is now going to college, now she flunked out and is back from college, etc.
Yep. More modern sitcoms have a bit more plot advancement, where things change a bit over multiple episodes. At least more than they used to.
There was a tiny bit of this in the past, but it was less about specific plot/character development, and more about just deciding they did not like how the character originally was portrayed. When you examine Major Houlihan from MASH, for example, she was a very different character by the end of the show compared to the beginning. (Of course, so was Hawkeye, who basically went from being a womanizing, rapey alcoholic to being Alan Alda.)
Without even talking about character progression over time, most sitcoms have characters learning something within a single episode (Seinfeld being the marked exception here, but that’s another topic): Joey gets mad at Chandler, Chandler apologizes, they’re friends again.
My issue with The Big Bang Theory (and this is from someone who still watches each new episode) is that a lot of times, plot threads are just dropped or not resolved in any meaningful way.
Here’s an example from a recent episode: Howard regrets that Bernadette made him get rid of his scooter when they got married, so he buys a new one. Bernadette finds out and asks why he did it, and he says he wanted to regain some of his youth. So how does the episode resolve? Bernadette makes Howard sell the scooter and give her the money.
No recognition of Howard’s wants. No softening of Bernadette’s character. It’s resolved as “Look how dumb Howard is for wanting a scooter! Also isn’t it funny when Bernadette is bitchy??” Most of the punchlines seem to be at the expense of the characters.
Parks and Rec. Community. Arrested Development. Just to name a few.
Oh hey, good call. I’ll include The Office in that too.