BBT is based on displaying stereotypes and then ridiculing them. As someone who studied CS and now works in IT, I've met quite a few people who actually have to deal with the very issues that this show makes fun of, and let me tell you: being a social outsider is not as much fun in the real world.
I have a hard time imagining how in this day and age the same ridiculing of stereotypes would fly without a giant backlash if the show were about:
- Women
- Homosexuals
- Non-white people
- ...
But apparently, "nerds" are a safe enough as a group that coming up with a skewed portrayal of them that lends itself to making fun of is okay.
Yeah, you go ahead and laugh about those tech freaks... why should the school bullies get all the fun...
Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a laugh track over the top”.
Try searching for versions with laugh track removed to get a better sense of the writing per se without the extra emotional manipulation.
Compare with Silicon Valley, a comedy show which also mercilessly skewers nerds, but more for the sake of social commentary than just piling on insults, and which treats even the most caricatured characters with some dignity and humanity.
BBT bugs me for the same reasons. I've yet to find someone actually in the life that enjoys the show. It seems to be an outsider's view of 'what nerds and geeks do', rather than written by nerds and geeks. This is given away in the article when they say they had to be shown students' apartments to see what they looked like.
It's interesting that the people I know who like it are the ones who like to be close to STEM or academia, but not actually in it. A sort of living-the-fantasy. Admiring the trappings you talk about, all wrapped around a fairly bog-standard sitcom.
BBT makes fun of nerds and geeks (without mentioning Science itself). I still watch it, because you gotta be able to laugh about yourself.
Now, the IT Crowd, along with Futurama, are shows that celebrate nerds and geeks. Our quirks, our good parts, and our bad parts. But its not us who are being made fun of, but the world around us.
I guess this thread is one more proof of why there's less and less funny shows coming from the U.S.
Nerds, scientists, engineers or developers can be make fun of like everybody else.
Sure BBT is not really a good show, especially after the first few seasons, sure it jokes about adults reading comics, but they also got hot wifes, go to the ISS and get Nobel prize.
The most damning thing is that people in this very thread praise Silicon Valley. You do realize that, besides being more realistic and better written, the people on this show are also way more ridiculous and despicable than in BBT? But somehow you're less offended, interesting.
I wonder if support people are offended by IT Crowd ahah.
This attitude is, secondly, the other incorrect attitude to view TBBT with, given that it also makes fun of every other stereotype depicted on the show! Penny's mocked for being dumb and dating dumb "jock" types, Walowitz's mother is mocked for being Jewish, Raj's accent is almost a mockery of itself sometimes (the actor doesn't sound like that IRL) - that's where the show draws humor from, for better or for worse. Nerds are in the crosshairs because that's the setting of the show, but every other stereotype is right there too.
The funny thing about this post is that BBT is full of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Like, chock full of it. And yet the most frequent complaint about it is about how mean it is to nerds.
I like IT Crowd, but I agree, it is just some funny, derpy IT guys that nothing every goes right for. But BBT guys have a lot of the stereotypes but generally come out triumphant over the bullies and thugs of the world. If anything, BBT celebrates "nerds" more than any other show in recent memory.
I think a second core problem with BBT is that it really plays into the "trappings of being intelligent" - which is not how most intelligent people actually are. There are a TON of "signalling" devices, for example liking comic books, or having thick-rimmed glasses. Now, I'm not a physicist (chemist/biologist) and we may be more "down to earth" but I don't have a single scientist friend who HAS THE TIME to do a lot of those things that maybe in high school geeks/nerds did a lot of. I don't know anyone who plays D&D anymore, I don't know anyone who goes to Comic-Con (I'm in San Diego). We do stuff like - go hiking; I'm obsessed with social dance (where there are, incidentally, tons of engineers and scientists); I had a lot of math majors friends from college and of the ones that did math PhD programs, they wound up: climbing rediculous spires in red rock country, supermarathon running for fun... And one, after getting his PhD, joined the Navy and entered its pilot training program (he would have become a fighter pilot but there were no fighter billets available).
So, what bugs me about BBT in addition to having really awful people (watch "BBT without the laugh track" on youtube if you doubt it), is not only that it perpetuates stereotypes, it perpetuates really dumb stereotypes... And the life of a scientist, I think, swings from incredibly boring times in the lab, to super-exciting times in the lab, to "relatively normal social life" outside of the lab, except that that last one gets a lot less time, since, we're in the lab all the damn time.
Well, I don't hate it. Its a funny show. What you must understand is that is it not a show for nerds, but for regular people. The IT crowd is for nerds. Otherwise you would not understand the humour. Take for example the episode where Jen is fooled into thinking a black box with a blinking red light is "the internet". Everyone believes her, because he is the head of IT (which itself is quite funny, given how she is clueless about IT, something many IT managers have in common). Watch the episode.
On the other hand, BBT humour seems to be about nerds. But look at the main characters. A somewhat functional genius (sheldon) with the social skills of a rock, a socially shy astronomer (or is it cosmologist?), an engineer (portrayed as being smart but puny and weak), and Leonard which is the bond that ties nerds between normals (his relationship with Penny portrays this). He constantly explains the context of the situation or of the characters. And let's not forget the comic book shop owner ( I forget his name). He is portrayed as a weak loser who has no other option in life. All of them stereotypes. Real to some extent, but stereotypes.
You are mistaken to think this show is supposed to depict the inner mental life of nerds.
It's absurdly common amongst people of our kind to assume TBBT is written for us, when in reality it's written as a caricature of us, for the general public. Much like Fraiser is not written for radio hosts, and Friends is not written for New York living twenty-somethings, TBBT is not supposed to be for nerds.
It's just not a big enough audience, yet, to cater to.
I'm just not sure I buy that. Maybe it's because I DO know non-nerds that like The IT Crowd; like all sitcom, the situation is merely a vehicle for the humour on top of it. in just the same way that you can find Father Ted funny without being a catholic priest. And there are plenty of non-nerds who would get the 'Internet as small black box' joke. And there ARE gags in BBT that non-nerds wouldn't get (not a huge number, but they are there)
BBT laughs AT nerds, reinforcing stereotypes in non-nerds and reassuring the mainstream about its superiority.
SV laughs WITH nerds, satirising the excesses of a culture that is presented as filthy rich and dominant beyond belief. It also deals with the actual wet dreams of the culture in a fairly realistic way.
Think about the material that a dim bully could get from BBT (tons), versus what he could get from SV (very little). That’s all the difference.
I find this sentiment interesting. I find BBT hilarious and identify with the characters. I often drag my wife to watch a specific BBT episode to get her to understand the way I think or understand the way I was in the past before I met her. I don't find it demeaning at all. I often find it hilarious and say, "yeah, that's me right there!" I see myself in Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard all of them. Raj, not so much. I haven't watched enough of The IT Crowd that people here on HN cite as being a better show to know what I think of it. The few clips I've seen on YouTube, I've only seen the IT Crowd characters being bullied more than I ever saw BBT characters get bullied. It's probably a biased sample, maybe those clips are at the top of the list because people like to watch nerds get bullied? I don't know. All I know is that I don't get all the hate towards BBT.
It is comparable. In the way that blackface allowed African Americans to work in venues and productions that they were otherwise prohibited, BBT allows nerds to be the subject of a mainstream sitcom.
BBT is not at all empowering the way that "Weird Science," for example, was, and highly-mainstream TV executive Chuck Lorre is of exactly a more powerful class who has allowed nerds to enter into a world where they were previously excluded. That BBT is only slighly less-awful than how nerds were previously portrayed is not a badge of honor.
How often does the show demonstrate dignified interactions between its main characters and the outside world?
I think in both shows there are occasions where you laugh with AND at the "nerds". I think the problem is a lot of people judge BBT without even seeing more than a couple episodes.
TBBT makes fun of being a nerd (or a geek) at the expense of nerds and geeks. The audience is never the nerd or geek themself; it's everyone else. TBBT does not intend for you to emphathise with the nerds, they are there for your enjoyment. Essentially, TBBT makes nerds into the new samba blacks.
There is nothing smart about the jokes; the punchline (and frequently, the entire joke) is usually [something vaguely nerdy sounding that most people don't know]. Basically, TBBT just randomly says "quantom superstring theory" and you are expected to laugh at it because the phrase sounds ridiculous; there usually isn't any more context to it than the utterance of the nerdy-sounding thing.
In contrast, Community takes the concept and builds into something substantial. They'll take "quantum superstring theory" and, for example, turn it into an episode where the vibrations of silly string perfectly predict events going on elsewhere on campus.
Exactly, the only people I know who like it are non-technical (e.g. my mother-in-law) who like it because "lol, nerds" (disclaimer: I'm not saying there aren't technical people out there who like BBT). For me, it's in the same awful category as 2-and-a-half men of shows with huge audiences that I can't watch for any length of time.
TBBT is not meant to depict the inner life of nerds. A common summary is "The Big Bang Theory is a show about smart people for stupid people, Community is a show about stupid people for smart people." I wouldn't say only stupid people can enjoy TBBT, but the point stands that TBBT's audience is not nerds.
TBBT is a show written by non-nerds trying to describe what nerds are, and failing miserably.
I have tried more than once to watch it and every time I felt actual physical discomfort at how bad the whole thing was; Even though the show is not strictly about nerds but rather a parody of SV culture, I find HBO's Silicon Valley to be so much better at describing nerds than TBBT - at the very least I can actually laugh at the jokes and there are slight hints that the writers actually know what they are talking about.
I have a hard time imagining how in this day and age the same ridiculing of stereotypes would fly without a giant backlash if the show were about:
But apparently, "nerds" are a safe enough as a group that coming up with a skewed portrayal of them that lends itself to making fun of is okay.Yeah, you go ahead and laugh about those tech freaks... why should the school bullies get all the fun...
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