03-04-2015, 07:22 AM
"Leonard and Sheldon are brilliant physicists - geniuses in the laboratory, but socially challenged everywhere else. Enter beautiful, street-smart neighbor, Penny, who aims to teach them a thing or two about life."
Question from Nutz - "Do you feel like this description of the show is accurate? Is the show still really about this overall principle statement?"
Not in the slightest. For one, there’s no back and forth between two worlds anymore. Ie, the world of Intellect/Geekery (as represented by Sheldon and the guys) and the world of Humanity/Pop Culture (as represented by Penny). ALL of them are presented as “normal” now. Even Sheldon likes Taylor Swift (I can’t even begin…He used to quote the Rubaiyat and Nietzsche!) and dresses like a “proper man”. Even though in his current mentally-enfeebled state he’s probably wearing an adult diaper underneath his boring suit.
If I were to stumble on this show in Season 8, with no knowledge of it, I’d surmise it was a show about 4 couples who inexplicably spent time together despite manifestly loathing each others’ guts. The meanness, the bullying, the manipulation…and that’s just the couples themselves!
I certainly wouldn't surmise it was about geniuses endeavouring to navigate the everyday world, or about science in any fashion. Or friendship. Or anything that Lorre and Prady originally envisioned and did so brilliantly for four years. Now it's just standard sitcom romantic relationships and all the unpleasant laundry that goes alone with it. Shouting, jealousy, blackmail, demands, sex, valentines, dates...The usual.
There’s none of the genuine delight in the world they once were passionate about. All the guys’ hobbies and passions are mocked by their wives/girlfriends. Everything the show used to honour is now displayed as something “you have to grow out of”. It seems to be saying that the only way of becoming a worthwhile human being is to sacrifice your identity and become a Stepford Husband.
In the midst of all this, there are amusing lines, certainly, and some fine acting, but for me it’s all crushed and suffocated by the appalling suburban fantasy heavily overlaid upon it.
It’s tremendously sad that they couldn’t give Sheldon a relationship wherein he could retain his core identity. They had to reduce his intellect by about half, to the point where he sometimes seems barely able to feed himself, bulk him up, put him in normal beige/grey MAN clothing, and turn him into the plaything of the world’s most self-pitying, envious, obnoxious and manipulative woman I’ve ever seen on television, and then, further insult - demand it’s CUTE.
Cute by god! It’s repellent and heartbreaking!
I admired Sheldon Cooper, brilliant, eccentric, honest, independent, weird as hell, and above all absolutely sure of himself, and passionate about his work.
This simpering, gormless fool hokeying his way around, saying things even a “sexy toddler” would cringe at, is NOT Sheldon Cooper. He’s just “handsome, normal and harmless” and the high school fantasy for a woman who is still obsessing over not being popular.
That’s what bothers me the most about Amy – WHO wants to be popular SO MUCH? How completely lacking in your own character, that as a grown adult you’d still be carrying around obsessions about cliques and boyfriends and proms, and looking for the nearest man-shaped object you could manipulate into your five-year plan for marriage, babies and white picket-fences, and of all the tragedies in art, it has to be the ONE CHARACTER who is the antithesis of all that normalist, conventional piffle. Alien Sheldon, the Noble Outsider.
Is it some sort of game? Let’s break the independent, asexual genius, down into a domesticated, heterosexual schmuck? The eccentric adult into a “sexy toddler”? A toddler whom they’re also going to force to have sex with a woman who sartorially resembles his Great Aunt or Nanny and treats him like an unruly charge?
It’s utterly humiliating and degrading.
So, no, I don’t think it’s the same show at all.
I still greatly admire Lorre and Prady for creating that once marvellous show, and for creating Sheldon himself. But why they’ve decided to destroy their finest creation, I cannot fathom…
Question from Nutz - "Do you feel like this description of the show is accurate? Is the show still really about this overall principle statement?"
Not in the slightest. For one, there’s no back and forth between two worlds anymore. Ie, the world of Intellect/Geekery (as represented by Sheldon and the guys) and the world of Humanity/Pop Culture (as represented by Penny). ALL of them are presented as “normal” now. Even Sheldon likes Taylor Swift (I can’t even begin…He used to quote the Rubaiyat and Nietzsche!) and dresses like a “proper man”. Even though in his current mentally-enfeebled state he’s probably wearing an adult diaper underneath his boring suit.
If I were to stumble on this show in Season 8, with no knowledge of it, I’d surmise it was a show about 4 couples who inexplicably spent time together despite manifestly loathing each others’ guts. The meanness, the bullying, the manipulation…and that’s just the couples themselves!
I certainly wouldn't surmise it was about geniuses endeavouring to navigate the everyday world, or about science in any fashion. Or friendship. Or anything that Lorre and Prady originally envisioned and did so brilliantly for four years. Now it's just standard sitcom romantic relationships and all the unpleasant laundry that goes alone with it. Shouting, jealousy, blackmail, demands, sex, valentines, dates...The usual.
There’s none of the genuine delight in the world they once were passionate about. All the guys’ hobbies and passions are mocked by their wives/girlfriends. Everything the show used to honour is now displayed as something “you have to grow out of”. It seems to be saying that the only way of becoming a worthwhile human being is to sacrifice your identity and become a Stepford Husband.
In the midst of all this, there are amusing lines, certainly, and some fine acting, but for me it’s all crushed and suffocated by the appalling suburban fantasy heavily overlaid upon it.
It’s tremendously sad that they couldn’t give Sheldon a relationship wherein he could retain his core identity. They had to reduce his intellect by about half, to the point where he sometimes seems barely able to feed himself, bulk him up, put him in normal beige/grey MAN clothing, and turn him into the plaything of the world’s most self-pitying, envious, obnoxious and manipulative woman I’ve ever seen on television, and then, further insult - demand it’s CUTE.
Cute by god! It’s repellent and heartbreaking!
I admired Sheldon Cooper, brilliant, eccentric, honest, independent, weird as hell, and above all absolutely sure of himself, and passionate about his work.
This simpering, gormless fool hokeying his way around, saying things even a “sexy toddler” would cringe at, is NOT Sheldon Cooper. He’s just “handsome, normal and harmless” and the high school fantasy for a woman who is still obsessing over not being popular.
That’s what bothers me the most about Amy – WHO wants to be popular SO MUCH? How completely lacking in your own character, that as a grown adult you’d still be carrying around obsessions about cliques and boyfriends and proms, and looking for the nearest man-shaped object you could manipulate into your five-year plan for marriage, babies and white picket-fences, and of all the tragedies in art, it has to be the ONE CHARACTER who is the antithesis of all that normalist, conventional piffle. Alien Sheldon, the Noble Outsider.
Is it some sort of game? Let’s break the independent, asexual genius, down into a domesticated, heterosexual schmuck? The eccentric adult into a “sexy toddler”? A toddler whom they’re also going to force to have sex with a woman who sartorially resembles his Great Aunt or Nanny and treats him like an unruly charge?
It’s utterly humiliating and degrading.
So, no, I don’t think it’s the same show at all.
I still greatly admire Lorre and Prady for creating that once marvellous show, and for creating Sheldon himself. But why they’ve decided to destroy their finest creation, I cannot fathom…
"WHERE THE HELL'S MY PARACHUTE?"