01-29-2014, 05:24 PM
JP is a fantastic physical performer. He's definitely one of the throwbacks to the heyday of Hollywood. Every so often, we've had glimpses of something far more nuanced than the scripts. I really want to ding him upside the ear and tell him that he's better than the cartoon garbage he's being given, and to stop pandering to it. But it gives him the paycheck that allows him to take meaty stage roles, so I suppose he doesn't care.
Even if Penny and Sheldon never did anything more than bicker their way round a grocery store, they have/had a chemistry. They are the two tallest members of the cast, for a start (and both, incidentally, good tennis players) and I think they match and mirror each other well. With the rest of the cast, they both have to hunch and diminish themselves, physically as well as mentally, to fit into the frame. JP plays, or used to play, Sheldon, as someone who was not precisely uncomfortable with his body, but regarded it as largely irrelevant except as a vehicle for his brain, with just the slight edge of that gangly awkwardness left over from being the tall, skinny kid who towered over his age mates and had to watch his knees and elbows constantly. (Again, that slight Cooper/Stewart vibe)
Even if Penny and Sheldon never did anything more than bicker their way round a grocery store, they have/had a chemistry. They are the two tallest members of the cast, for a start (and both, incidentally, good tennis players) and I think they match and mirror each other well. With the rest of the cast, they both have to hunch and diminish themselves, physically as well as mentally, to fit into the frame. JP plays, or used to play, Sheldon, as someone who was not precisely uncomfortable with his body, but regarded it as largely irrelevant except as a vehicle for his brain, with just the slight edge of that gangly awkwardness left over from being the tall, skinny kid who towered over his age mates and had to watch his knees and elbows constantly. (Again, that slight Cooper/Stewart vibe)