SHAMY WARNING: 8.24 The Commitment Determination

[wellplayedpenny]

8.24 The Commitment Determination

Tonight's episode was meant to be a contemplative one, with four plotlines ending mid-stream so as to create a 'see you next year' vibe. What we got in actuality, however, is something that said more about what's wrong with the relationship structures on the show rather than highlight the relationships' strengths.

Leonard and Penny, at Sheldon's prompting, decide to set a date for the wedding. Why their interactions don't work is that they show just how Penny and Leonard are on different paths. Penny is still spontaneous but she's also more mature; TPTB have structured her careers in such a way that Penny was once way below Leonard and is now way above him in terms of salary. Coming from this new angle as a mature, self-sufficient woman Penny lays out logical reasons for the wedding delay up until now—her career, Leonard's career and that they were both 'in a good place right now'. These words, however, went in Leonard's ear and out his mouth in the form of whining for wedding details. Basically, Penny's own sense of assuredness that they love each other and that things are going well is trod over by Leonard's insecurity until she relents and discusses the details. With the abrupt way she agreed to the details I had the feeling that she was just placating Leonard in order to get his latest bout of insecurity over with as soon as possible. It was an exchange that really showed how immature Leonard is compared to Penny—and really confirmed the idea that, yeah, she really is out of his league. And it's not just looks or money. She's an adult. Leonard is still Leonard—insecure, relentlessly whiny. To bastardize Flanders' view of Woody Allen: "I like BBT except for that whiny fella that's always in it."

Leonard's immaturity really hits home when he tells Penny that while he was away on the research ship he kissed a girl, 'but he broke it off'. Now consider this with s5 and his making out with Alice while Priya was away in India. Leonard also stopped himself from going any further with Alice because he was a 'nice guy'. Penny knows all about this given that Leonard went to her to basically sanction his cheating on Priya. So he's got a history. And now he's done it to her. And what's Penny's thinking? She's pissed, but 'it isn't like we were engaged then'. YOU WERE DATING, YOU TWIT! Penny pointed out to Leonard that he was cheating on Priya with Alice, and she don't even LIKE Priya. Now when it happens to her, she makes excuses for him. This flies in the face of the mature Penny we saw earlier in the episode because there is no logical explanation beyond there being something seriously emotionally wrong with her for her to still be with Leonard. This is Penny's 'Arctic' moment where it takes the 'divine' influence of the writers to keep real-life consequences from affecting Leonard. Yes, given how they write Lenny there's a good possibility that the wedding doesn't take place this time.

The problem is that it will take place at all.

The Sheldon and Amy segment was mercifully short as it really did go over the same tired sequence of Sheldon doing something Amy doesn't like and Amy getting mad at Sheldon. Their five year anniversary was ruined because Sheldon pondered whether to watch the Flash while sucking face with Amy. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the woman who faked being sick so Sheldon could rub her chest with Vaporub and give her a bath and yet now when she actually has him engaged in making out she calls a halt to it. Why was the former acceptable while tonight's attempt put Sheldon's fat on the fryer? The answer is given by Penny—Sheldon was supposed to have devoted all his attention to Amy.

And that's why Sheldon and Amy's relationship is unhealthy.

It's not healthy for someone to give up all his interests and devote everything he has to his mate. Sheldon is a comic book nut. It's the Flash—his favorite character. This should be a no-brainer. If this was a true relationship of compromise Amy would have leaned back, said, 'DVR it' and after he did so, resumed Operation Face Hugger. In that way both would get what they wanted. Besides, Sheldon was actually engaged and interested in smooching. Instead this is yet again another instance where Sheldon is insufferable. It's been five years of patience and frustration with the lack of physical affection and his having an idea that he could have interests outside of their relationship. He had five years to understand that this relationship was all about Amy and her wanting for a prom date/Prince Charming.

The end sequence where Amy tells him that she loves him but she wants to take a step back was a sad moment for me, not because of Amy's self-proclaimed 'self-sacrifice' to the relationship but because of her rejection of Sheldon's attempts to appease her. Season 8 was the year of the Prom, his 'I love you', even making out on the couch, and yet this wasn't enough change for her. She needed to step back and revaluate their relationship.

I guess Sheldon was falling behind in her five year plan for marriage.

And it's this plotting mentality that has me angry as this woman has done her best to systematically dismiss his hobbies, downplay his career and employed scientific methodology to get Sheldon to increase his feelings for her so as to bring their relationship 'to the next level'. And she does. He loves her—just not the way she wants. Sheldon is put in the position that he is solely responsible for derailing the relationship. And that's not fair. There are two sides to every story and their exchange captures it perfectly. Amy says that she's been nothing but patient with Sheldon. He disagreed. And he's right. Their interactions since s5 have been Amy nagging Sheldon for physical contact. Even TPTB summed up their relationship as 'Amy pushing Sheldon until he gives in'; that's not being patient, that's being a bully.

What Sheldon has come up against, and why he can't win this one, is that the writers haven't moved past their idea of Sheldon that rationalized Leonard's behavior in the Arctic—Sheldon was being Sheldon and therefore deserved what he got. Both Amy and Leonard knew what they were getting into when they agreed to Sheldon's invitations. In particular, Sheldon told Amy that aside from their being boyfriend/girlfriend nothing else in the relationship physical or otherwise was going to change. And she agreed. Now she's decided that maybe Sheldon isn't what she wants. That would be fair if she hadn't changed him so much that the Sheldon who built a nuclear reactor in his backyard from household items now can't even figure out a revolving door.

Amy knew that Sheldon viewed what they had as being intimate. He said 'I love you' of his own free will.

She won their tug of war, only to then say that he wasn't doing enough to change.

That's not love. That's selfish. And for Amy, completely in character.

That's why I found their final scene to be so tragic. Sheldon hasn't figured out that he's fallen in love with someone who genuinely doesn't like him.

Bernadette and Howard's dilemma with Stuart was a throw-away plot. Can they get him to move out? Not on his birthday after buying yoghurt and cereal for his roommates. And yet it does speak of the show's inherent problem of having secondary characters overstay their welcome.

Now from a structuralist perspective the most interesting relationship development occurred with Raj because of his realization that Emily and he are beyond different what with her necro-positive vibe to his Pottery Barn decor. His gut tells him to break up—a decision which Howard and Bernadette find hilarious as they figure that there is no way Raj would break up a relationship in which he's having sex. This is the prevailing viewpoint of the show that had Howard marrying 'the only woman in the world who would have him' and has Amy telling Sheldon that 'she's the best girlfriend he's ever going to have' so he should give in to her wants.

What makes Raj interesting is that he is actually questioning the tried and true formula by suggesting that compatibility should play a significant role in a relationship. Something that I've been saying for years the main relationships lack. And yet TPTB have tried their best to downplay this. The parts that don't comply with their significant others are from 'that other guy who doesn't exist anymore'. Howard thanked Bernadette for making him 'a better person'. Amy did her best to make a better boyfriend out of Sheldon. Raj wants to have something in common with his partner besides sex or as I call it, 'The Lenny Effect'.

I can only hope that Raj does follow through and dumps Emily. How ironic that the hopes of someone who might finally have a clue about how to have a mature relationship lies in the hands of a guy who spent almost his entire life being unable to talk to women.

But then again that would be asking the writers to be more innovative and aware of their work than they clearly are.

After all, if they were on the ball the later seasons would actually be funny.

[Louise]

These characters are so thoroughly dead that these last few eps haven't even been particularly upsetting to me.

I think it's noteworthy that they had to break the friendships in order for the "relationships" to be possible. Recently, in the chatbox, there was mention of the various later-seasons moments where Penny did not act in the guys' best interests and sided with A or B instead, despite having known the guys longer and presumably being closer to them.That's an example. New!Howard doesn't give a shit what happens to his "best friend", won't try to protect him or dissuade him from falling prey to someone who is distasteful at best and literally dangerous at worst. Because, of course, that version of Howard has accepted his own fate and misery loves company, so the "crabs in a bucket" mentality goes into effect. Any sense that H&R are friends and have a special bond is utterly dead. You can't have these ships without turning the original five against each other. Step one was to turn them against themselves.


The only thing left to ponder, really, is how *anyone* could believe in a message of "never question your relationship, don't act in your own best interests, sacrifice your entire self for the very first person you've ever dated." It's the most colossally unhealthy and twisted message I've ever seen in a mainstream piece of entertainment. Don't protect yourself from psychological or even physical danger, just let your entire life and selfhood be destroyed for the first random person who even grudgingly tolerates your presence. To me, it's just beyond baffling that a popular TV show in 2015 has this message.

The romance genre is known for some questionable tropes and messages, but I've NEVER seen this definition of "love" before, not even in books/shows/movies from decades ago. Even literature from the supposedly repressed Victorian era isn't like this. Even cults and extremist groups pay lip-service to the idea that a relationship should be reciprocal. That's a fact. The trashiest Harlequin paperback isn't like this. I would sooner take my chances with an arranged marriage to a total stranger than a marriage envisioned by Molaro &Co.

This show's definition of love is also the textbook-perfect definition of abuse. That's not an exagerration in the slightest.

This show is about people betraying themselves and each other for sex...or not even sex, but just the societal stamp of approval which comes from being coupled.

In a nutshell, the message is "Don't Think." Don't think about what's happening to you, don't examine your situation, don't listen to your gut. Throw yourself into a river and let it carry you along. Self-preservation is a selfish instinct and means you haven't "grown" enough yet. Really.

At the moment, I'm not even particularly upset, although there has been PLENTY of stuff in S8 that has upset me. TPTB, and the actors, have really shown their ass, this time. We've seen the man behind the curtain, so to speak. It's upsetting when you think that your fave characters are doing rotten things, or having rotten things done to them. But when those characters become so utterly OOC that they are really and truly gone, there's no reason to feel anything about what they do, or don't do, or have done to them. There's still a sense of loss and grief, but the impact of each new monstrosity becomes "meh."

I didn't watch a single frame of S8, but I can actually *feel* how this is just a weird generic sitcom, now. There's a blankness and a feeling of unreality, to it. I have that sense of "Oh, is *that* show still on?? I thought it was over."

[Idle Miscreant]

I didn't watch the episode because I'm only interested in Sheldon, and he wasn't in it. There was some bloke that looked a bit like him, but lacked all of Sheldon's original character traits, and mannerisms and fashion sensibilities and entire soul and...

However, I have scanned the comments. This is a common one, and demonstrative of everything wrong with the current audience;

"It's how the show is supposed to go. They are all becoming actual men now. Not just a bunch of nerds."

It's hard to know where to begin, regarding how ghastly that statement is. The very words "actual men" seem scented with cheap cologne and hint of moron. It's right up there with "You just want Sheldon to go back to being an emotionless robotic asshole" for sheer presumption, prejudice and ignorance.

"Just a bunch of nerds" and "emotionless robotic asshole" are how these current viewers genuinely see Seasons 1-3 and Vintage Sheldon. These viewers are common, normalist, blunt-minded bullies, and the show is now pandering to them. They are most certainly laughing AT the lads, and think that a love of fantasy, fiction and geekery is something ridiculous and pathetic, and that the only way one can "grow" as an individual is through sex, marriage and "romantic intimacy".

This appears to be similar to the message being pushed by Molaro in his interviews. Forget philosophical growth, or moral understanding, subtle introspection, illumination, artistic triumphs, deepening friendships, purely intellectual passions - the only thing that REALLY matters (if you're a REAL MAN that is, and not a NERD) is when you're going to marry your girlfriend/have sex.
If I had to pick a motto for TBBT's Season 5-8, I'd be torn between ~ "It's impossible to grow as an individual without becoming half of a couple." and "Growth requires shedding your previous identity."

As TBBT has now systematically crippled and destroyed all its most fascinating characters, leaving the everyman audience stand-ins (of Leonard and Amy) to triumph, the characters as individuals, previously worthy in their own right, can no longer support the show. The husks they have become of their former glory are simply not strong enough. So they've reduced these husks to soap-opera antics, mouthing platitudes and blowing about the stage in this sham of "growth" that's powered the past few seasons.

The current audience (housewives mooning over "Shamy" on social media largely, it seems) needed something as ham-fisted and OOC as Sheldon Gump pulling a ring out of nowhere to see "how much he's grown!!!" because they are incapable of seeing the subtler and far deeper emotions of Vintage Sheldon. He was far too unusual for their target demographic, so they dumbed him down. Anyone who thinks S1-3 Sheldon was "an emotionless asshole" is an unimaginative, unperceptive, insensitive pillock.

Current Sheldon has no subtlety at all, no range beyond the mawkish and pantomime, and has been debased further than any fictional character I've ever encountered. It's an appalling waste of Parsons' talent, and the writers' brilliance at Sheldonian dialogue which they are apparently no longer allowed to produce.
When was the last time we heard one of those wonderful spiels of science and fact, that Parsons used to delight in getting his tongue around, and its rhythms right?

There was a brief spasm of it during his discussion on Back To The Future grammar, and for an equally brief moment, my heart sped up with the old exhilaration, but then it vanished again. And has not been seen since.

I really despair of what has happened to this once magical and highly unusual show...but as Louise said, the characters have been dead for so long now that it's getting less and less painful. The more infuriating aspect is the wasted potential. The writers are far, far cleverer than this, the actors are capable of greater subtlety. Above all, those marvelous characters deserved a more interesting future than this conventionalist nonsense. I don't care if it's "realistic". It's MEANT to be art.

[Louise]

This, this, this! Yes to all of this, Gripe.

[SpaceAnJL]

I spent yesterday evening debating Marvel, and a host of science fiction, speculative fiction and pulp fantasy with workmates of my husband. Everyone at the table had varying degrees of relationship and family, but they all have extremely professional jobs. Except the struggling writer. But everyone always asks me how the book is going, and expresses genuine interest in the progress, because they like creativity and imagination. Nobody found it odd to like TV shows and comics, and to discuss politics, sports and cookery, or to be single, married, kids or not, any permutation.

Basically, I call bullshit on the show's portrayal and perception of geeks, fandom and adulthood. The characters are hideous, pathetic losers now to a greater extent than they ever were before, and that has nothing to do with their now-jettisoned hobbies and interests. It merely proves that those external factors were the only admirable and interesting things about them.

[Nutz]

I really despair of what has happened to this once magical and highly unusual show...but as Louise said, the characters have been dead for so long now that it's getting less and less painful. The more infuriating aspect is the wasted potential. The writers are far, far cleverer than this, the actors are capable of greater subtlety. Above all, those marvelous characters deserved a more interesting future than this conventionalist nonsense. I don't care if it's "realistic". It's MEANT to be art.

What we've been watching the last couple of seasons is NOT realistic in any way, shape, or form. The personality changes, the emotional abuse between romantic partners and "friends", the manipulations, and the melodrama of it all makes seasons 1-3 and most of 4 far more realistic then the crap they're writing now.

Not a single person who had the personalities of the characters (minus Leonard) in seasons 1-3 would even hang around this bunch of losers. They would have found new friends and laughed at the people who felt the need to completely give up who they are fundamentally just to be part of a "couple" with someone who only likes you for what you represent "after they've changed you".

"Most good jokes state the bitter truth. Without some fundamental basis of truth, there's little with which the audience can associate." - Larry Gelbart (Creator, Producer, Writer of M*A*S*H)

It makes you wonder what TPTB find funny, Cause their bitter truth of "you must change everything you are to be loved" is starting to tank the ratings.

[Louise]

What we've been watching the last couple of seasons is NOT realistic in any way, shape, or form. The personality changes, the emotional abuse between romantic partners and "friends", the manipulations, and the melodrama of it all makes seasons 1-3 and most of 4 far more realistic then the crap they're writing now.

Not a single person who had the personalities of the characters (minus Leonard) in seasons 1-3 would even hang around this bunch of losers. They would have found new friends and laughed at the people who felt the need to completely give up who they are fundamentally just to be part of a "couple" with someone who only likes you for what you represent "after they've changed you".

Basically, I call bullshit on the show's portrayal and perception of geeks, fandom and adulthood. The characters are hideous, pathetic losers now to a greater extent than they ever were before

Yes to all this. As I've said before, I don't believe there's a plausible in-universe explanation for these changes in personality, barring some kind of catastrophically bad occurrence.

Let's say something bad happened to the vintage characters and their lives took a wrong turn. Their original traits wouldn't diminish; they'd become more extreme, IMO.

Sheldon banished Ramona after he caught wise to the fact that she was crazy, controlling, and selfish. And Ramona was actually much more appealing than Amy! If Sheldon could break Ramona's spell, why couldn't he break Amy's?

I've already discussed at great length this idea that "B is just like Howard's mother." Well, Howard wasn't afraid to talk back to his mother, disagree with her, and push back at her. Besides, he's a plucky, spirited guy. Vintage Howard would look at B and Emily, shake his head, and say "Yeah, the hot ones always turn out to be psycho..." and then he and Raj would walk away and go for milkshakes. My personal opinion is that if Howard was disappointed with life, he would actually become more sarcastic, nasty, and abrasive, not more passive.

I'm not a great student of Penny, so someone else can speak to that.

The Vintage characters might've put up with this behavior for a few episodes or even a season, but not forever.

And yes, of course it's true that in the real world, people can balance family, career, and hobbies, without any of this self-flagellation. Absolutely nobody these days thinks you're a weirdo for liking scifi. New!BBT is a distorted funhouse mirror. Without the fun.

[Tuesday Pajamas]

What is the point of Shamy? Amy is just getting angry and disappointed over things he has no control over. What a loser she is. She knows who Sheldon is, or at least she’d been telling us, that she does. Talk about lame, she spent 5 years trying to manipulate a man into giving her one and he still doesn’t understand. That speech on skype was her still trying to exert blackmail, and he's just bewildered by the games.

I can not believe that the writers think they are now creating dramatic poetry when the whole show just plays out like some half ass fan fiction, without the imagination.

Haha! the Lenny marriage scene had no energy. Penny went “yah” without a capital Y. I laughed my head off because it was so lacking, like everything else about them. Then the confession and it was not believable how calm Penny was. Leonard is such a toe rag. What’s she doing with him? He did the same thing to Priya. What a terrible way to start a marriage. They are a total joke.

And then the ring? Regardless of anything else, this made the least sense. Now Sheldon is sad and will be made to suffer. Punished because the general public (the Shamys mostly) want to see him punished for not making Amy happy. But he doesn’t understand. I just felt sorry for him and I dreadful path that lies ahead. They are going to put Sheldon through the mill just because she can't be realistic about who he is.

[devilbk]

Shamy is what happens when creators decide they hate their creation.

[Tuesday Pajamas]

I'd been afraid to watch 8.24 because I thought as a Shenny it would upset me but it's comforting to watch it and see what a botch they have made of the relationships, which they were so desperate to protect. It proves how fraudulent keeping S/P apart has been, the lengths they have gone to explain their chemistry away, bury the magnificence of the early shows and pull them in opposite directions so fans don't see how great they could have been.