10-20-2015, 05:32 AM
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."
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."