Big Bang Theory 6: The Suffering of Being Unable to Love

[SpaceChampion]

No way. The very first episode starts with Ross lamenting his divorce and Rachel's wedding-dress-clad entrance and ends with Ross and Rachel both alone, looking out the window, after she has agreed that maybe he could ask her out sometime. The story was always Ross and Rachel. I like Monica and Chandler a lot, but the writers didn't decide that until it happened.

Well I wasn't being serious, but my point was the Ross & Rachel soap opera wasn't very interesting. That's not to say it wasn't successful. I thought the show was sold as a story about 6 friends struggling to live in New York, and how modern life and friendships create a space to take care of emotional needs in the absence of family, and that ultimately close friends become family. They addressed that somewhat. The soap opera plot was simply used to give it structure, but it was super annoying. Typically (not always) romance plots are used to give structure to stories in which the writer's interest is in exploring a setting, time, place, society, culture etc. They could have done that moving on from Ross/Rachel. And they could have treated Joey and Phoebe to better storylines that help explore those themes. Also, Ross and Rachel as separate entities did not seem to represent anything much, like people in different social circles getting together. I don't have a big hate for the show, because it could be funny, but it was vaguely unfulfilling as a story. As a sitcom, it was fine.

In Big Bang Theory, the romances are used to explore nerds and nerd culture, and interaction with the non-nerd world. I don't think it can end in any other way than with Leonard and Penny getting together, given that premise, but it's got to show Leonard and Penny each not only reaching of their cultures and comfort zones, but also enjoying the new things they find in each other's world.

[Datepalm]

@Starkess, I really would love it if you went on about Ross/Rachel, if you feel like it. I don't get it, but I'm not sure what it is i'm not getting and your epic summary was fun. :)

... And they could have treated Joey and Phoebe to better storylines that help explore those themes. Also, Ross and Rachel as separate entities did not seem to represent anything much, like people in different social circles getting together. I don't have a big hate for the show, because it could be funny, but it was vaguely unfulfilling as a story. As a sitcom, it was fine.

In Big Bang Theory, the romances are used to explore nerds and nerd culture, and interaction with the non-nerd world. I don't think it can end in any other way than with Leonard and Penny getting together, given that premise, but it's got to show Leonard and Penny each not only reaching of their cultures and comfort zones, but also enjoying the new things they find in each other's world.

I was quite peeved with the way they wrapped up Phoebe in particular. Her suddenly dissolving into wanting all the traditional stuff- insisting on marriage and a fancy wedding and everything - seemed like a real disservice to her, after she had been so determinedly apart from all that (even as Rachel and Monica chased desperately after it) for all that time. I just realized that this is exactly the opposite of what I said about Amy, where I like that she's not allowed to carry through with her quirkiness at no cost, but with Pheobe it feels like a failure, for some reason. Like they just couldn't come up with a satisfying ending for a woman that didn't include all the trappings of traditional, romance, even through Phoebe, like Amy, is coming from a background where she never had that growing up and there's an element of empowerment in allowing herself to even want the traditionally feminine, girly stuff and everything...and yet. Amy works for me and Phoebe doesn't.

I'm not sure about Penny/Leonard opposite worlds either - what does Leonard learn from Penny's world, really? She picks up the importance of education and maybe the value of unabashed enthusiasm and probably more SFF and science stuff than she knows, but what does Leonard get? He doesn't gain an appreciation for football or reality tv, nor for Penny's set of mildly-anti-intellectual, just-follow-your-dreams sort of values (if for no other reason that they don't seem to be working out for Penny all that well.) He...kinda learns to dress a bit better? Be more confident? It seems like more of a personal growth thing than an exchange of ideas. (I am always startled to recall that this show shares at least some creative influences with Dharma and Greg, which, IIRC, was as fluffy a romance as the came.)

[Jaxom 1974]

You don't think Leonard had learned a little about life outside his little bubble?

[SpaceChampion]

I agree, so far Leonard's picked up no outside interests, and they need to fix that.

[Jaxom 1974]

I don't know about interests, but he seems to have achieved better sense of nerd/life balance...

[Demonblade]

I don't know about interests, but he seems to have achieved better sense of nerd/life balance...

Yeah the Leonard of today is not nearly the awkward geek that the Leonard of season one was. No way does the Leonard of today run off to sell his splooge for some extra cash for a new console, or whatever the reason was in the pilot.

[Datepalm]

I don't know about interests, but he seems to have achieved better sense of nerd/life balance...

Is that a meeting of worlds or more of a critique of the geeky one? (Which i'm totally fine with.) Leonard was never exactly happy with awkwardness, etc, per se.

[Black Wolf Smith]

Yeah the Leonard of today is not nearly the awkward geek that the Leonard of season one was. No way does the Leonard of today run off to sell his splooge for some extra cash for a new console, or whatever the reason was in the pilot.

of coarse not. He's got a "hot" gf, he is getting older, he is growing up. Everyone of the characters, even Shelly, has grown as the show gone longer. Too bad the jokes have not changed, they were funny the first couple years.

[Jaxom 1974]

Is that a meeting of worlds or more of a critique of the geeky one? (Which i'm totally fine with.) Leonard was never exactly happy with awkwardness, etc, per se.

Actually I think it's a little of both...Leonard was such a caterpillar the first couple of seasons...

[Starkess]

@Starkess, I really would love it if you went on about Ross/Rachel, if you feel like it. I don't get it, but I'm not sure what it is i'm not getting and your epic summary was fun. :)

It's hard to explain exactly what it is about Ross and Rachel. They're so very clearly different people, but they come together in a way that seems much more natural than, say, Penny/Leonard. I think Ross has an amazing capacity to love, and Rachel has a very deep need to be loved, so in that way they satisfy each other nicely. I feel like they come from similar worlds--they went to high school together, after all, and it seems as if their families are in similar places, if the Greens a bit more wealthy--but have developed so differently. And it's so easy for people to dismiss Rachel, people have always dismissed Rachel, but Ross doesn't. In some shallow way, he's the nerd and she's the cheerleader, but after high school they don't get hung up on that, and they make a real friendship, and they seem to genuinely respect each other in their differences.

I don't know. I guess I can see where people are coming from where maybe it's not always healthy to put someone on a pedestal like that, but I just don't see it that way at all. It's not that Ross thinks Rachel is perfect. He knows she isn't, but she's still perfect to him and he loves her deeply.

[Datepalm]

It's not that Ross thinks Rachel is perfect. He knows she isn't, but she's still perfect to him and he loves her deeply.

That helps! I can kind of see that, that he's got this willingness to forgive anything about her, anything she's done, no matter how increadingly far fetched them actually being together gets, with all the wedding and the divorces and both of them moving on...he'd still be there at the drop of a hat if she ever called?

[Jaxom 1974]

That helps! I can kind of see that, that he's got this willingness to forgive anything about her, anything she's done, no matter how increadingly far fetched them actually being together gets, with all the wedding and the divorces and both of them moving on...he'd still be there at the drop of a hat if she ever called?

Sooooooooo...with that kind of descriptor, Penny/Leonard is essentially a Ross/Rachel 2.0...?

[Datepalm]

I think Leonard and Penny reveal one another's flaws in more complicated, difficult ways than Ross/Rachel, but, like Ross/Rachel I'm not actually terribly invested in seeing them end up together. :dunno:

Someone on AV Club defended them against charges that they just hate each other: they don't - what they hate is themselves, so damn much. That sounds like a good reading to me - Each of them puts all the sources of the other's self loathing under particularly unpleasant neon lights. Not even so much as people, to my mind, than as representatives of these different ways of navigating belonging and not-belonging to social convention. Leonard's insecurities, loneliness, dissatisfaction with his masculinity, feelings of immaturity because that's the way geekishness is marked. Penny's sneaking suspicions that she's nothing but a pretty face, her guilt that she's slutty, the drinking, her feelings of immaturity (in completely different spheres from Leonard's, and equally real to her) and lack of achievements or passions, I think they both have certain fantasies about life and about adulthood, about what those are supposed to look like, and they both feel like they've totally failed at them.

[drawkcabi]

Since other sitcoms are being discussed in this thread and Mom has been mentioned particularly, I feel ok to continue the discussion this way.

On watching a rerun of Mom last night, I'm becoming convinced it is set in the same universe as Breaking Bad.

Christy's ex husband Baxter is Badger, he probably got his nickname partly because it sounded close to his real name.

Christy lives in Napa, CA now, but she moved around a lot with her mom, last night mentioning being stuck in Mexico for a year when she was 5. It's not hard to believe at one point she was living in NM and hooked up with Baxter/Badger.

After the events in the BB finale Badger decides there's really nothing left for him in NM except maybe trouble so he decides to follow Christy and his son to Napa and to start going by his actual name, Baxter, again.

And really, watching either show Matt Jones is playing the exact same character.

Eta :

Looking at his BB character profile I see Badger's real name in BB was Brandon Mayhew

...

This leads me to one conclusion:

His actual name is Brandon Baxter Mathew aka Badger.

If/when the show Mom eventually reveals his last name isn't Mathew...I'll think of something else to keep my theory alive :p

[Myrddin]

I'm still hoping that AMC will combine spin offs for Mad Men, Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad into one show.

Walt's blue meth recipe gets corrupted and is what causes the zombie apocalypse. In the zombie waste land of Texas, a mature Sally Draper leads a band of survivors. They come across a crazy road warrior former lawyer who seems to know what caused the outbreak, and who might know how to break the mad walking dead man cycle.

If only they can keep him from getting stoned long enough to share it.

[Datepalm]

Since other sitcoms are being discussed in this thread and Mom has been mentioned particularly, I feel ok to continue the discussion this way.

On watching a rerun of Mom last night, I'm becoming convinced it is set in the same universe as Breaking Bad.

Ack! Breaking Bad spoilers! Mom is pretty nasty though - was it you that recommended it in the first place? It has it's ridiculous moments, and I don't think the darkness is quite gelling with the broad humor yet, but I like what it seems to be trying for. That scene with Christie and her dad where he's just..."yeah, no." was amazingly bleak. I can accept Baxter as a Breaking Bad refugee into that world.

[drawkcabi]

I thought I'd been broad enough too avoid any BB spoilers just in case.

But anyway Anna Ferris can bring the humor to her character's situation most of the time, but yeah at times things are too dark for a pratfall to lighten things even a little. I love Kevin Pollack as her dad!

Not one of my favorite shows but very watchable.

[Datepalm]

Mom. It's also a Chuck Lorre show, which is why it's coming up here, I guess. (It's also interesting to consider TBBT in it's light, because Mom is very consciously dark, mostly about messed up, seriously damaged people (recovering addicts and cancer patients and deadbeat dads and pregnant teens) trying to deal with fundamentally messed up lives and always just on the edge of being overwhelmed by it all, and it makes me feel a little less like i'm crazy for seeing so much sad, melancholy subtext in TBBT.)

I thought I'd been broad enough too avoid any BB spoilers just in case.

But anyway Anna Ferris can bring the humor to her character's situation most of the time, but yeah at times things are too dark for a pratfall to lighten things even a little. I love Kevin Pollack as her dad!

Not one of my favorite shows but very watchable.

Just stopping you before you go further with BB - I am going to watch that. Soon!

Sometimes the pratfalls just make it darker. What episode was it where Christie just goes through this barrage of physical injuries which are pure slapstick, and incredibly cruel, as slapstick is, I guess? It didn't quite work for me, because the disconnect was just too big, but I really think they were honestly trying for a kind of portrait of lower-class indignity there, going to work even though you're sick, not being able to properly deal with injuries because you can't afford the treatment/time off, the house springing a leak, etc, etc, all this totally banal, yet really difficult, grinding, exhausting, routinely humiliating stuff.

[drawkcabi]

That was the episode where it took just about Christy killing herself before she would accept any help from her mom. Breaking her arm, leg, going to work spilling the hot soup all over herself. And yeah that episode got dark, but Baxter's plot actually leavened it a bit.

[Datepalm]

Um, the one where he and Luke nearly burned the house down? Yeah, I guess it did lighten things. (I actually quite liked their interactions. They were goofy, but it was this nice untraditional family moment, where on the one hand it's very organic that Baxter would step in as a quasi-paternal figure for Luke, even though he's woefully unqualified, and yet, their actual relationship is...what?...Luke is to Baxter his ex-step-daughter's baby's father?)