fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6318 ]

[ SECRET POST #6318 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6318 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Horizon Forbidden West]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #903.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. https://i.imgur.com/HJfu03k.png

As someone who watched and enjoyed both shows, I wouldn’t say one is funnier than the other. They have different delivery styles that were chosen based on a target audience. And one had a much larger audience due to its country of origin.
And it’s not like TBBT cast started out making the most money per episode in history. That was the direct result of global success, same as with Hugh Laurie in House around the time these shows came out and the Friends cast a decade before.

I feel like IT Crowd was made by nerds for nerds, whereas BBT was made for a general audience to laugh at nerds. I mean there is gray areas it is not that straight of a divide, but they def have different vibes and different target audiences.

What about the IT Crowd's humor makes it feel like it's made by nerds, for nerds? I mostly recall it being what would be considered as really stereotypical jokes about what the secret describes - social awkwardness galore, nerd interests being lame, no love life because nerds, etc. etc. Very much in line with Big Bang Theory.

Sounds like we just had very different takeaways.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 06:58 (UTC) - Expand

I could barely watch first coupke of episodes The IT Crowd, I couldn't get past the misogyny. I did enjoy TBBT, because although there was misogyny it wasn't the same "flavour" I guess? Penny wasn't a shrieking shoe-obsessed woman who was IT illiterate, which was a stereotype a lot of men I worked with in IT expected all women to be, so the joke that the woman was in The IT Crowd just hit worse for me.

I suppose for most people it's the same, they're sensitive to the jokes that have been made about them, and TBBT hit a few more of those sour notes for some than the IT Crowd did.

Yeah, I think most people forget (or fail to notice in the first place) the misogyny. It comes from a time where "hur hur ladieez love shoooooes amirite?" and "pretty lady so dumb about computers" was top tier comedy and socially acceptable. Never mind the hilaaaaaarious joke about how being on her period turned her into a demon.

ehh, he's a weirdo disgusting (likely chaser) transphobe anyway. both suck in their own way now. tbbt didn't start out that bad though. and then it became absolutely insufferable with the misogyny and haha mention nerd thing funny instead of an actual JOKE

Being angry that children not old enough to drink, smoke, get tattoos, or even piercings, were getting permanent body altering drugs and surgeries doesn't make him a transphobe.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 10:19 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 21:48 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 22:51 (UTC) - Expand

As a person who hated TBBT and liked... *some* of the IT Crowd (in spite of that one ep-- but at the time I was watching it, it somehow wasn't the most transphobic episode of a comedy series I had to suffer)... to me I think the big difference was that in what I saw of TBBT, none of the characters seemed to like or support each other?? I saw one where everyone was being mean to Howard, and I saw a couple where everyone was bullying Sheldon, and a part of an ep where Raj was the butt of the joke, and in none of those did any of them really stick up for each other in any meaningful way.

The IT Crowd certainly has its issues, but Roy and Moss had a solid friendship and even when the characters ragged on each other or got into fights about something, there was also the general feeling that they would have each other's backs.

Both shows had at least one actor that I've liked in other things, and I liked the TBBT theme song, but I just really felt BAD every time I watched it, whereas IT Crowd only made me feel BAD like... twice? While also having bits that, despite my general hate of Graham Lineham, I do wind up quoting a lot.

Personally I think it may also have to do with the fact that the IT Crowd wasn't promoted as to being "For" Nerds where the nerds weren't the butt of the joke. Which is the issue I had with TBBT (besides you know, the utter lack of knowledge of a lot of actual fandom things like how to get badges for SDCC!)

IT Crowd always sucked, it was never funny, and I can't speak for anyone else but I've been perfectly willing to criticize it for years.

I think the reason that IT Crowd gets away with it is because it does have a genuinely amazing cast. Not that TBBT has a bad cast, but IT Crowd has quite simply one of the greatest sitcom casts of all time and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

But the writing and direction and so on are SO bad all the way through.

SA

I think the writing on TBBT might actually be better than the writing on IT Crowd, now that I think about it.

I love the cast of The IT Crowd, but it was a crap show.

I tried IT Crowd, because I do enjoy some good British humor, but it just wasn't funny. It was weird and off-putting. I dislike TBBT but it's still a "leave TBS running in the backgroud while I do other things" staple because of Penny, her character is the only interesting one (Bernadette and Leonard being 2nd and 3rd I guess). She became exactly how a midwestern young woman finding herself in SoCal while surrounded by academic nerds should be. She had a life, an arc, a personality, and the best one-liners. The nerds in the show were just there to prop her up. Between the utter Flanderization (or even in cases Moe-ization) of the supporting cast and their general unlikeability (I have known people like Sheldon, they are terrible people and so is he), it's best to just view the series as The Penny Show. Until the final season, and fuck Lorre for that fucking finale, so gross.

Did The IT Crowd have a laugh track? Because BBT had the WORST laugh track, set to "Hyena" for even the weakest joke. It was even in the ads to a degree that made me pre-emptively loathe the show.

it's a studio audience.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 03:43 (UTC) - Expand

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meadowphoenix - 2024-04-24 03:57 (UTC) - Expand

I think the laugh track is one of the primary reasons people hate Big Bang Theory so much.

Basically that and Two And A Half Men.

I think people forget sometimes that stereotypes exist for a reason. The people on these shows are all people you can run into in real life.

So? Just because something has roots in realism doesn't make it funny or enjoyable.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-04-24 11:49 (UTC) - Expand

Funnily enough this is like a million times more true of TBBT than IT Crowd

because the IT crowd is played like office humor rather than nerd culture humor. It is more than anything an exaggeration of nameless faceless companies and the entirely arbitrary hierarchy within it. the awkwardness is not just being a nerd, it's very specifically being a co-worker. you don't have to be a nerd to relate to the nerds...you just have to be mildly competent.

to a certain extent tbbt has a distance with its audience, where penny is for a long time the only audience surrogate amongst people the audience is less like to be able to relate to. this makes it easier to laugh at them and therefore feels more pointed about nerds. while the it crowd has Jen as its surrogate, she is often as much the one being awkward, and you simply don't need her to laugh at, say, nepo baby douglas making the company more ridiculous through arrogance. that's literally not about nerds and technically the nerds are often the "heroes" (and it is everyone else who is ridiculous or at least...not any better).

much like the other office humorist, turns out the writer merely has a victim complex they have turned outward upon ~progressive~ culture.

Both shows are about extremely specific subsets of nerds. BBT paints them in broader strokes, and The IT Crowd is a little, well, nerdier in their depiction. In the end though, it all depends on what sort of nerd you are/know and how seriously you take yourself. (BBT, for example, was fairly popular with STEM nerds.)

I think it’a because a lot of the IT Crowd jokes are normies not understanding tech— like the box that contains the entire internet, or they’re in-jokes that normies wouldn’t get (like that bomb technician robot that ran on like windows 7 or something), or they’re jokes that aren’t about tech at all. I haven’t seen a lot of TBBT but often to me it seems like the punchline is that a character knows some obscure nerdy detail or something, rather than that nerdy detail being the punchline.

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