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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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I honestly find even ten seconds of the Big Bang theory to be like nails on a chalkboard.
It feels written by someone who isn’t a nerd trying to write a nerd character and just missing the point utterly and completely.
If you want an example of good non neurotypical nerd characters that are on the spectrum maybe, you don’t need to look any further than Tendi and Rutherford in Lower Decks. They both have heart and feel way more fleshed out than the Big Bang theory.
The Big Bang theory just makes me want to vomit, it either feels like the most insufferable version of nerds or it feels like a high school bullies super reductive perception of nerds. Also the whole “Penny is a normal hot girl hanging out with nerds” is such a stereotypically reductive setup too.
It's a tad dated now but still hilarious "The I.T. Crowd" owns it hard. One of the funniest shows ever made.
except that one episode
also the misogynistic framing of Jen, although at times she is shown to save the day by being well adjusted
I wouldn't say it was a misogynistic framing. Is that just because she was IT illiterate?
So she's basically the only woman in the show, and the only long term one. Despite basically everyone at the company being completely clueless about technology most of the jokes about it are played at her expense, particularly early on.
It's very much playing into the "haha women be shopping and clueless" stuff, which is a misogynistic framing. Especially considering the actual history of computing.
It's a show about a corporate IT department, and there are like 5 long term characters. Not unreasonable there is one woman. A lot of if not more of the jokes are with the CEO too. She gets a lot of jokes at her expense because she is a main character in a comedy show.
It doesn't play into that at all, she is clueless because she lied to get the job, not because she is a woman, the other 2 are just as clueless about other stuff, and her interpersonal skills and cunning is what gets them through a lot of their challenges. The whole premise of the show is they're clueless nerds and she is clueless at her job she lied to get. They cover each other's weaknesses.
You need to ask yourself questions like "why is that character a woman?" "how does the show treat women generally?" etc
Like obviously they made choices, and those choices are because of and reenforcing misogynistic steriotypes.
misogyny isn't characters screaming about hating women, it's portraying women as bad at tech, sex objects, making a joke entirely about beating up a woman as the end of an episode, portraying women as liars etc.
Portraying misogyny doesn't make the show misogynist. They are all bad people, that's the underlying comedic premise of the show.
it was a good how it played the idea of tech vs non tech but it did play a terrible stereotype about women vs men roles. Unfortunately at the time it was written, tech industry was at its prime of being the most difficult for women to break into it for one of the main reasons they were often excluded and even discouraged by a lot of gatekeeping men. (Example: James damore who wrote that misogynistic manifesto).
no doubt it was just writers writing what they know rather than writing from an idealistic approach which seems to be what current day sitcoms try to achieve.
Silicon Valley also suffered a bit of the same although it did try to introduce the occasional tech woman if even just a love interest now and again.
And then there was mythic quest that tried to almost even reverse the typical roles on gender in the tech industry…but then they still wrote women very terribly.
Si Valley does a lot better, while it's still very male heavy in the casting etc the one woman that showed up early on was at least good at her job and somewhat independent.
Hey, did you see that ludicrous display last night?
There's worlds difference between nerds in Silicon Valley and Big Bang Theory. Makes you even cringe harder at BBT.
Silicon Valley gets nerds and coders spot on. It's such a brilliant show for the first couple of seasons.
I can't watch it, but for completely different reasons than Big Bang Theory. It does its job too well.
The season 1 finale was amazing television.
The whole first season was brilliant. Season two has some great writing too. Russ Hanneman is probably the funniest character I've seen on TV. They got so much of corporate culture at tech companies at the time spot-on.
I'm curious - why do you think it dropped off later on? I remember it being pretty consistently great aside from what felt like a rushed wrap-up.
To me the humor started feeling forced, and the storyline became too formulaic. They really needed to give the Pied Piper team some wins, but getting them close to success and then snatching it away worked before, so they just kept following that formula. That gets tiring as a viewer, and fraught with angst. They leaned hard into Richard's anxiety, and pushed a lot of that emotion onto the viewers, which isn't enjoyable for me. That's Ben Stiller, Meet the Fockers type humor, which I have never enjoyed.
I couldn't get past the first season because it felt like anything that could go wrong did. Are you saying that keeps happening throughout the entire show?
You do NOT want to watch mythic quest then.
I watched the first season and it wasn't too bad, sounds like it gets a lot worse?
The character arch for poppy becomes very disappointingly annoying later as everything keeps turning into disasters. As the writers seem to start taking on this idea to write in some feminism but seems they haven’t really read up on the subject. They reduce the women characters to very 2 dimensional reactionary characters and cannot possibly figure things out for themselves. Ian becomes the feminist common sense wizard. No woman can get anywhere in the world without a powerful male ceo guiding and pushing them into their power.
Fair enough - I certainly remember elements of that - thank you!
I'm probably about due for a re-watch...
It’s nerd blackface.