I'm going to break off for a moment from the Real World and just rant for a moment, because I'm sitting here trying to read and my lovely Bride has turned on the fucking Big Bang Theory again.
She loves the hell out of this sitcom, and it's her single most go-to form of video entertainment, to the point where I can be at the far end of the house and hear the laugh track and know without a scintilla of doubt that it emanates from the fucking Big Bang Theory.
(Since I'm gonna be using this term a lot, let's save bandwidth and abbreviate it TFBBT.)
This sucker turns out to have been insanely popular - so she's not alone - ran for twelve seasons, and made big stars out of at least two of the leads; Jim Parsons as the male lead, Sheldon, and Kaley Cuoco as the female, Penny. Supposedly each of them (and Johnny Galecki, who played second lead, Leonard) made something like a million bucks an episode and they made over seventy of the bastards.
That's some serious jack.
And I don't get it.
I mean, de gustibus nil disputandem and all. But to have gustibus for TFBBT? Really? C'mon!
Seriously. The thing is just that bad. It's one of those painful trainwrecks that leaves you wondering if the writers and showrunners weren't missing out on their destined careers as housepainters, baristas, or grips on a porn film set.
To make matters worse, it's backed by a braying Sixties-sitcom-grade laugh track that just serves to point out how gawdawful the supposed-"jokes" are.
I have problems with about 99% of "reality" television because "reality" usually turns out to be a cast of variously-dysfunctional assholes being miserable to each other.
Christ, if I wanted that I could go to work.
Somehow TFBBT manages to combine the unfunny-ness of an unfunny sitcom with the trash human resource of your average "reality" show.
No kidding. There's barely a salvageable human being on the screen.
"Raj" (a.k.a. "the Indian guy") is just an extended Apu joke; he's a whiny, clingy, constantly horny rich desi whose domineering parents bankroll his overseas adventures while his supposed American friends mock his race, his culture, his personality, and his pathetic attempt at a love life. The whole Raj idea should have been euthanized for the same reasons the Simpsons showrunners flushed Apu.
The three women characters are just different versions of female stereotypes; "Bernadette" is a ball-buster (who hooks up with the smarmiest male character) who improbably becomes the mommy-character, "Amy" is the girl-geek, all social incompetence and ugly clothes, and "Penny" is the hottie who uses her looks to gold-dig and manipulate.
The male leads are just punchable; "Howard" (the smarmy wanna-be-womanizer) is needy and whiny but with a nasty undertone, "Sheldon" is just a complete asshole who'd be shunned by normal humans, and "Leonard" is perhaps the worst of them all, a meeching little man who hates his roomate Sheldon's bizarre assholish behavior yet constantly defers, enables, and sucks up to him - why he'd want to stay "friends" with the gomer is beyond inexplicable. Leonard "gets" the hot girl Penny by lying and faking and pursuing her so relentlessly she just gives up and settles for him.
It's all just simultaneously sad and annoying, and my Bride loves it dearly, which makes it even more annoying.
And it re-runs constantly, so she can always find one playing somewhere, so as often as not the evening resounds with the braying laughter of TFBBT's idiot "audience".
Ugh.
I'm with you, Penny; rather than sit through a FBBT I'd spend the evening sanding my feet...
