FolkLorre

[ricardo shillyshally]

Some of CL's thoughts just before he started TBBT; Lorre: For me personally, comedy always begins by caring about the character. You fundamentally have to root for them, you have to care about their relationships and you have to get invested. Going back to Jackie Gleason, Archie Bunker, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, people loved those characters. Their lives became something you could care about and then laughter was possible.
TBBT: Their world is not one I know, but that idea of feeling like you’re on the outside looking in is certainly universal.(Forbes.com) He then quotes this memorable scene from Stardust Memories. Imagine the train carriages are two seperate apartments!

[ricardo shillyshally]

'At the taping I saw, lines that the actors had grown visibly sick of during the camera run-through, lines that even Lorre had stopped laughing at, were getting huge laughs. Everyone seemed lightly narcotized by the audience’s presence, the audience included.' from an old article with lots of insights into CL's working method, ' A lot of sitcoms are, in fact, darker than you realize. The Big Bang Theory is about alienation. You would never know it from the shows themselves, but you do, sometimes, feel it while watching them.' http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/1...ple-medium , also interesting how many films/programmes have been made on Stage 24 (the 'Friends' Stage), and Stage 25 http://www.thestudiotour.com/warnerbros/stage25.php

[Louise]

A lot of sitcoms are, in fact, darker than you realize. The Big Bang Theory is about alienation.

Yes, it's a show about people who are misfits and outcasts. The problem is that instead of siding with them, the show itself treats them with contempt. Instead of just showing us people who are bullied and shunned, the show is complicit in the bullying and shunning. There's no "revenge of the nerds", here, IMO it doesn't really treat the characters as heroes or invite us to identifty with them.

I think there's some of that even in the earlier seasons. I'm not sure the show has ever really embraced the guys' perspective or ever truly empathized with them. Rather, it kind of implies that their alienation is their own fault and things would get better if they'd just "snap out of it."

As fun and entertaining as they are, IMO even the early seasons have kind of an ugly undercurrent and some mixed messages. This show never *quite* knew what its premise or its message was. Odd as it might sound, this was always a show where I liked the characters and the *idea* of it, more than the actual episodes.

I think the early seasons were good almost by accident, if you see what I mean. The best parts were unrelated to whatever theme or message the writers *thought* they were presenting. The show was good in spite of itself.

ETA: and now, they think they can balance-out the cruel humor with syrupy emotional moments where everyone is crying and hugging, or by letting a character succeed for about five minutes before knocking him/her down again. There's major tonal whiplash.

[ricardo shillyshally]

I am watching the early seasons at present(re-runs here to drum up support for new season). The character are so fresh, they do still have multiple social links, the guys hang out and are happy, none of them have a girlfriend, it is exactly what CL and BP envisioned. Penny is independent. Here's another interesting quote from article; 'Sitcoms, if they show us anything, show us people we might like to know. Because of this, the sitcom is a medium designed to reassure. The more reassuring the sitcom, the better its chances become at winding up in the financial promised land of syndication, where multi-camera sitcoms fare far better than their single-camera brethren. Most sitcoms are about families, and, for the millions who watch a sitcom, it becomes a kind of mental family. Week after week, your couch faces the couch of characters you feel you know, characters whose problems can never quite get solved.' and ' To laugh at these things with our mental families may allow us to cope with our own loneliness and alienation and self-hatred. It may be that the sitcom’s constant avoidance of any final, dramatic catharsis is its accidental strength. If so, that would make this least lifelike form of entertainment the most comfortingly similar to real life.'

[ricardo shillyshally]

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #217 (CENSORED)

words that confuse the CBS censor

fecund, penal, taint, titmouse, cockamamie, cockatoo, cocksure, coccyx, ballcock, cockeye, prick, prickly, kumquat, titter, cunning linguist, insertion, gobble, guzzle, swallow, manhole, rimshot, ramrod, come, fallacious, lugubrious, rectify, Uranus, angina, paradiddle, spotted dick, dictum, frock, cunctation, engorge, turgid, stiff, bush, uvula, crapulence, masticate, Dick Butkus, gherkin and, of course, the always bewildering lickety-split.

As you can see, context is everything.<........... (It must be bizarre, being a writer, and knowing that even the words you use are going to scrutinized, by a team at CBS, before they even check the dialogue, references, plots. I often hear talk on shows, and wonder if clever writers have outwit the censors).

[ricardo shillyshally]

I have a great respect for Jewish writers and thinkers. They've made a great contribution to contemporary culture. Their song writers are expert crafters of erudite expression.' Comedy is older than physics. There's a lot of knowledge about what works and what doesn't'. As you know CL wrote songs, and then transferred his skills to sit com writing. (which then made sense of particularly the last sentence for me> 'And you may wonder why they chose Saul Perlmutter, as opposed to the other two winners. It just comes down to that they liked the sound of his name better. Things like that matter. The writers think of the script in terms of music and the rhythm of the lines.' from http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/...ang-theory

[Louise]

As I (and others) have been saying these past few days, I think Lorre is just messing with the audience, now. As FM said in the chat box, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this show's ending (when it finally comes), has some kind of nasty twist to it.

Yes, the current couples will be endgame, but somehow I'm starting to imagine that it won't play-out exactly as the canon shippers hope. Lorre can still pull a fast one. WHY would he do this? Nothing but spite.

For example, I wouldn't put it past them to have these weddings and babies occur off-screen or just be glossed-over, thus robbing Shamies and Lennies of their climactic moment. They could do something tricky, like skip ahead in time by a year or two, in the last few seasons. S9 ends and when S10 opens, it's a year later. Something like that.

Ditto for The Coitus™ (yuck) . They could gloss-over that instead of making it a big deal; the characters just mention it in a casual, off-hand way as having already happened, and the shippers don't get their big day.

I could be totally wrong, because those big events might spell big ratings, and the writers certainly have nothing else to write about and are desperate for material.

But they skipped-over Amy's integration into the group, so I wouldn't put it past them to have these weddings take place between-seasons or something, and when we return in the Fall, it's just the same boring-old-couple interactions. They could make the shippers wait so long and beg so hard for these "big events" that all the enjoyment is drained out of it.

They could spend a whole season killing time with Raj & Generic Girl-Shaped Character #3, making the Lennies and Shamies wait. Or there's other time-filling, ratings-whoring stuff like the Howie's Dad storyline.

Again, I could be totally wrong, but somehow I feel like TPTB would enjoy deflating the fans' balloon and just downplaying the stuff that the shippers have been salivating for.

That's just one example of what might happen. I don't expect anything to change and I certainly don't hope for a more Nostalgic-friendly turn of events, but the writers might not go for an orgy of shippiness, after all.

I'm not saying it's *likely*, I'm just saying it wouldn't surprise me.

I kinda predict that unless MR gets pregnant IRL, they'll have Howie™ and Bernie™ (Generic Girl-Shaped Character #2) adopt a kid, because that will be portrayed as some kind of compromise between having and not-having babies. And then they could have an older kid who is already verbal and cute and what-not, for the show, since babies don't actually *do* anything. Or the Lenny kid will mysteriously age four years between one season and the next. Sitcoms have been known to do that, before.

(and I maintain that none of the vintage characters were intensely interested in becoming parents ASAP, except possibly Leonard. They were very young and, for the guys, had just recently finished many grueling years of school and study, and prob. have lots of student-loan debt.)

I also predict some really pathetic episodes where the couples *almost* break up, but then the guys go crawling back because their lives are empty and meaningless without the Wimmins. (Or I suppose P. crawling back to L.)

Either way, I look forward to many happy years of not watching and ignoring this tripe completely.

( Meanwhile, in a universe far, far away, Real!Howard will be sitting in the Time Machine, or perhaps the Goth Club, having margaritas with Real!Raj and feeling relieved that he dodged a bullet.)

---

Of course, knowing that CL was working on both shows simultaneously on adjacent stages on Warner Bros lot; explains the appearance of Charlie Sheen(which is random, otherwise). He just walked over from the other staging area.

I like curly-haired Raj. RIP.

[SpaceAnJL]

I call Jealous Asshole Sheldon being humiliated when AFF dumps him/is pursued by other men/mysterious fiancé reappears. Something that will manage to be both nauseating and boring. Just so he learns to 'appreciate' her.

(as opposed to throwing a fucking ticker-tape parade in celebration and escaping into the sunset)

[ricardo shillyshally]

Somewhere amongst all the crap I read, it said CL was always looking for new ideas for sit coms, even Two and a Half was considered a break from the traditional families and couples. When you consider the reality of modern societies, the inter connectedness of peoples lives, it does seem strange that he starts out wanting to explore modern relationships, but then drifts slowly back to the traditional. I wish CL would have a mad moment, and shake things up. I think he has that in him. Yes BB doesn't seem very empowering to men, who are intelligent; they are berated by their female partners , or shown as pathetic like ('I'll do or say anything you want for sex' Leonard). It seems CL, maybe because he's been accused of being sexist to women, has switched to men.

[FlyingMonkey]

I call Jealous Asshole Sheldon being humiliated when AFF dumps him/is pursued by other men/mysterious fiancé reappears. Something that will manage to be both nauseating and boring. Just so he learns to 'appreciate' her.

(as opposed to throwing a fucking ticker-tape parade in celebration and escaping into the sunset)

There is a very vocal segment of the fandom that strongly wants Sheldon to SUFFER, that's the word they use, for his crimes of not giving AFF what she "deserves". I expect Sheldon to be broken and humiliated several more times before the series ends. He WILL be assimilated.