The Human side of Sheldon

[Idle Miscreant]

Indeed. How can a man so passionate about everything be so indifferent in love?
And they can't change it now or else look like artistic counterfeiters.

If they'd written his romance properly in the first place (ie, vivid from the outset), they wouldn't have had to change his character so wildly every time they wanted to have a "intimate" moment.

It's very bizarre this sulky infantile behaviour interspersed with Darcy-esque OOC dialogue. Vintage Sheldon was perfectly capable of intimate moments, WITHOUT turning into a two-dimensional fantasy cutout from a piece of fanwank.
("I hope you treasure this the way I treasure you"? Fecking cookies from Meemaw that taste like hugs? Proms and pretty dresses? *off-screen copious vomiting*)

What mawkish, godawful twee-hole have we fallen into...

The one that used to bother the hell out of me was the unmitigated twaddle of “Sheldon was an emotionless robot before he met Amy”

REALLY...


Let's look at a handful of these non-emotions.

---

---

ETC ETC ETC.

---

---

Here's some comradery & companionship;






Respect...



Attempt at humour/friendliness...



Adaptability...


Chivalry...


And they're just for one person - Penny. Once you add in Leonard, Howard and Raj, his mother, and the odd obsessive grad student for the writers to experiment with, (and now his friendship with Wheaton) there's no need for any further characters with regards to Sheldon's development or expression of emotions. I have yet to see any emotion expressed by Sheldon in his current relationship that isn't either unpleasant (ghastly rudeness to AFF) or hideously OOC (the fanwank Darcyisms). All the honourable emotions have been covered in full all throughout the first seasons.

I find it interesting (and a bit nauseating) that the moments so heralded as milestones for Sheldon by the Jim Parsons fans (because that's who most of these folk are. They certainly don't give a shit and a half for Sheldon's original personality) are precisely the moments I feel contain dubious acting from Parsons. I've always believed in Sheldon as an existant upon the earth. Parsons embodied Vintage Sheldon in a way rarely seen outside of serious film. But something happened between S4 and S5 to Parsons' portrayal, he became almost pantomime Sheldon, and I've not "believed" (outside a moment or two) in Sheldon since.

The soap-opera acting of the hand-holding scene at the end of S5, and the "please don't hurt my friend" are two examples of instances where I've cringed with embarrassment. Ditto the Proton Dagobah scene unfortunately, which I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of.
Yet we've SEEN Parsons act seriously, over and over again. The Electric Can Opener is deadly serious. So what is he DOING now? This is where I can only think it's another case of a clash between Sheldon and UnSheldon dialogue/actions.

Parsons' acting in Eulogy Punch-Up Artist was also superb. Is it possible to lose one's focus as an actor? It certainly is possible amongst writers...

[Tuesday Pajamas]

What a fine selection

Another human side of Sheldon sighting:

Sheldon apologising to Howard for his pathological honesty causing him to be dropped from the space programme...

Howard: You’re giving me a couch cushion?

Sheldon: No. The cushion is merely symbolic. I’m giving you my spot on the couch.

Howard: But you love that spot.

Sheldon: No. I love my mother. My feelings for my spot are much greater. It is the singular location in space around which revolves my entire universe. And now it’s yours.

[ricardo shillyshally]

Granted, wellplayedpenny, but I was thinking this is when both characters really came to life. People meander along, it's only when someone (or something) challenges them, that they have to focus all their mental power, and really feel it. It actually started as Penny taking power in their apartment, Leonard rolls instantly, and as TP says, only Sheldon is immune to her sexuality(paraphrase). He starts imposing strikes against her. I don't think they always have to resolve everything in 20 mins(where's the fun in that). I think Sheldon is as Human as anyone, certainly flawed. From what I've read, humans develop neural networks which mirror their external environments. It can't have helped Sheldon to have everyone trying to judge and label him, from an early age. People fear the unique, and different.

[ricardo shillyshally]

I do see Sheldon's human, what we could call his more emotional, side, in his interactions with Penny. He even realises that she doesn't value what is important to him. Interesting how they both started out in Pasadena; Sheldon with a prestigious position at Caltech, Penny remaking Psycho, low budget with an axe weilding gorrila!

[wellplayedpenny]

Ricardo, I agree they shouldn't resolve everything in 20 minutes as the writers are at times tone deaf as to what part of the story requires closure and what doesn't. The Arctic fiasco is an example as we have the 'happily ever after' with Sheldon back in Pasadena and Leonard in the sack with Penny but leaves out the impact all of this has on Sheldon's reputation/career.

[ricardo shillyshally]

I think we approach anything that appears like reality, and the expect it to follow some logic. But really that is part of sit com logic; the 20 minute reset. The happy ending, (ubiquitous, throughout media). Everyone flirts with the possibility of being with everyone else. There are no consequences to actions. So for example, we'd expect Sheldon to exact a long and well thought out revenge for Arctic lies, as he did over unreturned DVD.

[wellplayedpenny]

But what gets unfair (at least to me counting as lazy writing) is when writers include things that are not seen in the 20 minutes we do see and incorporate the off-camera parts as canon. If they're going for the joke and reset that's fine but it's the seemingly arbitrary choices tptb make regarding what does continue beyond the current episode (the Lenny being the obvious candidate but we also get it in terms of how the Shamy relationship had 'evolved') that irk me because as a viewer I don't 'get' a lot of their choices for beyond-the-episode plot progressions.

[Louise]

But what gets unfair (at least to me counting as lazy writing) is when writers include things that are not seen in the 20 minutes we do see and incorporate the off-camera parts as canon. If they're going for the joke and reset that's fine but it's the seemingly arbitrary choices tptb make regarding what does continue beyond the current episode (the Lenny being the obvious candidate but we also get it in terms of how the Shamy relationship had 'evolved') that irk me because as a viewer I don't 'get' a lot of their choices for beyond-the-episode plot progressions.

But really that is part of sit com logic; the 20 minute reset. The happy ending, (ubiquitous, throughout media). Everyone flirts with the possibility of being with everyone else. There are no consequences to actions.

I think we're looking at two separate concepts here, and therefore I agree with both Ricardo and WPP:

"Amy and Sheldon became a couple during the hiatus and the audience doesn't get to see how or why"* is cheating. You can hand-wave *small* things but you can't hand-wave *big* things.

Character development (or the development of a relationship) cannot happen off-screen. TPTB are basically telling us "Because I said so, that's why." We keep being literally *told* how great these couples are, all the nice things they've done for each other, but we have no proof.

And if the writers are telling instead of showing, it makes one suspect that they CAN'T show these things in a convincing way, and that's why they're telling, instead. Presenting these big changes in characterization, in relationships, in the emotions and psychology of the characters, would be too hard, because these ideas are bad ideas and they don't work. They're not sound. TPBT are telling, not showing, BECAUSE these ideas are not plausible and not workable. They're cutting corners.

Major changes of this kind, even if they were handled well instead of poorly, are also too time-consuming for the sitcom format. TPTB have chosen themes and plots which are simply not suitable for a show of this type. The extremely slow development of someone's internal psychological state is not exactly zippy and jazzy material for a mainstream primetime comedy. So, they leapfrog over the middle part and say "Ta-da! We've arrived!" And, now back to the pratfalls.

It's like someone giving you a book with several pages missing.

You can't gloss over important, game-changing, show-changing, character-changing things. That's bad story-telling, it's emotionally and intellectually dishonest, and it's lazy. It's asking the audience to suspend their disbelief to an unacceptable degree.

"Raj can talk all of a sudden, for some vague reason!" is another example of TPTB skipping over the actual hard work of showing us these subtle emotional processes, and just pulling the rabbit out of their ass...I mean, hat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ricardo is talking about the episodic nature of TV. This is a somewhat different issue. Personally, I'm *in favor* of the type of sitcom where nothing ever really changes and there's more or less a "reset button." Maybe not to extremes, but to some degree. IMO you should be able to watch the episodes of a sitcom in any order and not miss much. This is not to say that there should be no continuity. I'm actually kind of a stickler for continuity. But the more changes you make, and the bigger they are, the more issues you'll have with maintaining continuity.

I believe long-term changes and "story arcs" are not appropriate to the half-hour sitcom format. That's a very unpopular opinion nowadays, when seemingly everything is structured like an hour-long HBO drama.

"Penny gets a *slightly* better job than the CCF" is a level of change that I would find acceptable. "Raj can now talk to women he already knows, like Penny, but still can't talk to strangers." Ditto. "Howard has to try living without his mother *temporarily* Ditto.

When you start having permanent long-term changes, that's when you run into this argument of "if these characters don't mend their ways, they'll end up alone and miserable, blah, blah." Well, if they mend their ways, they lose the very things which made them funny and the very things which drove the plots of the episodes, and you end up with characters who have no motivations because everything's been resolved.

"People's actions have no long-term consequences" is one thing. "We're showing you the consequences WITHOUT showing you the actions." is another.



*I have not watched most of S4, but I've been told that's what happened.

[wellplayedpenny]

What I'm referencing is the flip side to the episodic part of television and it isn't a different issue (at least to me--but then again I do have brain damage so take that as you will! ). What this is ultimately about (and what gets my goat) is how TPTB see the structure of their show. The episodic nature of the 20 minute format and its reset value is what defined the early season episodes--although an argument can be made that the early seasons aren't 'pure' reset sitcom as there is an overarching story arc--the progression of Lenny--which hovered in the background in some episodes, devoid in others and front and centre in a few. In effect the episodic format dictated the value of relationship plotting in that, yes, it was a part of the overall season arc but it wasn't crucial to the show's success or working mechanics. As a 20 minute sit com vehicle it was successful in what it did and there were moments of believable character 'growth' that subtly shaped the episodes but did not deviate from the consistency of plot development and structure. 'Serious characterization' didn't spoil the broth as it were and I was quite satisfied with the recipe they came up with.

My complaint is that TPTB have decided to alter the formula by making the relationship arcs paramount and that the 20 minute sit com structure they set up (with plot providing character growth) can't accommodate it particularly since the relationship structures are so terribly 'old school'. Thus the need to cram in the 'important parts' (as they define them) which distorts the 20 minute sit com format they set up in the early seasons. Jokes and plots are not as complex as they used to be because they have to write in all of the characters into nearly every episode. Again this is a problem with the new writing style not being compatible with the initial structure. This is why we all have the feeling that BBT is two separate television shows spliced together (with AFF as the sinew)--because it is. TPTB can't change the set structure of 20 minutes within its own micro-universe to make room for broad-sweeping character 'growth' so its only option is to fill in what they can in terms of showing their vision of the show or in other words plot no longer forms character, it's an external off-camera Power that tells us how the character thinks when we the audience are devoid of the visual on-screen facts as it were.

Ricardo, I think you're right that we seem to assign logic/order to what we see on the telly and agree completely with your observation that there is a balance between 'not everything resolving itself in 20 minutes' (Panty Pinata or the Lenny arc) and having a 20 minute reset where there are no consequences (Sheldon's career in the Arctic. This one in particular *had* to be dropped and forgotten because as so many ff writers have picked up on, this would have seriously altered/destroyed the friendships and comedic dynamic of the show). For me, what's happened is that the choices TPTB have made in terms of what gets reset and what 'goes on' are kinda whacked. Especially in terms of the Shamy, which had to pick up the pace so as to be on the level of 'serious relationship' as Lenny and Howardette, we have Sheldon's insults and Amy's...whatever the hell she's doing resetting over and over while at the same time their relationship deepens as they go on into future episodes. This further compounds the problem of inserting the relationship into the sitcom format as TPTB want to create the illusion of sentiment that supersedes the nasty one-off jokes that we see episode after episode. They seek to reorganize/reshape/alter the structure of the show (which to my mind is the logical structure format of the 20 minute sitcom we had in the early years) in order to make the relationships plausible (because as we all know 'poorly designed relationship' isn't a Shamy only problem). We see the devastating results in terms of episode quality and more importantly characterization.

So, am I saying that the characters were designed for the sitcom format? They might have been written for it but as I can attest to with the more dramatic pieces I've read on ffnet they are as adaptable, credible and poignant in more dramatic pieces as characters written solely for literary purposes. Therefore the problem lies solely with the altered vision of TPTB and the writers' inability to translate it into something that's funny. The *writers* are the ones who functioned best in the 20 minute sitcom format and Lorre and Molero are too up in their own arses to see that what's coming out is second rate.

Ah crap, did I ever babble. That's what happens when you guys come up with such interesting topics to ponder.

[ricardo shillyshally]

JEEEEZ! You two can write! (I started in science, and reduce everything to a simple equation). So I think you're saying that they've changed from the classic sitcom reset(with a little progression), to a drama, or even soap format, where plot arcs are more important. And just admit, anything they can't explain. I sometimes wonder if it's not just gag driven, and some gags take longer to play out. I'm just watching late S7. Not funny, few ideas. They've either ran out, or lost interest. I certainly think with all the good ideas I see here, it's about time they re-thought programme definitions and limits. TV needs an injection of new ideas, if its going to survive. It's almost extinct to me!