08-09-2015, 07:12 PM
Exactly!
I always felt (the original) Sheldon WAS one of those characters, trapped in a ghastly technicolour sitcom universe. Slowly going mad, teetering on the brink of being drawn into the pedestrian, normalised vortex, but always fending it off. By his aloofness, intelligence, and alien sensibilities.
But as the background pulled away from him, becoming more aggressively commercial (nastier jokes, boring adult dinner parties, "girls nights", claustrophobic relationships, in-laws, cheating etc), the discord between his peculiar, alien character and the "plastic, saccharine, primary coloured world" became so extreme as to be untenable, and he collapsed and was dragged under, into the frothy mainstream.
Now he's just another harmless sitcom boyfriend. Alternatively buffoonish, simpering and idiotic. And through this very attempt to normalise and de-alienise him (solely through the medium of romance, predictably enough) he has, ironically, become less believable as a person.
I always felt (the original) Sheldon WAS one of those characters, trapped in a ghastly technicolour sitcom universe. Slowly going mad, teetering on the brink of being drawn into the pedestrian, normalised vortex, but always fending it off. By his aloofness, intelligence, and alien sensibilities.
But as the background pulled away from him, becoming more aggressively commercial (nastier jokes, boring adult dinner parties, "girls nights", claustrophobic relationships, in-laws, cheating etc), the discord between his peculiar, alien character and the "plastic, saccharine, primary coloured world" became so extreme as to be untenable, and he collapsed and was dragged under, into the frothy mainstream.
Now he's just another harmless sitcom boyfriend. Alternatively buffoonish, simpering and idiotic. And through this very attempt to normalise and de-alienise him (solely through the medium of romance, predictably enough) he has, ironically, become less believable as a person.
"WHERE THE HELL'S MY PARACHUTE?"