And I'd argue against either Penny or Sheldon's dreams being trite or shallow things that they need to let go of. Their dreams signal very real emotional needs that, if they were met in other, more immediate ways, Penny and Sheldon might be willing to let go of in favor of an equally satisfying reality.
I agree with this completely, and it goes to the heart of the show for me, I just don't think it's a flaw in any way. That's deft and compelling characterization, from where I'm looking. Of course Sheldon's professional fixation and hubris are making up for a profoundly stunted social and emotional life. Penny's movie-star fantasies are the dreams of someone who has never stopped to think about what she really wants for herself and her life (maybe she's never needed to) because she's spent most of it being a pretty face. It's sad and uncomfortable and I love it to pieces.
Ditto Amy/Sheldon, I think - what he's doing to her is humiliating and possibly downright cruel. If he had the least bit of ability to see it and really cared for her, he should untangle himself from her life as fast as possible. But, of course, he doesn't have that insight, not a whit. For her part, watching her begging for affection and warmth from someone so singularly ill-equipped to give any is just brutal, and probably indicative of a crushingly low esteem and distinct whiff of self-sabotage. (A little more charitably, I can also accept that part of it is that for all her talk, she really doesn't feel ready for a genuine, intimate, sexual relationship, and letting herself be strung along by Sheldon is a sort of comfortable safe-space.) If I knew her, as a person, all I would be telling her is to dump his ass. As fictional characters though, all that incompetence, vulnerability and hurt is just riveting.
(I do think they have something, some weird connection that goes beyond friendship. I also don't particularly buy Sheldon as genuinely asexual (mostly because it would be just...healthier, and I like the messiness) and there's a certain twisted sexual edge to their relationship (all those contracts and experiments and mind games. Practically fifty shades of the color they paint the inside of asylums) that makes the whole thing quite tense and fascinating. The moments when they do manage to fumble their way to a bit of real intimacy - because they're so rare and fragile, and come in the midst of this vast ocean of alienation - are kind of sublime. So, yeah, I totally ship that even while I think it's fairly of awful.)
Anyway, that's all to say that what I find most interesting about the show is exactly how frustrating it is, and how stubborn it is about giving anyone - characters or viewers - any sort of catharsis. Yeah, it would be great if Penny made it big. If Sheldon has some emotional breakthrough. If Amy left him for someone who deserves her. If Howard did the laundry without being told, for once. But that's a long, slow, tedious journey, and that's how it should be. That is the show, not a problem with the show. Anything that does happens feels...earned, and hard-fought, so there's still a light at the end of that tunnel.
I can accept that the guys, in reality, should be even lonelier and even worse with women, but it does give them more ways of flaming out. I find the lot of them thoroughly pitiable, and yet offputting, as is - turning that dial a little more up or down seems mostly academic to me in terms of the narrative. A few dates more or less wouldn't change the basic paradigm of the thing - they're jerks, they can't see that they're jerks, and it leaves them ever more miserable and yet ever more jerks. Spiral of doom. That's my show!
Yeah, I loved Leslie Winkle too, and I did like Priya, actually. She was a little needy, but still far less than Leonard. Her ministrations also seem to have taken - he still wears the clothes she bought him and has grown into someone a little more composed, when needed. I think a lot of that was Priya rather than Penny. I did think that bit with the doctor when he's astonished to discover that his feelings are also supposed to matter and be communicated in a relationship, and maybe a relationship requires something more from him than to be some kind of desperate, passive-agressively cloying pile of tissue paper is one of the funniest/saddest of the show's moments.
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I agree with this completely, and it goes to the heart of the show for me, I just don't think it's a flaw in any way. That's deft and compelling characterization, from where I'm looking. Of course Sheldon's professional fixation and hubris are making up for a profoundly stunted social and emotional life. Penny's movie-star fantasies are the dreams of someone who has never stopped to think about what she really wants for herself and her life (maybe she's never needed to) because she's spent most of it being a pretty face. It's sad and uncomfortable and I love it to pieces.
Ditto Amy/Sheldon, I think - what he's doing to her is humiliating and possibly downright cruel. If he had the least bit of ability to see it and really cared for her, he should untangle himself from her life as fast as possible. But, of course, he doesn't have that insight, not a whit. For her part, watching her begging for affection and warmth from someone so singularly ill-equipped to give any is just brutal, and probably indicative of a crushingly low esteem and distinct whiff of self-sabotage. (A little more charitably, I can also accept that part of it is that for all her talk, she really doesn't feel ready for a genuine, intimate, sexual relationship, and letting herself be strung along by Sheldon is a sort of comfortable safe-space.) If I knew her, as a person, all I would be telling her is to dump his ass. As fictional characters though, all that incompetence, vulnerability and hurt is just riveting.
(I do think they have something, some weird connection that goes beyond friendship. I also don't particularly buy Sheldon as genuinely asexual (mostly because it would be just...healthier, and I like the messiness) and there's a certain twisted sexual edge to their relationship (all those contracts and experiments and mind games. Practically fifty shades of the color they paint the inside of asylums) that makes the whole thing quite tense and fascinating. The moments when they do manage to fumble their way to a bit of real intimacy - because they're so rare and fragile, and come in the midst of this vast ocean of alienation - are kind of sublime. So, yeah, I totally ship that even while I think it's fairly of awful.)
Anyway, that's all to say that what I find most interesting about the show is exactly how frustrating it is, and how stubborn it is about giving anyone - characters or viewers - any sort of catharsis. Yeah, it would be great if Penny made it big. If Sheldon has some emotional breakthrough. If Amy left him for someone who deserves her. If Howard did the laundry without being told, for once. But that's a long, slow, tedious journey, and that's how it should be. That is the show, not a problem with the show. Anything that does happens feels...earned, and hard-fought, so there's still a light at the end of that tunnel.
I can accept that the guys, in reality, should be even lonelier and even worse with women, but it does give them more ways of flaming out. I find the lot of them thoroughly pitiable, and yet offputting, as is - turning that dial a little more up or down seems mostly academic to me in terms of the narrative. A few dates more or less wouldn't change the basic paradigm of the thing - they're jerks, they can't see that they're jerks, and it leaves them ever more miserable and yet ever more jerks. Spiral of doom. That's my show!
Yeah, I loved Leslie Winkle too, and I did like Priya, actually. She was a little needy, but still far less than Leonard. Her ministrations also seem to have taken - he still wears the clothes she bought him and has grown into someone a little more composed, when needed. I think a lot of that was Priya rather than Penny. I did think that bit with the doctor when he's astonished to discover that his feelings are also supposed to matter and be communicated in a relationship, and maybe a relationship requires something more from him than to be some kind of desperate, passive-agressively cloying pile of tissue paper is one of the funniest/saddest of the show's moments.