Addendum to Philosophical Shenny

[Wisp]

As we watch now, the potential Muse has become a housewife of abandoned personal ambition, and the noble Outsider has been regressed into infantilism, and broken down into an alternately pitiable or villainous pantomime, sometimes akin to an Idiot Child, under the guardianship of a character that began as an identikit copy of himself, and is now inexplicably, wiser and “better” than he is, and seems to function as his Keeper. This hideous destruction of character may be justified commercially, but artistically it’s indefensible.
If the characters of Sheldon Cooper and Penny are remembered past the death of syndicated re-runs, in any pocket of iconic eternity at all, it will be for their original depiction, not for the dispirited mockeries they’ve become. They have in Jim Parsons an actor of vast capabilities and extraordinary comedic instincts, and in Cuoco a comedic naturalism and enormous charm that is severely underused and underrated. It’s like watching Buster Keaton and Lucille Ball reduced to doing children’s parties.

That is all I currently wish to say on this matter. I would lay a fairly certain bet that I’ll have more to add interfrastically. In the mean…Thoughts?

Fuck sake, Gripe. Taking thoughts out of my head, goddammit.

We've seen subtlety and nuanced body language in Homo Novus era Sheldon, which has all but gone bar a few brief glimpses, and Penny is definitely a little off now. Unlike with Sheldon I'm having trouble diagnosing what exactly is wrong, but she's definitely lacking something now.

And Pajamas, I agree that Sheldon's self-esteem is almost as shaky as a dead leaf on the back of a donkey with rickets. (Laboured simile but there you go) People don't seem to get what I mean when I say this, but the other guys' "here we go" response to Sheldon's unpredictable behaviour was great when there was a sense of certainty in what he was doing. Get rid of that egotistical self-assurance and all you have left is an annoying wierdo who is eccentric just for the hell of it. Writers, what are you doing? HE'S NOT PROGRAMMED TO DOUBT HIMSELF! Penny seems to me to be at that awkward character-stage of being settled in but overshadowed by the newer female personalities. (Both very overpowering in their natures. But I will point out that I quite like Bernadette. Howardette is the only canon relationship in the show, I feel, that is not wrong to me at all.) The character construct has been over-complicated. It's possible that all the relationships that popped up after Leonard and Penny getting together piled on the "women-folk troubles" and "struggling unexperienced-in-long-term-partnership-males" story lines too quick, too fast.