10.10 The Property Division Collision

[Tuesday Pajamas]

Airs tonight if anyone wants to give us an opinion. Added the poll as well...

The B plot involved Raj and Stuart competing over Howard and Bernadette's friendship. I saw a few remarks on Facebook about how much they have thrown both Raj and Stuart under a bus over the last few years. 

The message of the show is so backward. Single people are unhappy. Single people are desperate. Only couples matters. They make ALL their single characters pathetic smucks who are desperate to hover around those who have achieved coupledom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Couples are boring. In my experience its the single people who are dynamic and having fun. I don't know where this narrow minded idea comes from. Being single can be incredible, there is so much you can do as a single person that you can't do when you're attached. 

Stuarts first appearances... 

The Hofstadter Isotope.



Stuart charms Penny so much by drawing her and his witting remarks that she agrees to go on a date with him.

He has a second date with Penny in 

The Classified Materials Turbulence

Where is asks for Leonard's advise about Penny and Leonard tries to mess things up. At the end it turns out Penny is supposed to be into Leonard. Ewwww! Seriously, Stuart, was the better bet. Leonard was creepy, desperate and insincere. Stuart was much nicer, I would have picked Stuart. Even back in those days it was never Leonard. I would have shipped Stenny if they had taken it further.

It's not until Season 4 when they start to destroy Stuart by making out that he's so desperate he'll date a girl at Comic Con he doesn't even like and it just gets worse and worse from there until they have him consulting the women on how to get females customers. It's painful to watch as he's regressed so much. The cruelty they inflict on this character is akin to bullying. He was so relatable, he suffers from depression which is so widespread it's practically THE 21st century aliment. He could have been a real voice of the masses. 

But NO unfortunately all the characters on this show are emasculated. in order to try and make Leonard look good. Stuff Leonard! He's a twonk.

[Berliner]

The message of the show is so backward. Single people are unhappy. Single people are desperate. Only couples matters. They make ALL their single characters pathetic smucks who are desperate to hover around those who have achieved coupledom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Couples are boring. In my experience its the single people who are dynamic and having fun. I don't know where this narrow minded idea comes from. Being single can be incredible, there is so much you can do as a single person that you can't do when you're attached. 

I really don't know where this is coming from ... I mean it's so utterly false that I simply can't believe TBTB are really doing this. I do wonder if this is specifically an American thing? Maybe because all the Hollywood / teenange films show us (since decades) that you NEED a partner or otherwise you're doomed.
TBTB are totally ignoring the reality: everyone has different phases in their life. You have a partner, then you break up. You are single for a while (or years, doesn't matter), find a new parnter or "keep it casual" and so on. I mean it's 2016 ffs! So many different life/love choices out there. But now, the show keeps us telling that only "partner --> marriage --> baby" is the ultimate way for being happy and successful. It's just ridiculous on so many levels. Here in Berlin literally noone gives a cr*p what and who you are. Single, married, polygamous, gay, ...? Doesn't matter! Move along and live your life as you have wished and not what others are expecting.

[Idle Miscreant]

Certainly might be an American thing...If you look at the great UK comedies - Black Adder, Father Ted, The Young Ones, Mighty Boosh, IT Crowd, Black Books, Fawlty Towers (et-bloody-cetera) - there's certainly no obsessive revolving around coupledom. If anything these comedies are anti-relationship, or at least completely uninterested in the topic. There's a bit of sex here and there, but no hook-up lasts longer than one episode. Their main focus seems to be "unusual people in dire straits and surreal occasions". Also a very definite strain of Catch 22-like terror and absurdity.

On the other hand, none of these shows ran for longer than 4 seasons. They were short, concentrated works of art. TBBT managed a certain surrealism and similar unusual quality in its first 4 years. Personally I'd add S1-4 to the above list of classic comedies.

The current show still has hilarious moments, no doubt. The writers and actors are some of the best in the business. But the damn thing as a whole isn't as unique anymore. It's just a very very competent romcom. Well-written, unchallenging, relatable to many normal folk. "Everyone" gets jokes about babies, sex, marriage, gender differences (O what larks), couple problems...So financially it makes sense to appeal to "everyone", particularly when you want to go past 4 seasons.    

Yet Seinfeld, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Simpsons (if that counts) and so forth kept that surreal and aesthetic quality throughout their endless seasons. Even Frasier managed to weave in romance repeatedly without making it the whole claustrophobic focus of the series, and without oddly demonizing single people. The main thing with Frasier was they didn't alter the characters to do so.

Sheldon, now...

YES YES WE KNOW.

But seriously, if they'd managed to keep Sheldon out of the romcom world, and kept him the unique, strange detached planet around which the OTHERS orbited in their little conservatively-coupled satellites, or at least gave him a relationship which didn't normalise and diminish him, I'd still be watching the damn show. But the character we fell in love with/idolised just isn't there anymore, and this decision (made back in season 5, evidently) will never cease to baffle me.
(OH DEAR GOD GRIPE IS BAFFLED STOP THE FECKING PRESSES!)

Anyroad, we'll always have Blackadder's approach to relationships...

[devilbk]

I would maintain that every one of the shows you mention, Gripe, are shows with a mostly singular vision. I don't think Lorre/Prady/Molaro (LPM) is in the same class as Matt Groening or Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld. LPM has a competent vision of what a sitcom can be. There may be sparks of brilliance, like seasons 1-4, but they are they anomaly, the happy accident. Mostly you get Two and a Half Men and bad Muppets. Their instincts are wrong for brilliance. They don't have the tools. Just sparks.
We should appreciate that we got a whole bunch of sparks and still occasionally get a flicker. But we should remember that what is airing now is probably what they wanted from the beginning.

[Idle Miscreant]

Graham Linehan (Father Ted, Black Books, IT Crowd) certainly had a singular vision...what that vision was OF is another matter...

[CTR69]

Looks like this episode officially killed Shenny. Penny is always on Leonard's side and calls Sheldon a jerk. Unless the writers make another 180, I don't think she's coming back. Being with Leonard turned her against him. So now Sheldon is stuck with Amy forever, Penny is with Leonard and that's settled.

10 years and this is how it ends, like it was nothing...

[Nutz]

Looks like this episode officially killed Shenny. Penny is always on Leonard's side and calls Sheldon a jerk. Unless the writers make another 180, I don't think she's coming back. Being with Leonard turned her against him. So now Sheldon is stuck with Amy forever, Penny is with Leonard and that's settled.

10 years and this is how it ends, like it was nothing...

Just for this episode, in 4 weeks it'll be Penny/Sheldon against their jailers again. The lack of continuity  from season 4 on keeps me hoping that None of it happened, it's just been some dream/fantasy/hallucination of Leonard's so he can get Penny.

[QueenOfShebaSays]

Yeah no they can never kill shenny... they're always flipping and sliding and changing and depending on their mood making it shenny, Lenny, lamy or Shamy.

[SpaceAnJL]

Leonard electrocuted himself fixing up the can-opener, and this has all been a vivid hallucination. Death just had a near Leonard experience, and needs a stiff drink to get over it.

[Ratman77]

Hello everybody!

At this point I want to write my POV regarding coupledom and its role by "TBBT".

When somebody (no matter of he or she) find the right partner, than I think coupledom/marriage can be really fulfilling, great and a real enrichment. If there is the right connection between the partners, the right ying-yang-constellation it would be not boring but exciting because the presence of each other would be take the partners higher and bring only the best out of them.

(To whom I am thinking now?)




But:

To be in coupledom is a thing of free will, of free decision...and there is my problem with the message of the show. "TBBT" implies that no one really has a choice, that coupledom is a thing that MUST come, that MUST be part of everyones life. And that is a fundamental mistake. To have a free choice and will about that, it is what  raises us above the animals.

So the show let it looks like that someone who is without a partner is fighting against nature-rules. Not only this. It shows-  indirectly- the nerd-team -the team from season 1 to 4- as social failures with useless lives.

Really?

Sheldon won scientific awards, Ray disovered a new luminary and Howard was personally in space. All not things wich I would call useless.

By the way.

If there is a section where coupledom really is boring, than it is......in  TV and cinema, and that in a special way.
Have you noticed, that the most Stories most end with that the two protagonists become a couple? The most of the lenght of the story is the process of rapprochement and only when it ends they come together. That is the exciting part. Not that after that.
A perfect example is the adventure-movie "Romancing the stone", where the characters of Jack (Michael Douglas) and Joan (Kathleen Turner) fall in love during the treasure-hunt and become a pair at the end.
The movie was succesfull and it came sequel "The jewel of the nile".
Well, what happened?
Be honest.
Could it have really interested someone to see Jack and Joan as a cuddly couple go through the next adventure? No, because that had been boring. The writers knew that. And so the story was build on the consence that the two had lived apart from each other and their relationship had cooled down. Only for one reason.
Just so this "approchement"-game could start again. Because everything that follows the "assembly" is boring and uninteresting.

(Could that be one of the reasons why sequels are most have the image of a cheap copy?)


So to start a relationship between characters (Penny and Leonard) at the third (!) season was one of the greatest mistakes they could make because it opened a boring and (in the case of "Lenny") unbelievable plotline. Dramatically it is pure poison

 When "Howardette" and "Shamy" came to it the writers navigated themselves into a dead end regarding ideas.
Actually, the series creeps  since the start of the first/wrong relationship.

Yes, I also hope that it will revealed that this whole years are only Leonards dreams. That he wished that someone like Amy would come to change Sheldon because his original/vintage nature was so fascinating for Penny that she preferred him. (Or at the second half of this season will come a great turn. All possible)

And, regarding "Queens" and "Nutzs" posts,,.....CORRECT, they cannot destroy the "Shenny".
Both, the acting of Miss Cuocco and Mister Parsons as well the constellation of their characters where/are to incisive than to make it ineffective.  Their efforts make them themselves only unbelievable and the effect of "Shenny" only stronger.

For me, their "Shamy" and "Lenny"-nonsense" could only have one effect.







Greetings, and "Shenny" for the win!!!