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Comment by novum | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, I was watching BBT just yesterday (on a long plane ride with limited entertainment options) and I was reminded how uncomfortably awkward it makes me feel. In short, the core problem is that the characters are not sympathetic -- you're meant to laugh at them, not with them, to say nothing of the show's terribly backwards gender roles.

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)?

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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.

Indeed, I've heard the style of the humor on Big Bang Theory as

    "Stupid comedy about smart things."

And I'd agree with that. The humor itself is really shallow, often mean spirited and uncomfortable. They can only pass themselves off as "smart" because they have peripheral details that relate to traditionally smart things.

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.

I don't know. In my personal opinion those critiques are overly critical.

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.

I agree with this. Insofar as you're supposed to laugh at the characters, I think it's true of pretty much all sitcoms. Sitcoms are almost always about broad stroke "laugh at yourself, because you are funny" kind of stuff.

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.

I think the appeal of BBT is that some people like to see a reflection of their microcosm: they like to see people like them, situations like the ones they experience, references to things they like, etc.. It makes them feel relevant and part of an in-group.

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.

> 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.

I call them "tribal markers".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics

>> 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.

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.

>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?

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.

Right. You're the center of the universe.

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.

The way Chuck Lorre writes, the scripts could be transposed onto just about any combination of stereotypes you can imagine. Stereotypes are his game, and BBT could just as easily be shot with the Happy Days characters with the Fonz in the Penny role.

>Right. You're the center of the universe

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.

> Didn't the fact that I already wrote that "Twilight is targeted at teenage girls" stop you from writing all those dreadful "counter-examples"

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.

>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.

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".

> 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.

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.

People who think the show is not "close enough" to real life don't know enough elite physicists or Caltech grad students/research scientists. Even within the world of tech PhD's (a small community in the scheme of things), Caltech is especially unusual. I have been impressed that the creators of the show can capture some of that oddness and make a go of it for a mass audience.

The show does struggle with female roles. As does its real-life counterpart.

I once heard Big Bang Theory described as "blackface for nerds"* and it made me suddenly realize why I was so uncomfortable watching that show.

* 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 really wish people would stop saying this. Even if you don't mean to trivialize what blackface actually was, that is basically the net effect. It's a terrible analogy on pretty much every level.

They both set up caricatures of an unpopular group for the audience to laugh at. Like I said, blackface is far worse but I don't see how the analogy is "[terrible] on pretty much every level". It's much less hateful and damaging, certainly, but it's there in tone.

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.

Part of what makes blackface so horrible is the power imbalance that underlies it. In the days of minstrelry, black people were deeply and powerfully unequal in civil society. They had no recourse against the indignity done to them by blackface performance, and it was an indignity forced on them by a more powerful social class.

Try replacing nerds with black people in that paragraph and tell me it's at all comparable.

Put it in context of a high school / middle school lunchroom...

Where, in spite of that, your teachers were probably pushing you to perform, and when you got out you probably had no trouble getting into a good school which made it more likely for you to get a good job.

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.

Absolutely. Its history stings no less for some, however.

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 feel like the second paragraph wasn't there when I first replied to this, but if it was I just didn't notice it. I'd like to address it specifically either way.

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.

When the analogy is a worse thing than what is being likened, it is not trivialized. The thing being likened is moved to the level of the analogy and compared to see if the analogy is apt.

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.

I prefer another saying I've heard - Big Bang Theory is a dumb show about smart people, and Arrested Development is a smart show about dumb people

I've heard it expressed as "The Big Bang theory is a dumb person's idea of what a show for smart people would be like."

> Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

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.

Can you elaborate on why Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track?

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."

> 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.

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!!"

Did you miss the last paragraph of his post. He was comparing live in-studio w/ audience to single camera, saying how a laugh track in live in-studio helps, and then goes on to note how he doesn't approve of canned laughter.

>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.

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.

I started to feel this way watching Two and a Half Men, because of the character Allan. After some years of laughs I just felt awkward because there was this, incredibly unlucky, with no particular skill socially or professionally, mistreated by everybody, from his ex-wife to his brother's maid, humiliated by women, with no will-power to fight back. Really, it was just sad. Usually even the weak characters have some quality, some strenght you have to admire in them - as a pure heart. They stripped Allan from all that.

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 me the awkwardness started when I realized that Charlie Sheen was playing himself. A morally deficient, manipulative, self-centered douche-bag who happens to be hell bent on self-destruction, yet he always narrowly avoids it due to his disproportionate amounts of luck.

I agree, they made Allan so pathetic. I also learned that Jon Cryer is an incredibly good comedy actor. Charlie wasn't really acting, he was just being himself but Allan was a real piece of depressing work.

I felt exactly this way too. You know how you just cringe about something, knowing exactly how awful it's going to be or feel? That describes most of my reactions to Allan, and is part of the reason I quit watching. The other was that the raunchy factor seemed to know no lower bound. I finally reached a point where I couldn't take anymore and quit watching (around the time Ashton Kutcher came in).

I personally find the characters very sympathetic and laughing at the BBT characters is like laughing at myself. It's refreshing to see the extreme qualities which other shows merely caricature be shown in the context of fully fleshed out human beings.

BBT doesn't flesh out those characters. Most other shows I watch do.

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.

> In short, the core problem is that the characters are not sympathetic -- you're meant to laugh at them, not with them, to say nothing of the show's terribly backwards gender roles.

For the record: I disagree 100% with every single statement in there.

For the record: I agree 100% with everything you said.

It bothered me too, I thought about it and came to the same conclusion. Moreover, while watching the show (always at the behest of someone else, by now perhaps in four different countries) I am primarily left wondering how twisted the producers of such a show must be, and how sick the entire entertainment industry really is.

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.

> Edit 2: Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

BBT does not use a laugh track.

You are right that its not canned laughter, but a laugh track can more generally refer to a separate track for the audience's laughter. This can be edited to compensate for jokes that require repeated takes or have its level's adjusted just like the rest of the sound in the show.

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.

> 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.

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.

I'm sorry, but this isn't "layman use" of the term laugh track: it is simply wrong. A laugh track is a separately recorded or constructed track of laughter that didn't exist when the show was being shot. Calling a live studio audience a "laugh track" is an absurd black-is-white abuse of the term.

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.

From the second sentence of that article: "In some productions the laughter is a live audience response".

I don't want to get into linguistics wankery about when a definition counts, but I really don't think it's as absolute as you're portraying it. Certainly not if have to point me to wikipedia to refute the way it is often used in by people who don't know nor care about the canned/audience distinction.

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.

That's an awful lot of ambiguity for such a "black-is-white abuse of the term"

>but its possible that the way the laugh track is mixed makes it more obvious than other shows, such as 90s sitcoms.

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.

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