Hate Shamy?

[Nostalgia]

Wonderful first post. You’ve explained things very clearly and it reminds me of that uncomfortable feeling I had during those first few seasons of Shamy. There’s a sense of enabling some pretty disturbing behaviour within both canon ships, enabling a stalker and then rewarding that manipulation with the love of the person they targeted. It’s seriously wrong on so many levels. What baffles me is how it’s been accepted and even seen as endearing to millions of fans of the show. It’s as though we are being asked to pretend we don’t see these flaws. And it sells. Look at how huge the show is. Yet if Sheldon were a woman I really don’t think they would have got away with it.

As far as I’m concerned the Big Bang was 3 and a half seasons. The rest is just a long winded money spinner for the executives and an unwillingness to let go. There are peppering of decent material here and there throughout some of the later ones but the decision to stretch things out and create this “romantic” story arc for Sheldon was driven by a desire to stay on air for as long as possible and not from any creative impulse.

Nowadays they have Sheldon willingly wanting to have coitus with Amy. The battle is won. She got what she set out to get. Sheldon’s love and sexuality. We’re are supposed to believe that he feels all this for real now. I just so clumsily done. And yes I would have despised Shenny if it had been written like that. Where are the media in all this? I’m continuously surprised by the lack of insight over this show and the direction it took.

Unfortunately, I'm sure there are actual relationships like Lenny out there in the real world. There's a lot of messed up people willing to do a lot of messed up &^%* out there in the world. What gets me is that TBBT basically, like I said about the Shamy ship, normalized/trivialized the whole situation about Lenny but unlike Sheldon's situation, WE the audience as a whole should know better. Yet people still cheer on the Lenny/Shamy ships even with all the disgusting, manipulative stuff both Leonard and Amy pulled in the pursuit of their "love", AKA sex.

I mean, Holloywood /loves/ to portray itself as paragons of virtue and above stuff like this(Especially in today's times even), but by allowing this to have continued for 12 freakin' seasons, going on 13 before Parsons finally put his foot down, they're basically telling the world, "If you're manipulating someone in the pursuit of sex or "love" and lying to them and stalking them, etc... it's okay and there's no consequences in doing so."! Or you can take the alternate meaning that Leonard himself demonstrated or said out loud multiple times on the show, "If you're a nerd or a similarly disaffected person and you want that hot chick that reminds you of the girl from high school whom who never had the courage to ask out/who said no to you, here's how to twist everything around and about her to get in her pants and maybe even married"! Or, "If you're a hot girl and a nerd wants you, you'll let him"! By peddling this and the continued encouragement of the establishment("#1 comedy in America?!") and the fact that the fans bought this bull&*^#, it sends a BAD MESSAGE no matter what message you take from it. And as you say, if Sheldon(Or rather, Leonard since he's the "protagonist"/Gary Stu) was a woman, Hollywood wouldn't stand for it. But since Penny/Kaley is the "love interest" rather than the protag(or a character on equal standing to the protag), it must be alright, right??? Typical Hollywood hypocrisy.

As for the lack of media being all over this stuff? I'd say it's because they know that if they even /try/ to make anything bad for the establishment/Hollywood that Hollywood doesn't approve of(I have no doubt Hollywood would've been able to cover up the Weinstein stuff, for example, if they weren't trying to prove themselves moral paragons and part of the #MeToo movement. Since they were, Harvey has to go...for now. He'll be back, just like Mel Gibson), Hollywood would make their lives hell. After all, we know how that billionaire Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan brought down Gawker and every newspaper and online media reporter is afraid of the same thing happening to them. Also, the media thrives on celebrity drama and getting blacklisted from Hollywood is bad for your career, I'd imagine, so better to ignore all the bad things in shows like this so long as they can get access to Hollywood, right?

TBBT was at it's best the first 3, maybe 3 and a half seasons though, that's not what I'd call a high bar. With the introduction of Bernadette and Amy, the show went downhill at such a rapid pace, it's kinda hard to believe. But here we are, Raj AFAIK still not hitched and can only talk when drunk, Howard and Bernadette hitched but hating each other(Howard literally married someone who yells and screams like his ma at him and Bernadette hated everything Howard liked like his Star Wars stuff and dismissed them as "toys"), Leonard and Penny married and still pretending to be happy yet are obviously not(At least, on Penny's part), and now Sheldon and Amy are hitched and Amy's gotten everything she's ever wanted. Granted, I haven't really actually seen the full seasons past 4 so things might've changed, but that's what I've gotten from 2nd hand sources and the occasional TV Episode.

Either way, Leonard and Amy have won in their pursuit of their goal(sex) and gotten rewarded for it via hitching the people they had sex with for the rest of their lives to them. I feel sorry for Penny and Sheldon, because it must be a miserable existence to be trapped with your stalker and manipulator for the rest of your life even if you don't recognize it consciously.

Just... *Throws hands up in disgust*