09-16-2014, 10:40 AM
If this show had ended after three or four seasons, then the shippers would be free to imagine that every character eventually got married and had 2.5 kids and a golden retriever, and the non-shippers would be free to imagine other things. This is why I'm not in favor of having *all* questions answered and *all* threads tied-up, on a TV series. It's okay to leave some things open-ended.
Like I said in another post, IMO a long-running TV series, especially a comedy, is not a linear thing with a definite "beginning, middle, end" type of structure. Or at least, it shouldn't be. It's a very different animal than a novel or a movie.
You can't apply that three-act structure to something that lasts for ten years. That's when you get story arcs that last too long and become tiresome and have to be extended in a very artificial way. (Couples breaking up and getting back together half a dozen times). You can't bring on the weddings and babies *yet*, because then it's all over, so you're literally just killing time and waiting for the final season. (The H/B wedding was possibly a test to see if the audience would accept this sort of thing. And not many fangirls care about Howard, so he's sort of expendable. "Here's a wedding to tide you over until the weddings that you actually care about.")
I am fine with shows where each episode is more or less self-contained and there are no "arcs." That doesn't mean there's no *continuity*; I'm not saying they shouldn't make references to things that happened in previous episodes, for example. I'm not arguing for each ep. to be a totally isolated discrete thing. Seinfeld had a complex web of in-jokes and situations that were built on previous events. That's how you reward long-term viewing. That's the whole concept of a "running gag." But I have neither the patience nor the inclination for soap opera-style ongoing plotlines in a sitcom. I wouldn't want a particular story to last for more than three or four episodes at the outside.
Weddings, babies, and deaths are just so *final.* I don't believe that a sitcom needs an "ending." The whole point of a sitcom, supposedly, is its re-watchability. Supposedly what makes syndication work is that you can watch the eps in any order and not miss anything, or least not miss *much.*
Canons seem to want everything spelled-out, in the most obvious and irrevocable way: all mysteries revealed, all I's dotted and T's crossed, each character "taken care of." This is where their literal-mindedness and lack of imagination really shows: they believe that if they're aren't SHOWN character X getting partnered-up or whatever, it means that character is doomed to some sad fate. Whereas, Nostalgics know that if this show had ended after Season 2 or 3, it doesn't mean that Penny is going to work at the CCF until she dies, or that Howard will eternally be rejected by women. It means that they cease to exist. They're not real. I don't watch a sitcom to "see what happens." I watch to feel like I'm visiting a pleasantly familiar place with pleasantly familiar old friends, where things, for the most part, are reassuringly unchanging.
If the current ratings are any indication, TBBT will last forever in syndication. But fast-forward ten years from now: if I were a brand-new viewer, I'm not sure I'd want to start watching this show from the beginning if I already knew that it ended with a flurry of weddings and babies and that the pairings were set in stone by Season 4. That really takes the wind out of the sails of the early seasons. A lot of the old ongoing jokes have been unraveled: Raj's mutism, the invisible Mrs.Wolowitz, etc. It's like a vehicle that keeps losing pieces as it moves onward faster and faster. If I already knew these things, would the early seasons still be as enjoyable?
Anyway, what was my point? The writers have shot themselves in the foot by adopting an arc-based style of storytelling that relies on waiting for big-deal events to happen. They've fostered a different type of expectation in the viewers, but they can't deliver too soon because they want to continue making $$$ as long as possible, so in the meantime they're left coming up with "filler" and diversionary tactics.
Whereas, IMO, the early seasons were more about an atmosphere, a style, a feeling, than about "what's going to happen." The Artic trip or the Penny-Raj almost-sex were perhaps the first examples of this notion that "Oh, shit, we need to make something *happen*, they can't just sit around and talk about comic books."
Whereas, the scenes of the guys just dinking around were my *favorite part*, and that's the part that's been deemed disposable and obsolete.
Like I said in another post, IMO a long-running TV series, especially a comedy, is not a linear thing with a definite "beginning, middle, end" type of structure. Or at least, it shouldn't be. It's a very different animal than a novel or a movie.
You can't apply that three-act structure to something that lasts for ten years. That's when you get story arcs that last too long and become tiresome and have to be extended in a very artificial way. (Couples breaking up and getting back together half a dozen times). You can't bring on the weddings and babies *yet*, because then it's all over, so you're literally just killing time and waiting for the final season. (The H/B wedding was possibly a test to see if the audience would accept this sort of thing. And not many fangirls care about Howard, so he's sort of expendable. "Here's a wedding to tide you over until the weddings that you actually care about.")
I am fine with shows where each episode is more or less self-contained and there are no "arcs." That doesn't mean there's no *continuity*; I'm not saying they shouldn't make references to things that happened in previous episodes, for example. I'm not arguing for each ep. to be a totally isolated discrete thing. Seinfeld had a complex web of in-jokes and situations that were built on previous events. That's how you reward long-term viewing. That's the whole concept of a "running gag." But I have neither the patience nor the inclination for soap opera-style ongoing plotlines in a sitcom. I wouldn't want a particular story to last for more than three or four episodes at the outside.
Weddings, babies, and deaths are just so *final.* I don't believe that a sitcom needs an "ending." The whole point of a sitcom, supposedly, is its re-watchability. Supposedly what makes syndication work is that you can watch the eps in any order and not miss anything, or least not miss *much.*
Canons seem to want everything spelled-out, in the most obvious and irrevocable way: all mysteries revealed, all I's dotted and T's crossed, each character "taken care of." This is where their literal-mindedness and lack of imagination really shows: they believe that if they're aren't SHOWN character X getting partnered-up or whatever, it means that character is doomed to some sad fate. Whereas, Nostalgics know that if this show had ended after Season 2 or 3, it doesn't mean that Penny is going to work at the CCF until she dies, or that Howard will eternally be rejected by women. It means that they cease to exist. They're not real. I don't watch a sitcom to "see what happens." I watch to feel like I'm visiting a pleasantly familiar place with pleasantly familiar old friends, where things, for the most part, are reassuringly unchanging.
If the current ratings are any indication, TBBT will last forever in syndication. But fast-forward ten years from now: if I were a brand-new viewer, I'm not sure I'd want to start watching this show from the beginning if I already knew that it ended with a flurry of weddings and babies and that the pairings were set in stone by Season 4. That really takes the wind out of the sails of the early seasons. A lot of the old ongoing jokes have been unraveled: Raj's mutism, the invisible Mrs.Wolowitz, etc. It's like a vehicle that keeps losing pieces as it moves onward faster and faster. If I already knew these things, would the early seasons still be as enjoyable?
Anyway, what was my point? The writers have shot themselves in the foot by adopting an arc-based style of storytelling that relies on waiting for big-deal events to happen. They've fostered a different type of expectation in the viewers, but they can't deliver too soon because they want to continue making $$$ as long as possible, so in the meantime they're left coming up with "filler" and diversionary tactics.
Whereas, IMO, the early seasons were more about an atmosphere, a style, a feeling, than about "what's going to happen." The Artic trip or the Penny-Raj almost-sex were perhaps the first examples of this notion that "Oh, shit, we need to make something *happen*, they can't just sit around and talk about comic books."
Whereas, the scenes of the guys just dinking around were my *favorite part*, and that's the part that's been deemed disposable and obsolete.