Relationships

[A.D.A.]

Oh, I have so much to say on this topic… (But for starters, hello!  )
 
Since I’m new here, I guess I should first describe where I’m coming from. I am what would in Queen Penelope’s gaming realms be refered to as a filthy casual when it comes to TBBT. I first watched the show up to season 7, then dropped it for a year or so, watched season 8 in its entirety, came back just before season 9 started.
 
I also still watch the new episodes and can still find a few laughs here and there because I don’t really ship (in this show, anyway) and it does appeal to something nihilistic in me. This idea that no one achieves their dreams whether it be in their jobs or their personal lives and instead ends up with a partner they don’t really like and friends they’ve grown apart from, treading water in their careers, just seems quite realistic when I'm in a bad mood.
 
Because I think we can all agree that none of the relationships in the show are fun. Penny belittles what Leonard is into, and their sex life, and occasionally their relationship and generally seems to have given up on herself (remember when she used to be on her way out for auditions or girls’ night all the time? It felt like she had a life outside the show). Leonard’s become a total jerk and whiny push-over, somehow at the same time, depending on what soap opera conflict the writers want that episode. Bernadette, of course, takes the cake when it comes to ridiculing her partner and treating him like a nuisance, but unlike Penny, she has also set out to correct him. Howard accordingly acts like a nine year old. Responsible wife and lazy husband hijinks, oh boy! Sheldon has regressed even farther than that. Amy is on some sort of mission to turn Sheldon into a normal guy to be her perfect boyfriend; not that I liked her that much when she was genderswitched Sheldon – seemed lazy of the writers –, but at least back then, I understood why they were dating. Now, I don’t have the slightest clue. And then there’s Emily and Raj, who, uh… watch… horror movies together? She’s too spooky for him? I’ve got nothing, so far she’s got one weird character trait and that’s about it for her personality and they’ve been dating for like a year. Oh, and she also wants to keep him from doing fun silly things, of course (your song sucks, Raj). My guess is she’s going to turn into another Bernadette.
 
So all of that didn’t really bother me at first, though, because I’d watched the first seven seasons in quick succession (and not always with complete attention) and they kinda ran together, creating the illusion it had always been that way. Also, the actors are all good at their jobs, meaning they can still turn all that sniping, backbiting, and the underhanded insults into passable material. But then I rewatched… I don’t even know, but it was the start of the season 8 plotline about the paper Sheldon and Leonard wrote together, when Leonard ran over to Sheldon and told him about this idea he’d had, and then Sheldon worked it out, they were enthusiastic, etc. And I realised, holy cheese, I used to like these people, and damnit, they actually used to be friends. That’s when I went back and saw just how big of a disconnect there is to the earlier seasons – not just because of the girlfriend situation, but also because all of the characterisations and friendships seem to have fallen by the wayside, with the possible exception of Raj-Howard’s relationship (they are by now the best part of the show for me). The Sheldon-Leonard one is probably the one that is most strange to watch now because they still force them to live together. Leonard is just an ass to Sheldon most of the time, but on the other hand, I can’t really blame him either, because new Sheldon is insufferable. I’m also pretty sure Leonard would just leave, but he’s not allowed to. It’s not really a friendship anymore as much as it is a hostage situation because if he leaves and Puppy-Sheldon fails to find the toilet, obviously it’s Leonard’s fault. (Yeah, I do have a lot of complaints about what happened to Sheldon… didn’t he live alone in Europe at some point as a teenager? And now he can’t deal if his roommate moves across the hall? I get he has to adjust, but apparently he used to be able to do that.)
 
Anyway, this is not nearly the extent of how much I could rant, but I think I’ll leave it at this for now.

[Louise]

[Idle Miscreant]

Oh, I have so much to say on this topic… (But for starters, hello!  )
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Anyway, this is not nearly the extent of how much I could rant, but I think I’ll leave it at this for now.

Beating a very familiar drum there...   Interesting idea about watching TBBT nihilistically. The sorry comfort of the universal shipwreck?
Welcome anyway indeed!

We have a rather odd "welcome mat" here called "The Sanctum of Burning Souls", if you'd care to investigate your fellow HQers, or mention anything further about yourself. http://shennyhq.co.uk/dir/showthread.php?tid=16&page=12

[A.D.A.]

Beating a very familiar drum there...   Interesting idea about watching TBBT nihilistically. The sorry comfort of the universal shipwreck?
Welcome anyway indeed!

We have a rather odd "welcome mat" here called "The Sanctum of Burning Souls", if you'd care to investigate your fellow HQers, or mention anything further about yourself. http://shennyhq.co.uk/dir/showthread.php?tid=16&page=12

Oh, thanks for the directions. I ventured to the Sanctum.

But yes, it is that sort of disheartening dread of all twenty-somethings that eventually none of what you want will come to pass and you settle with someone you tolerate into a life that is okay-ish since comfortable, garnished in TBBT with the clever hurtful one-liners that many of the writers still come up with. Not exactly what TBBT is going for I imagine, but I certainly can't watch it as a fast-paced, happy comedy about a bunch of oddballs having fun in their own way anymore.

[Louise]

Bernadette: her bra is more supportive than her attitude. 


I have zero use for this actress or this character, in any context. I find her intensely repugnant. The "sweet" moments are almost worse.  I literally cannot look at her. I won't look at red carpet-type pics of the actress, either. I would not watch her in some other role, outside of BBT. 

I didn't watch S3 in chronological order, so I don't remember my reaction to her very first appearance; but by that point I'd already heard murmurings in the fandom about the character's destructive impact and Howard's "reformation", so maybe this character never had a chance to make a favorable impression on me. But I reject the idea that this character or this ship ever had potential. I believe it's a one hundred percent bad casting-choice and a fallen souffle of a character-concept. It's some of the laziest writing and most one-dimensional characterization I've ever seen, for a major character on a high-profile show. Ramona was a more vivid character, and she had one episode. 

The decision to use that phony high-pitched voice is bizarre and amateurish. None of the other cast members are using a wholly false voice, like that. It's like something you'd see on a lower-tier sketch show like Mad TV or In Living Color, or a Disney teen show.

Obviously I am talking about the character, not the actress as a human being, I'm sure she's a cool person IRL, it's important to separate the actor from the character, etc, etc. But being a cool person IRL does not improve the show.  People's dislike of Amy might be compounded by MB's questionable off-screen antics, but MR being a decent person off-screen does nothing for me as a viewer. We're not privy to what happens off-screen, what we see is the final product. I don't care if SH claims to enjoy working with her and praises her in interviews, etc. In fact, I find it slightly distasteful when the cast acts like they're having a grand old time together, fiddling while Rome burns, acting like they're at summer camp instead of being professional and striving to produce a quality result.

Even if some people find Bernadette mildly amusing, the price we paid for that was Howard. It's a very cut-and-dried cost-benefit transaction: is the presence of a character that some people might find okay-ish or tolerable or mildly entertaining worth the loss of Howard? 

I think we've been conditioned to think in terms of "Well, this is okay, this isn't too bad, I can tolerate this, it's manageable", when the real question is, "Does this make the show better or worse?" If something doesn't actively improve the show, then it shouldn't have been added. Period. 

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Did we *need* to see SH spending almost all of his screen-time with a new character? Did we *need* to break-up the Howard-Raj duo? H&R already had this quasi-spousal thing where they bickered amusingly, although it was seldom as vicious. It's not like the Howard character was lacking someone to interact with, a foil, a contrasting character to balance him out.  H/B is the shipping equivalent of New Coke. Don't piss down my neck and tell me it's raining. 

Bernadette has no function except to ruin one of the most vivid and memorable sitcom characters of the past twenty or thirty years, a character who could've been almost (but not quite) as iconic as the characters from Seinfeld or Frasier, IMO. 

I wouldn't watch Bernadette if she were just sitting on the couch saying nothing and doing nothing, and I wouldn't watch MR play Joan of Arc. I wouldn't glance at her if I passed her on the street. I will never forgive TPTB for taking the show in this disastrous direction and pissing away the wonderful character that they had in Howard, almost like a spoiled kid who doesn't appreciate what they've been given. I could cry when I think about the willfully squandered potential. 

We've had four or five years of a delightfully talented actor doing this asinine cliched stuff which is beneath him. That's his own fault, perhaps. But even if MR is occasionally amusing--a point which I do not concede--that's a heavy price to pay. Bernadette is *the* reason I stopped watching. She's the show-destroyer, for people whose primary focus is not Sheldon. (with all due respect to Sheldon.)

I caught a few minutes of Einstein Approximation the other day, and while that's still in the realm of "Penny's friend Bernie who works at the CCF and is cute",  the voice and the whole Little Miss Muffett persona is bizarre and unconvincing. This is not 8pm primetime-level stuff. It's like she's auditioning to play one of the kooky aunts on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It's the type of thing that would have 'em rolling at a high school play.

And if this all sounds excessively vitriolic, well...imagine if they'd foisted some "girlfriend" on Kramer after we'd had only a few short seasons in which to enjoy him and get to know him. Can you imagine any other character in that god-awful Letter scene or the Romance Resonance or that "She made me a better man" crap? No, you can't, and the very idea makes one feel uncomfortable. One's gut reaction is "Oh, they'd never do that to Kramer, that's absurd, that's impossible, I can't even imagine that." Well, the only reason they didn't is because that show was in wiser hands than Lorre et al.  People might've said the same thing while watching Season 1 of BBT.  Can you imagine this guy buying engagement rings and sniveling about how much he wants a baby? "Obscene" is too strong a word, but it has that same feeling of fundamental "wrongness."

[Louise]

"He is not a project or raw material to be sculpted (nor are you), he is a being and a universe entire."

--Captain Awkward.

[Louise]

For New!Howard, a turning-point could conceivably come when B. starts aiming that same abusive behavior at their child(ren). (You *know* that would happen, especially if it's a boy.)

But I try not to think too much about New!Howard.

[Louise]

I think something almost like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is going on with A and B. (and possibly L?):

"This person is so sick, and I am the Care Giver."  These people have no strong identity of their own, so they take on the role of Problem Solver and Fixer. 

But of course, a Problem Solver needs a problem to solve, and if there isn't one, they will create one.

"This other person is so helpless, so deficient, so incompetent, so lost, look at what a martyr I am for putting up with them and helping them. I am brave and unselfish and capable and efficient." 

They need to feel needed and they need to feel important. They need to feel indispensable, like the other person couldn't survive without them. Subconsciously, or even not-so-subconsciously, they don't *want* the other person to actually pull themselves together and do things right, because that would rob them of their role as Rescuer.

B. is pathologically controlling. WHY would she want to be married to someone whom she views as being so deficient, incompetent, and just plain *wrong* in every area of life? Why would she even want to be friends or associates with such a person, let alone claim to "love" them? Because her own identity is unformed and she needs to feel like the Leader and the one with all the answers. 

Putting aside the occasional moments where she claims to find him cute or sexy ("He's the best guy I know" yeah, right  ) she is getting NOTHING out of this relationship except the ability to feel powerful, important, and needed. She does not seem to need him emotionally, socially, sexually, financially, or intellectually. Her only reward in this marriage is the opportunity to look like Good Cop, the patient, long-suffering, reasonable, rational one. 

***A person who is truly confident and strong and at ease with themselves does not have screaming tantrums. That is a sign of deep insecurity, instability, and fear.***

In Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, you literally make the other person sick so that you can be praised for taking care of them and managing the situation so well. 

Prob. a lot of this applies to Amy, too. 

The way B. micro-manages New!H is more heart-breaking, angering, and sickening for me than anything else. If someone calls Vintage!H a pervert, I'll still disagree with that, but whatev, it doesn't strike at my heart and directly contradict his earlier characterization, the way this stuff does. It's just intensely upsetting for me and I don't see how anyone finds it humorous. 

That's an in-universe explanation. An out-of-universe explanation is that TPBT have no idea what a healthy relationship actually looks like, or they have some repressed fetishes about age-play, power, and sadism.

I once read somewhere, not long ago, that after a person has formed their image of you, they will find it very threatening to their own worldview if you start to divert from that box they've placed you in, and they will attempt to push you back into it. Because if *you* aren't The Messed-Up One, then...who are *they*?

A & B's baseline personalities are unpleasant and off-putting, so they won the jackpot by finding people they can off-load that baggage of "you are unpleasant and weird" onto. They are projecting. Unsurprisingly, they don't have seem to have any friends outside the group, and we've been explicitly told that B's co-workers are all afraid of her. A and B can transfer their own "ostracized for a good reason" status onto S, H, and maybe also P. It's like an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt. They've jumped at the chance to make themselves look better by comparison, feeding off S, H, and P's perceived weaknesses or deficits and thus bumping up their own place on the totem pole.

[Louise]

"You can’t “let” or “not let” another adult do something unless it involves your own boundaries."

--Miri Mogilevsky.

[SpaceAnJL]

B's first intro had her bonding with H over their mothers. I think she's reproducing that same micro-managing, hectoring psychodrama she grew up with. H's mother coddled him, but he let her, and they knew it. B's mother was a different order of control.

Yeah, that idea of keeping people broken so you look better is something I think applies very seriously to Leonard's early relationship with Sheldon. He's reproducing and projecting his issues about a lifetime of (maternal) emotional distance and negotiation, and punishing the person he can get in his power.