The Man Who Gets The Science Right On 'The Big Bang Theory'
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This essay was quite popular a while back and summarizes all this and more, quite well I think: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...
Edit: Interesting to see many of you have a completely opposite take on these characters. That's fine with me, as long as we don't have to watch BBT if I'm over at your place. :)
Edit 2: Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?
My circle of friends is pretty much exactly like the main characters in the show. Nerdy, 20-something PhD guys that play board games and watch sci-fi. A few were actually almost as bad as Raj in not being able to say a word when a woman was around.
And I love the show. Loved it as soon as it came out just because it reminded me so much of my friends. And I don't feel like the characters are meant to be laughed at.
So, just to say, there's more than one perspective on this.
But more interestingly, often people who hold up this argument are fond of bringing up The IT Crowd as a counterpoint to BBT on this front and... I just don't get it. The people in IT Crowd are basically awful human beings I can't sympathize with, in spite of existing in a vaguely similar world as they do. The characters on BBT feel much more sympathetic to me. They're mostly trying to be good people at least.
It's the same appeal that xkcd has. It has been called "referential humor", but I don't think it should be classified as humor, although for some people it seems to be a completely satisfying humor surrogate. Indeed, BBT and xkcd are both full of nerd references, devoid of actual humor, and enormously popular.
I call them "tribal markers".
You're just completely missing the point. The joke is not the nerdy references. The references are a backdrop, a framework in which to develop the show's humor.
Do people really think, even for a second, that CBS developed a primetime network show whose jokes were targeted specifically to Caltech physics PhD students? Or even to self-identified nerds?
Think of it another way. The show is produced by Chuck Lorrie, the same guy who produced Two and a Half Men, which featured Charlie Sheen as a Malibu playboy. Did you think Two And A Half Men was written to appeal primarily to Malibu playboys? Would you consider that referential humor? Do you think Malibu bachelors got their panties in a twist because some of the jokes poked fun at the show's main characters?
Some of the characters on the show are quirky and flawed, and sometimes they're the subject of ridicule. Flip the channel to another sitcom. It's the exact same thing, but about jocks, or suburban families, or blue-collared delivery truck drivers.
Only the nerd community has enough of an ingrained victim mentality to take it personally, to think the show should be about them, or that jokes about nerds should be off limits.
Yes, and it named it The Big Band Theory.
I mean seriously, did you really think, ever for a second, that this wasn't at attempt to hit the target group of (not Caltech PhD students of course) the "geek/nerd crowd" -- a group which nowadays is more populous than ever, and it's not "the kiss of death" to indentity with anymore?
It's delluded to think the setting is not part of the targetting strategy and merely serves as a backdrop for the humor. That's not how TV works. The BBT is targeted for this crowd as much as Twilight is for teenage girls.
And "Gilligan's Island" was made for people stranded on desert islands.
"Taxi" targeted that coveted taxi driver demographic.
"That 70s Show" targeted time-travelling teenagers from the 1970s.
"Scrubs" was written for doctors. Remember how upset all the doctors were when Scrubs joked about doctor stereotypes? No?
Likewise "Frasier" was for effete psychiatrists, "Cheers" for bar flys, and "I Love Lucy" for Cuban bandleaders and their wives.
Or, it's just a comedy about some quirky, nerdy friends, written to appeal to a very broad audience.
No; but you are at the center of a strawman.
Didn't the fact that I already wrote that "Twilight is targeted at teenage girls" stop you from writing all those dreadful "counter-examples" (as if I believed that the fictual setting of a show automatically and necesarrily determines the target audience?)
If I followed the strawman logic you accuse me of having, I'd have said "Twilight is targeted at vampires and girls having affairs with them". I did not.
As for your rude question, no, I'm just at the center of a big enough and profitable demographic -- geeks, semi-geeks, etc that have come out of the woodwork ever since the mid-nineties/early oughts, and for which tons of media content is produced, from J. Abraham's and Josh Whedon's stuff, to the nth comic book movie and down to Kevin Smith's Comic Book Men TV series.
The "counter-examples" that you provide, are workplaces and professions, that have served as generic backdrops for drama for ages. They are not about a specific demographic, and their content and references are not targeted at them. On a medical drama, for example, the content is all about relationships, tension, love affairs, etc, not the practice of medicine. They characters might as well be lawyers and the show would still work, whereas in BBT the content is all about the geek references, and nothing is generic and universal.
You even seem unaware of the fact that shows can be targeted a specific demographic, like, say, Friends created for 20-somethings, or Sex and The City created for 30+ women.
No, merely reference Twilight is not enough because in majority of cases, a show about a certain type of characters is not necessarily targeted to that audience.
The gist of your argument is that since (1) geeks are more prominent in pop culture lately, (2) BBT is a comedy about geeks, then it follows that (3) BBT must be a show for geeks. Certainly that's possible, but where's the evidence? Another possibility is that the show is targeted towards people who know a geek (which is a much larger audience... essentially everyone).
> "in BBT the content is all about the geek references, and nothing is generic and universal."
I disagree. BBT is a comedy, and the content is the jokes, 99% of which, you don't actually have to be a geek to get (it certainly helps if you know a geek or are familiar with the geek stereotype).
Yes, BBT includes geek references. So what? Excuse the "dreadful counter-examples", but ER included medical references, MASH included military references, etc. That's required by concept of the show.
I think the most damning evidence against your claim is BBT's audience. It's a wildly successful show, yet so many self-identified geeks on Internet have problems with it (mainly the ones who think it should be a show just for them. Hmm.) So the burden of proof that it's actually a show specifically for geeks (but just happens to appeal to non-geeks) is on you. And you presented no evidence.
No, I'm not arguing anything. I'm not into formal reasoning in common discussions.
What I said is BBT is a show for geeks, period. The other stuff I said to explain why they made it so, not to prove that it is so.
So I offer no "evidence" and no "proof" (that would be too geeky in itself) -- just my opinion that BBT is a show targeted at the general geek audience, take it or leave it.
>Yes, BBT includes geek references. So what? Excuse the "dreadful counter-examples", but ER included medical references, MASH included military references, etc. That's required by concept of the show.
I think I answered that objection in my original comment: while those shows also contain references, the difference is that BBT "is all about the geek references, and nothing is generic and universal".
Humor is subjective. But just because what is funny to other people isn't funny to you doesn't make it "not humor", its just not humor that appeals to you.
The show does struggle with female roles. As does its real-life counterpart.
* I hope no one thinks I'm trying to trivialize blackface which was, of course, far worse than what Big Bang Theory is doing.
I was hoping to not have this debate that invariably comes up about how you can't compare anything to blackface because of how bad blackface was but I don't consider that a valid argument against the comparison.
Try replacing nerds with black people in that paragraph and tell me it's at all comparable.
Kids are cruel, but their social order is not the real world. In the real world nerds are not a disadvantaged, let alone oppressed, group.
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'm not at all saying "you can't compare anything to blackface." There are absolutely modern power structures that resemble it, and it is absolutely right to point them out and deal with them. I would never ever say that you shouldn't.
What I'm saying is that this is not a matter of scope but structure. Structurally, whatever you're seeing in Big Bang Theory does not resemble in any way what exists in traditional minstrelry. The people who are the butt of the joke in Big Bang Theory do not suffer systemic disadvantages in the way that Black people in the Jim Crowe era did, and they actually enjoy quite a lot of systemic advantages.
If merely caricaturing people for an audience to laugh at is sufficient justification for a comparison to minstrelry, then the entire comedy industry is and has always been guilty of it. As for unpopular, I'd also argue that there's a vast difference between unpopular and being treated as subhuman by law, to the point that they are not even close to the same thing. Black people being 'unpopular' is not why minstrelry was wrong.
For example, "my teacher is a Nazi" does not make anyone think Nazis are only as bad as teachers, only that the student is overreacting (comparing the teacher to something that is on another level, i.e., worse.) The inverse, "Nazis were basically strict teachers," is a horrible thing to say as it brings Nazis down to the level of something benign.
To say The Big Bang Theory is blackface does not make a person wonder if blacks were actually only mistreated as much as nerds. It makes a person wonder if nerds are systemically exploited and mocked by social superiors. The answer is that in a very limited way, this happens, but it happens in an extremely irrelevant part of life (school) and nerds go on to run the world and are unquestionably full equals, possibly superiors, of more athletic people socially and politically. At no point here do we think blacks are only as mistreated as nerds.
On the other hand, saying something like "being black before the Civil Rights movement was like being the nerd in high school" is obviously offensive because we are bringing the black experience to the level of the analogy, being a nerd, and then making the comparison, and it's not even close.
Ben Wyatt on Parks and Rec comes off as a much more realistic nerd than any of the characters on BBT.
Abed Nadir in Community is also a whole lot more fleshed out than the characters in BBT.
The BBT characters are the epitome of stereotypical, caricatures of nerds. None of them are ever shown to have interests other than the traditionally nerdy kind.
If by "fully fleshed out human beings", you mean they happen to be main characters, sure. But by any other definition of "fully fleshed out" vs "caricature", they're much closer to caricature.
But I guess other people started feeling the same way because they change it a little bit. They gave him a beautiful, nice girlfriend, some qualities, some character, some opinion. As a result it is a more human character now, not a freak show.
And about BBT, I guess the writers give the characters some of these qualities, so I don't feel as awkward whatching it as I was watching 2&1/2Men.
For the record: I disagree 100% with every single statement in there.
No. Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.
Shooting a sitcom in front of a studio audience radically alters the pacing, the way jokes are told, and the setup (you're inherently constrained to fewer sets).
I think there is still a space today for comedies with live audiences (and the ratings seem to back this up). I love Arrested Development. I also love Frasier. AD would obviously never have worked with a live audience, Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track.
Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.
One show which benefited from a laugh track was Married With Children, because it was an unapologetically trashy show about trashy people, and the audience hoots and jeers contributed to its low-brow atmosphere.
But the Big Bang Theory suffers horribly for its laugh track. It's not just the disproportionate reaction to jokes, it's the laughter at things that aren't jokes at all. See for example this egregious example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE , in which the audience starts cracking up after "My new computer came with Windows 7."
Or, y'know, you could have single camera comedies with no laugh track. The British seem to manage that just fine. I personally find laugh tracks equal parts desperate and condescending. "Hey dummy! There's a joke here! Laugh damn you... LAUGH!!"
You are looking at it wrong. Do you know why the laughter is edited in post? You agreed that they film in front of a live audience (something most BBT bashers still can't accept from personal observations).
Now, one scene, multiple takes. The take that makes it into the show might have been the fifth one of the day. Of course the laughter that take produced is nowhere near as the initial response to the joke. So, you edit the laughter in post to make it fit. That has got nothing to do with "sweetening" anything. Unless you would rather they just use the laughter form the actual take, even though it was the 12th attempt and after seeing the joke 12 times the audience couldn't muster up so much as a snicker.
BBT does not use a laugh track.
I don't watch the show, so I can't say for sure, but its possible that the way the laugh track is mixed makes it more obvious than other shows, such as 90s sitcoms.
Chuck Lorre, the producer for the show, is really ticked off at people who say that BBT has a laugh track, and has been very adamant that it does not.
Good for him. The television producer can split hairs about terms that have different industry and layman uses all he wants.
Either way, there is still studio audience laughter embedded in the show's audio. Dude should be well aware that home viewers can disagree with the recorded audience on whether or not punchlines are powerful enough for audible laughs, and that when they disagree often enough the audience laughter becomes very grating to the viewer.
And ultimately, that's what he is ticked off about. The way the laughs bother people is a indictment of the comedy in the show. When viewers agree with the recorded audience about what is funny, they don't notice the recorded laughs as much, so they don't complain as much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laugh_track
The laugh track has a long and sordid history in US television recording, and Lorre is ticked off that people think his shows have to result to fakery.
On top of that, you seem to be banking on the idea I won't actually click your link, from the first paragraph:
In some productions the laughter is a live audience response;
in the U.S., the term usually implies artificial laughter (canned
laughter or fake laughter) made to be inserted into the show.
It isn't. It is exactly the same as any other sitcom that was filmed in front of a live audience. No better, no worse.
It is just that some people won't give BBT a pass on that usage.
And in a dramatic twist, most people who hate BBT loooooooooove The IT crowd. Somehow I have never heard any of those fans to criticize them for using a laugh track. Weird right? Cause that show does not only use one, it is completely canned laughter as they do not film in front of an audience. Just think what the BBT bashers would have to say if BBT did it like that and The IT crowd would use a live audience. They would go mental over this.
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.
"Stupid comedy about smart things."
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.
If you ask me, Buddhism got it right: communicating trivialities, distractions and divisive speech are things fundamentally unhealthy to ourselves and our environments that we should seek to avoid.
Hollywood, on the other hand, celebrates the same. Of course, people will interpret this as fundamentalism, and of course I'm not advocating zero entertainment (I believe we should all be free to make our own decisions about which company to keep and media to consume and produce). I am, however, advocating calling a spade a spade, and I do think novum's comments are right on the mark with this show.
Good on them for having science consultants to get the science part of the show right, but the show is uncomfortable to watch. BBT is a dumb show about smart people. A show that repeats beaten to death stereotypes about nerds and jocks, a show that does nothing to break the status quo that smart people are the only hope this world has and that all smart people aren't comic book loving introverts who never go out and are 40 year old virgins.
Obviously I am not the target of this show nor are any of my educated friends with degrees. But I can tell you the stereotype of what smart people actually are is completely wrong because smart people can't be pigeon holed into a certain category. Everyone is different; you have your introverts and extroverts, your comic book readers and non-comic-book readers.
As usual I am overreacting. I have a passionate disdain for this show and know of many others who feel exactly the same way. I didn't intend for this to sound like a rant, it's somewhat out of place, but felt it had to be said.
Did you similarly rail on "Sex in the City" for not realistically portraying women and sexuality?
I'm sorry if you think I am being condescending, but not once did I insult or single out any particular individual, I called out a show which is definitely not funny for being completely unoriginal. I didn't call out people that watch the show, if you watch it and like it, then good for you, I'm not saying you are a bad person or any less of a person for doing so.
Your comment is condescending if you want to get specific. You've singled me out for having an opinion on a show you share a different opinion on. Who's the bad guy here? Keep things civil buddy, stop trying to bait me, it won't work. Run along now.
Could be right there. When I searched Instagram for #bbt once, I found a couple of posts like 'I wish my friends were this smart' or 'I want to be a nerd too' with pics from the series. I think the series may give science a good image.
It makes sense for Sheldon to be the ultimate theorist chauvinist since he works with string theory, which is, so far, not of much interest to experimentalists because its so impractical to test! Salzburg is definitely a theorist, and it shows. The whiteboards may be correct most of the time, but the lab scenes are just painfully bad! All they really amount to is, "Hey look! Lasers!". Having a consultant around to check your white-boards is fine, but they should send the writers to intern in an experimental lab for a bit if they ever want to move past seeing the world through Sheldon's eyes.
P.S. I specifically watched this show because, when you tell people you work in physics, BBT is the first thing they think of. If there's a TV show specifically about your profession it's surprisingly awkward to be completely ignorant of it!
Back then, experimental physics was perceived as the 'real' physics, and guys like Einstein were 'mathematicians' meddling with physics.
Source: Einstein and Feynman biographies.
So far as funny? Can't get enough of the monkey + cigarette jokes.
I'm sure he told them, I'm sure they know; but the whole plot turned on it.
Sometimes when you realize that superman flying around in space is impossible from a thermodynamic perspective no matter how "super" he is, you just gotta shrug and say "dude, he's superman".
No, I get that. But using this logic, BBT shouldn't be making any attempt to get the physics right either. After all, it's not a show for physicists.
Why the inconsistency?
The formula is simple: Turn your brain down to "slow" and have a good time. Don't take any of it seriously. It's not real. It's television.
Some of the writing is hilariously funny. I have worked with people that exhibited some of these characteristics (not all). Some were great engineers but had the social skills of a brick. Most are nothing like these characters. They have varied interests and really full and active personal and family lives outside of work.
I think Abed Nadir from Community is more my type of nerd. Probably because I find the character similar to myself.