02-07-2015, 02:29 PM
Seasons 1 and 2 are The Big Bang Theory. S3/S4 are when they start to sneak in the re-boot/spin-off through the back door, and 5 is the completed installation of the spin-off. If you made a Venn Diagram, S1-S2 would be one circle, S5 onward would be the other circle, and 3/4 would be the place where the two circles overlap.
Yes, there is loads of great, classic, iconic stuff in 3, and some good stuff in four. If you're someone who doesn't mind Bernadette or finds her easy to ignore, you'd probably say S3 is still Vintage. I think you can find other flies in the soup with S3 though. There's the Lenny, there's the introduction of AFF at the very end, there's the Arctic issue--which isn't really on my radar because I'm not Sheldon -centric, but I know it really, really angers and upsets some people, and I understand why, even if I don't feel it on an emotional level. The equivalent for me is Killer Robot, but that's Season 2, and it's kind of a foreshadowing of how badly these writers can suck when they try to stretch the format or try to go for darker, more serious themes.
In TV lingo, there's a "backdoor pilot." Well, this is a backdoor spin-off or backdoor re-make. They were sneaky, and gradually phased-in the new show as they gradually phased out the old show. That's why it's so hard to pinpoint the exact place where things changed. S3 and/or S4 are a gray area. There is no single, obvious JTS moment. Every person of a Nostalgic bent probably has their own personal line in the sand, marking the boundary between old and new. And there are even some pretty good moments in the later seasons....***but they are good moments on a different show.*** That's the key difference. They can't be evaluated in the same way.
I can't post images right now, but if I were to illustrate this process with color theory, it would go like this: if S1 and 2 are blue, and S5 onward is yellow, then 3 and 4 are the place in-between which is green. S3 is a green composed of more blue than yellow, S4 is a green composed of more yellow than blue. We move gradually from blue into yellow, with 3 and 4 being the transitional part. And why do we still find the occasional vestige of Vintage-style BBT in the later seasons? Because yellow is still located pretty close to blue on the color wheel. They look very different but they're not totally unrelated.
( yellow being a symbol of cowardice, I think this is pretty apt.)
Or, if you want to use fandom/fanfic lingo, what we're looking at now is a "Canon Divergence AU", maybe.
ETA: as I've said before, I would feel about 99% better if they simply gave this new show a different name or gave the characters different names. In other words, if they were honest and open about what they've done. If they wanted a profitable generic romcom, they should've ended their quirky little nerd- show and made a profitable generic romcom which didn't claim to be anything else, instead of this "We know you like chocolate, so now we're going to give you vanilla while insisting it's still chocolate" BS.
TPTB realized, a bit late in the game, that Parsons is a draw. Well, frankly, from what we've seen of Parsons, I think he would've been perfectly willing to star in a new Lorre production. They could've shed every cast member except Parsons and made their profitable new romcom.
Instead of keeping the old audience *and* adding a new audience, they have instead lost the old audience. But it doesn't matter one bit to them, because the new audience is much, much bigger. Therefore, I wonder why they even made a pretense of still being an eccentric, geeky, smart show or even bothered to gradually transition away from the original format instead of just quickly chucking it altogether. Sciencey stuff is not the draw for the casual viewer; Parsons is. Maybe they thought they could keep the original fans, but they didn't.
As we've seen, TPTB have zero understanding of WHY people liked Vintage BBT or what the good parts were. The parts which TPTB view as the most important, the stuff which is precious to their hearts, are the parts which Nostalgics consider the most boring, annoying, and irrelevant. There is a huge disconnect between TPTB's intentions, and what the original fans perceived. TPTB have now taken the worst parts of the Vintage years and made them the whole of the show, because they are incredibly, intractably, fanatically stubborn and blind about what REALLY made those years special. They will NEVER stop believing and insisting that this show's central premise and reason for existence is Lenny, and therefore we now have Lenny times four.
Yes, there is loads of great, classic, iconic stuff in 3, and some good stuff in four. If you're someone who doesn't mind Bernadette or finds her easy to ignore, you'd probably say S3 is still Vintage. I think you can find other flies in the soup with S3 though. There's the Lenny, there's the introduction of AFF at the very end, there's the Arctic issue--which isn't really on my radar because I'm not Sheldon -centric, but I know it really, really angers and upsets some people, and I understand why, even if I don't feel it on an emotional level. The equivalent for me is Killer Robot, but that's Season 2, and it's kind of a foreshadowing of how badly these writers can suck when they try to stretch the format or try to go for darker, more serious themes.
In TV lingo, there's a "backdoor pilot." Well, this is a backdoor spin-off or backdoor re-make. They were sneaky, and gradually phased-in the new show as they gradually phased out the old show. That's why it's so hard to pinpoint the exact place where things changed. S3 and/or S4 are a gray area. There is no single, obvious JTS moment. Every person of a Nostalgic bent probably has their own personal line in the sand, marking the boundary between old and new. And there are even some pretty good moments in the later seasons....***but they are good moments on a different show.*** That's the key difference. They can't be evaluated in the same way.
I can't post images right now, but if I were to illustrate this process with color theory, it would go like this: if S1 and 2 are blue, and S5 onward is yellow, then 3 and 4 are the place in-between which is green. S3 is a green composed of more blue than yellow, S4 is a green composed of more yellow than blue. We move gradually from blue into yellow, with 3 and 4 being the transitional part. And why do we still find the occasional vestige of Vintage-style BBT in the later seasons? Because yellow is still located pretty close to blue on the color wheel. They look very different but they're not totally unrelated.
( yellow being a symbol of cowardice, I think this is pretty apt.)
Or, if you want to use fandom/fanfic lingo, what we're looking at now is a "Canon Divergence AU", maybe.
ETA: as I've said before, I would feel about 99% better if they simply gave this new show a different name or gave the characters different names. In other words, if they were honest and open about what they've done. If they wanted a profitable generic romcom, they should've ended their quirky little nerd- show and made a profitable generic romcom which didn't claim to be anything else, instead of this "We know you like chocolate, so now we're going to give you vanilla while insisting it's still chocolate" BS.
TPTB realized, a bit late in the game, that Parsons is a draw. Well, frankly, from what we've seen of Parsons, I think he would've been perfectly willing to star in a new Lorre production. They could've shed every cast member except Parsons and made their profitable new romcom.
Instead of keeping the old audience *and* adding a new audience, they have instead lost the old audience. But it doesn't matter one bit to them, because the new audience is much, much bigger. Therefore, I wonder why they even made a pretense of still being an eccentric, geeky, smart show or even bothered to gradually transition away from the original format instead of just quickly chucking it altogether. Sciencey stuff is not the draw for the casual viewer; Parsons is. Maybe they thought they could keep the original fans, but they didn't.
As we've seen, TPTB have zero understanding of WHY people liked Vintage BBT or what the good parts were. The parts which TPTB view as the most important, the stuff which is precious to their hearts, are the parts which Nostalgics consider the most boring, annoying, and irrelevant. There is a huge disconnect between TPTB's intentions, and what the original fans perceived. TPTB have now taken the worst parts of the Vintage years and made them the whole of the show, because they are incredibly, intractably, fanatically stubborn and blind about what REALLY made those years special. They will NEVER stop believing and insisting that this show's central premise and reason for existence is Lenny, and therefore we now have Lenny times four.