I watched two episodes before bouncing off hard. No idea how it got as popular as it did, because the jokes were just low effort and lazy.
I thought it was funny when it came out, but it hasn’t aged well at all. Very cringey and stereotypical, with a slight tinge of homophobia.
The big bang theory killed my parents.
If a show requires a laugh track to tell its viewers when to laugh, then it lacks substance enough to cause it without.
I don’t agree in general - I like the trad sitcom “sort of live” approach, as in Cheers and early Red Dwarf, but it is definitely used as you say far too often. The fecking Flintstones used a laugh track - an animated show.
But search YouTube for “Big Bang Theory without Laugh Track” and you’ll see a dew examples of how shit most of the humour actually is
I absolutely agree. You can find some parts of the show with the laugh track removed on YouTube, and it’s amazing to realise how unfunny the jokes really are.
The autism representation is what happens when a writer has never met another person before.
Fairly accurate sociopath representation though.
I really like it. It has some nice jokes and I enjoy it quite a lot when I see it
I refer to it as geek culture black face.
“Nerdface” I have called it.
This is a great way to put it! Totally agree
Wow, that’s incredibly succinct and accurate.
As a nerd I loathe that show, it’s vapid. You nailed it.
I’m a Nerodivergent geek, I had lots of people tell me “you will love this show” so I watched some and now I wonder how those people really see me. So that’s kinda fun.
Yeah, that’s what I told my grandmother when she wanted me to watch it. It was like the show was portraying nerds as other people see them when we start gushing about a niche interest.
I love it. Watched it when it aired and catch reruns once in a while. I don’t watch a lot of the reruns but do watch them from time to time.
The “laughs” all felt from the outside. There was very little humor aimed at the people who would self identify as nerds and way more “haha look at these nerds and how quirky they are” set ups. Sure there are misogynist asshole nerds but usually they need to grow beyond that to find friends and partners. As far as I could tell none of them did. Sheldon and Howard were still super sexist, Leonard was still passive and whiny, but the story pushed forward foisting “perfect matches” on them.
Throughout the whole thing there was very little actual geek humor, and it felt denigrating to actual nerds.
It’s fun to watch clips where people removed the laugh track. The “jokes” really fall flat.
The show isn’t for nerds. It’s for people who believe they are a nerd because they like sci-fi
I’ve always maintained it’s for non-nerds who want to laugh at cultures they’ll never understand. For convenience, all known nerd stuff is crammed into all characters.
It’s for nerds that hate themselves.
I tried to watch it around 2012 and couldn’t stand it
Shallow and pedantic
Hmm, yes, shallow and pedantic.
My brother, my dad and I watched it together some 10+ years ago. I think people get too angry about it. Most sitcoms aren’t really funny, BBT isn’t unique. “Oh it has too much of a laugh track” they all do. I also think this idea that the show makes fun of nerd culture gets taken a little too far as well, for the same reason. The characters are sitcom characters. Name any sitcom and there will be dozens of youtube videos about how the characters are horrible to each other and don’t make good decisions. If they were decent, rational people then there wouldn’t be as much drama, so no show.
Laugh track bullshit that basically tracks as “you-know-of-star-trek-then-you-know-nerd”
I didn’t like it.
