Wishful Thinking...

[BoxyP]

I agree in this instance completely, Louise. While there has to be some sort of character progression to every well-crafted story - the character needs to start at a point A and logically, organically progress to point B, otherwise there's a stagnation that can very quickly lead to boredom and the character being completely two-dimensional, the evolution of this character CANNOT be into its complete opposite, but rather a version of itself that, whilst still holding what is essential to the character (Sheldon, for instance, whose scientific worldview has in the early seasons led to him being relatively tactless when he's only stating the obvious and his general bafflement of being driven by a need to have sex, which the other guys exhibit) has the sharpest of edges sanded away while still remaining true to itself (in Sheldon's case, that would have, for me, meant that he gains some awareness of how his statements should be phrased so that they don't make people angry, even if it's only after the fact in the sense of 'oh, I suppose that could have been misconstrued, Penny warned me about that'). I can accept stagnation of characters in sitcoms mainly because the whole point of them is to make the audience laugh, and it's hard to accomplish this if all of the things that are funny come from these sharp edges. Of course, then I stumble upon a well-written sitcom like Community (I'm watching season 1 and thoroughly enjoying it), which proves that, in this case, you can eat the cake and have it too.

And retconning is right (which is sort of amusing to me, as my idea for a perfect show actually was retconning the later seasons in-show by the characters themselves). Putting aside the condescension towards hard sciences (and, FYI, biology isn't a soft science, like Sheldon claims, thank you very much; soft science are economics and sociology, which are based on something so changeable as human behavior, while biology deals with a world that uses the building blocks of physics and chemistry and is thus 2+2 always equals 4 kind of science) that I think can be ignored in the earlier years, the show, I have a feeling, started out primarily as a clash between the sciency, geeky way of living and the more mainstream, street smart approach to life. Then the masses came, because Sheldon and Penny chemistry is irresistible, and there began the pandering to the masses that's led to the devolution of the show into ridiculous romcom cliches. Predicting the path the show has taken in recent years back in the beginning would have been really hard without the knowledge of who ended up being the viewers. Of course the masses won't argue that the original was better, because had the show stayed on course, they'd have left long ago (the same way that happened with Fringe), and of course everyone involved with its production won't say that it went to crap because that'd be admitting their own faulty approach to their creations (which, for me as a writer, is the ultimate betrayal of oneself and one's creation). Plus, there's also that disappointment that follows the realization of 'the show got ruined'. I've experienced this with more than one show out there (Bones is a prime example, used to be a gritty show with a very strong human element and gradually became which dead body is the goriest and how two-dimensional the characters can become), and it's left me wondering if spending so much time getting into a show that just constantly grew worse and worse was even worth it. So, it's much easier to accept change as the intended course of action by TPTB than to say 'I've wasted my time on something that's ultimately just low quality'.

As for TBBT growth??? Who the heck ever said that spouse, boring but relatively well-paying job, two point five kids and white picket fence is considered the be-all and end-all of life? For me, the guys were already grown up when the show started, because right from the start, they were self-sufficient, lived on their own (well, except for Howard, but even he earned his own money), generally weren't a burden on either other individuals such as their families or society, and even contributed to the betterment of the world with the various scientific advancements they'd accomplished in their professional careers. Which means that my question for the later seasons is: Who cares what they do in their free time?! If they want to play Halo and Klingon boggle, read comic books and discuss science fiction until they're old and grey, then that's their prerogative! Even Penny, who's sort of the most knowledgeable on what's the norm, would have been horrified by this. She moved to California so that she could be an actress, hello. If she'd wanted to marry and have kids, she would have stayed in Omaha, not followed her dreams to fight her way in one of the hardest professional environments out there. Normal shouldn't mean giving up one one's dream (acting, Nobel prize) and settling down into the average; normal should be striving for the best, no matter how hard it takes. Too bad that insults the lazy and the uninspired, who would be the ones happy with a show that deals with questions like who slept with whom and what arguments they had about it.

My wish, for the show, would be that SOMEONE finally gets the message through to TPTB that they've completely gotten off track and that well-written shows are the ones that become classics (Firefly, anyone), and that the mass-pandering ones become 'just another old sitcom'. Then they'd gradually phase Bernadette's manic controlling tendencies out, would make everyone realize how terrifyingly creepy Amy is, and how false to themselves the characters have become, all five of the core group. That'd actually get them the true character growth - characters figuring out that trying so hard to be something you're fundamentally not just leads to unhappy, tired people who strive for external validation instead of internal satisfaction.

Edit: oh, just saw how long the post got, sorry about that, I tend to go on and on when I start writing (on the bright side, I'm completely happy with being outside the norm, even if people stop reading what I've written. Take that, Leonard, you self-deprecating, self-doubting, self-pitying whiny excuse for a scientist ).