SPOILERS: 9.04 The 2003 Approximation

[Idle Miscreant]

Wow. Somehow I feel like these are very significant points. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that JP was actually *told* to incorporate his own mannerisms. He was, wasn't he?  How do you even do that? I don't think I'm aware-enough of my own mannerisms to describe them to someone else. 

But yes, if it's a continuity problem, then that overrides the pro-Canon argument* about "development" or "evolution" or "growth."  This is a whole new angle from which to examine this issue.  People don't change this much because they met a girl.  They don't change this much unless they're Phineas Gage and they took a metal beam to the brain...

*unless you're someone who simply dismisses the early seasons or has never watched them, of course.

Oddly, Phineas Gage is precisely the argument I used to use elsewhere...How in reality, Sheldon's violent change in personality could only be attributable to a tamping iron through the head.

From basic observation (not just of scientific and literary biographies but of my bohemian bastard associates), people generally mellow as they get older, unless they're a genuine eccentric, in which case they tend to become more extreme. My problem with the direction and nature of the change chosen for Sheldon's character, is that I don't think it's in line with his original personality. He's gone from a focused, driven, passionate scientist, with neurotic tendencies and a strictly ritualised system of existence, offset by spasms of whimsy, to a malicious, dopey, childish, shouty/simpering mess. His egocentricity, misogyny, and dependence on others has increased horrifically, and his dignity has been reduced to fuckall.  Quite frankly, he's a pitiful character now, and that's a very far fall from his glorious height.

And that's just the character changes, ie, the script. Now, character changes can be justified by exposition, or subjective interpretation. They can say, well, in OUR view, this IS the way he would grow, and you can go stick it up your- etc. I know that on this forum, the theory that Sheldon is regressing and suffering a slow mental breakdown over a period of years, is rather popular as the only feasible explanation for his behaviour. But what CAN'T be justified is a change in voice, posture and mannerisms. And this, I suspect, is the chief problem some of us Purists are having with this latter-day incarnation of Sheldon. It's simply difficult to believe in him as the same character.

People change their philosophical viewpoints, sometimes. They change their hobbies, subtle aspects of their fashion, they might learn to put things in perspective, or become more tolerant, and so forth. But they don't change the way they speak, both the volume and accent, the way they stand, walk, sit, or their facial expressions, unless they've either had brain trauma of some description, or they're making a deliberate alteration.
 
Now if anyone wants to argue that Sheldon is deliberately slouching, talking louder and broader, slackening his face, twisting his mouth to the side, smiling in an odd artificial toothpaste manner etc, out of some attempt at Gestalt therapy, be my guest. But Occam's Razor would suggest it's the actor playing the part differently instead.

It begins in Season 5, Episode 1. I know, because, outside of my own observations, my housemate can hear Sheldon through the door in Season 5, but not in Season 1-4. He is a LOUD blighter from Season 5 onward. An obnoxious redneck toddler of a boyfriend. And the strange, sweet alien of Season 1-4 is lost.

I'd say some of it is simply attributable to youth, but we know from recent clips that Parsons can still do the alien marvelously. So obviously it's a directorial decision. And a disastrous one, if you ask me...or any of us here, obviously...