[ SECRET POST #2549 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2549 ⌋

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

01.


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02.
[Perry Mason]


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03.
[Johnny Weir / Thor fandom]


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04.
[Swedish Chef/Gordon Ramsay]


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05.
[Hannibal]


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06.
[Big Bang Theory]


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07.
[The Lion King]


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08.
[Billy Madison / Happy Gilmore]


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09.
[Caitlin Moran, Sherlock]


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10.
[Tales of Vesperia]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #363.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I still don't buy that she's "vastly better than the guys at navigating her way through the world." Again, she is not shown to have any real friends, she's often rude or aggressive for no real reason,she's irresponsible with money, etc. The guys are repeatedly bailing her out of one predicament or another. Yes, there are a few occasions where she's helpful to the guys or gives them good advice, but she's generally a mess. The guys have issues, certainly, but at least they have each other. Meanwhile, Penny thinks it's okay to spend her rent money on hot shoes and then hit up Leonard for a loan. She might be better than the guys at being "nice" in a glib and superficial type of way, but that's not the same thing as emotional maturity or common sense. On the contrary, she is barely muddling her way through the most basic responsibilities of everyday life. Even the guy with Asbergers isn't asking someone else to buy his dinner or pay his rent. In real life, Penny might've been evicted by now, or arrested for the multiple times she has kicked/punched/physically attacked someone. She's also a manifestly bad judge of character, since she keeps on dating good-looking jerks who end up disappointing her.

[quarter_to_five]

Sure, agreed on everything - the question is why she's behaving like this, as I don't think she's inherently an idiot - these are decision she's making, and they're not good ones. More to the point, the show doesn't try to justify or excuse any of those behaviours on her part. WRT the "better at navigating the world," I guess that was poor phrasing on my part. She's certainly not doing well financially or in her career (mostly through no fault but her own,) but the big gap between her and the guys is in terms of more basic social capacities, right down to the ability to have a conversation.

I think that's what immediately striking about their interactions - these guys are vastly more accomplished, largely more mature, certainly better set in most practical aspects of life, but Penny just floors them (and draws Leonard like a moth to a flame) by how confident and at ease she is in her own skin. Why? Maybe she shouldn't be, but nevertheless, she is. I don't think there's an obvious answer, but the lack of easy dichotomies with regard to success/failure, happiness/misery, isolation/connection (ie, this very debate) is exactly what makes the show interesting for me.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, everything you say in your above comment is true. To me, personally, the problem is that Penny just isn't endearing enough or interesting enough to balance out all the things I mentioned in my previous comment. She's not a likable character, to me.

The four guys are endearing and interesting, not just in spite of, but also because of, their flaws and quirks and eccentricities. We all know that in real life, Sheldon would be insufferable and you probably wouldn't be able to stand him for even ten minutes, but on-screen he's riveting, and I believe it's because Jim Parsons is such a good actor.

IMO Kaley Cuoco is not an especially strong actress. I wouldn't say she's *bad*, but she's not on the same level as the others. She just can't pull it off. In this case, I think art imitates life: Penny's not a very good actress...and neither is Kaley Cuoco.

The others are obnoxious in an exaggerated and cartoonish way that is fun to watch, while still having an undercurrent of emotional truth. Penny's just a pill. The nerds are fun, and she's a buzzkill. Maybe that's an unpopular opinion, but that's my reaction, as a viewer.

"I think that's what immediately striking about their interactions - these guys are vastly more accomplished, largely more mature, certainly better set in most practical aspects of life, but Penny just floors them (and draws Leonard like a moth to a flame) by how confident and at ease she is in her own skin. Why?"

Because their self-esteem is abysmal, and they've been taught to expect nothing, so they're happy to receive crumbs. To me, it's rather sad to watch the guys' fawning admiration of Penny. I don't think she *deserves* their adoration. The message of this situation is that physical beauty trumps everything, absolutely everything, and that's a pretty sad message.

Plus, I think it's arguable that the guys don't even really *like* her, they're just physically attracted to her. To them, she's a sex-object, and to her, they're just a mirror for her vanity. This isn't a friendship, it's a D-list celebrity and her groupies.

I know that sounds harsh, but think about it: her relationship with Leonard is rocky, Sheldon annoys her, she detests Howard, and Raj can't even talk to her. WHY are these people friends, again? If she finds them so annoying, why does she continue hanging out with them? This friendship just isn't believable, to me. On closer examination, it seems like *she* is the one who's so desperate for company (or attention) that she'll even hang out with people she doesn't particularly like.

(I'm referring to the earlier seasons, here. I know this show has undergone a lot of changes, but what I've said is true for probably the first three or four seasons.)

For me, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance with this show, because we're told that the premise is "nerds and a normal girl, learning from each other", but that's not what plays out on the screen.


To me, the best part of BBT is just watching the nerdy guys doing their thing, and being a fly on the wall in their strange and whimsical world. Supposedly that's not the premise of the show, but it's the part that I find enjoyable. I would gladly watch a whole episode of the guys playing games, having conversations, and just doing what they do, without Penny.

Then, the show decided to add two or three more Pennys, and that's why I no longer watch.

[quarter_to_five]

I think you're missing out - I find the show a lot more interesting since the addition of Bernadette and Amy. (Both, but Amy especially, trample all over the show's previously established neat gender dichotomy and do a lot to make it vastly more complex.) I find the guys immensely endearing too, but Amy just owns my heart. She makes them look both well adjusted, and reveals them for the cowards they are at the same time.

I like Penny, (and Cuoko) but that's all a matter of taste. But I've never found the show particularly happy and I don't really want it to be. It never quite allows the guys to just be happy campers in their own happy geek world of games and pranks. They try, but they keep coming up short. It's not enough, they want something more. Yes, even shallow things like girlfriends. It's why I called the show callous, way back at the top of the thread. In a perfect universe, they would be happy just the way they are. Reality is nastier than that, and that makes the show compelling to me. I don't want them to win at life with geekery (and I say this as a full blown, unapologetic geek.) That's just alltogether too comfortable for my tastes.

In the same way, Penny's flaws, vanities and hollowness makes her compelling for me, just as much as Leonards insecurity and low self esteem, Raj's crippling loneliness, Howards struggle against his own worst nature and the whole mess of obnoxiousness and repression that is the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock via. sitcom jokes of Sheldon.

I liked Penny from the moment in the first episode when she introduces herself with a burbling, bubbling monologue of pathetic, cliched, utter nonsense, and then has a this stunning moment of stillness where she seems to have a inkling of just how absurd and empty everything she has just said it...and then gathers herself up and barrels over it, because she knows that to look into those depths would just break her. I totally loved it.

But, no, not a happy story.

[(Anonymous)]

Hmmm. Well, that's certainly an interesting viewpoint, and you've clearly put a lot of thought and analysis into it.

I *do* want a sitcom to be just pleasant, escapist entertainment. That doesn't mean that a sitcom can never have a serious or emotionally touching moment, but I'm pretty baffled by the recent trend of people who seem to expect the same things from a sitcom that they would expect from a novel or a movie or an HBO drama.

What are sitcoms *for*, if not pleasant, escapist entertainment? I dunno, everything you just wrote sounds horribly depressing and disturbing, to me. That's not a reflection on you or your line of reasoning, it's just my personal reaction.

Some people *like* depressing and unsettling things. Indeed, that's what they expect from a piece of entertainment, and they don't consider it high-quality if it lacks those features.

But that's *not* what I expect from a barely 20-minute mainstream sitcom.

Sure, there's plenty of pathos in these characters. It is, after all, a show about people who are misfits and outcasts. But I'd prefer to let the acting speak for itself and not have these themes spelled-out so overtly.

The old saying that comedy comes out of pain is very true, in some ways. But I don't share the mindset of someone who wants even their comedy to be melancholy and full of deeper meaning.

I just want some escapist entertainment--which, by the way, is NOT the same thing as *mindless* entertainment. Apparently, it's no longer PC to want that, or to want things that are plot-driven instead of character-driven.

I don't get the people who seem to be waiting for some type of big emotional pay-off from a sitcom. If I want character development, I'll read a novel. If I want romance and relationships, I'll watch an hour-long drama like Downton Abbey.

I think your viewpoint is very interesting, but I wouldn't watch Amy or Bernadette if you paid me.

[quarter_to_five]

Yes, I probably have overthought this, but it got under my skin and required untangling. (If this goes on much longer, i’m going to start explaining about the subversion of the false consiousness of late-stage consumer capitalism. Then it just gets sad.)

I like a lot of escapist, happy sitcoms too - I’m very happy with watching Community or Brooklyn 99 and enjoying their world of hijinks and misadventures that inevitaly result in friendships growing stronger and misfits coming together into supportive surrogate families where everything is well. It’s pleasant and funny, and I don’t disparage it in the slightest. It’s what I was expecting with TBBT, but I wound up with this odd, dark, sad reading that I can’t unsee, and I find that I respect that.

WRT comedy vs. drama - I appreciate dark and unsentimental comedy, and while a 20 minute sitcom is never going to deliver the kind of thing a full-length drama can, I think it can doll out darkness and sadness that are every bit as bad, just using different tools. TBBT specifically, in my opinion, has this capacity for really humiliating, uncomfortable humor that makes a very powerful viechle for a certain darkness. For me, actually, in a way a lot of dramas - that are much more respectful, much more...elegant, perhaps, of the way they portray suffering - never quite arrive at. (This is the other side of the coin of the fact I find things like Hannibal, which turns suffering, loneliness and outcastness into something terribly profound and just beautiful, absolutely hilarious. Yes, it makes sense in my head that Hannibal and TBBT are obviously comparable shows.)

[(Anonymous)]

Same commenter, here :)

I'm not saying that I like overly sentimental, sugary, Pollyanna-ish things. On the contrary. I *do* like dark comedy, in some contexts.

To me, the very best sitcom will always be Seinfeld, which went for all-out surrealism and anarchy, not drama and feelings.

What I don't get are these people who seem to be desperately, masochistically waiting for some emotional money-shot where Sheldon and Amy finally kiss, or something. That is just 180 degrees removed from what I look for in a sitcom. That, to me, is a soap opera. I don't look to sitcoms for emotional gratification.

It's worth noting that while this show's ratings are sky-high, the online fandom is more or less dead, and ship-wars are the only thing keeping it alive. As I mentioned in a previous discussion here on F!S, this show might have millions of "viewers", but it no longer has fans, and I find that very telling. There is relatively little fanfic or fan-art being produced for TBBT. It's the number one TV show in the nation, yet it's not even in the top 50 fandoms on FF.net, for example. I keep running into BBT-themed sites, blogs, and Tumblrs that haven't been updated in two or three years. There are no active BBT communities on Dreamwidth or Livejournal, except for the various shippers despairingly waiting for their favored couple to get together.

I liked the nerdy hijinks and the absurdist humor and the male camaraderie of the early seasons. There are now people who will tear your head off for saying that, and accuse you of wanting silly, fluffy drivel instead of ***emotions*8* and "character development." What this really means is they wanted a soap opera, and they got it.

I want this show to end so that we can see Simon Helberg in other roles. He's much too good for BBT.

[quarter_to_five]

Yeah, the dearth of fandom is a bit...I don't know if odd is the word. It's not a show that encourages much of that kind of engagement, for whatever reason, which might be worth thinking about. (Or, maybe none of it is worth thinking about. Who knows.) In conversations i've had with very casual fans, people will often react with a certain discomfort to the show or admit that a lot of it is, strictly speaking, pretty sad, and then move on. I don't feel like I'm making things up out of whole cloth, but I clearly have an unusual take and I'm not trying to convince anyone else to join me.

About the soapy elements, well, if that's what has people hooked, surely that's fair enough? It's not what you enjoy (or enjoyed) but they are, so, you know, live and let live. It doesn't make it a flaw.

Personally - I seem to be in a minority of one on this - I don't think the show has changed at all between the early and later seasons, not tonally. It added two characters which opened up some new storyline possibilities, but there's plenty of the same kind of sadness in the first 3 seasons as there is in the later ones, in my opinion. (I still think the darkest single episode of the show is the one with killer robot, which was season 2. And season 3 has some real gems in that regard as well. The one where Sheldon takes Penny to the hospital is a nightmarish Flowers for Algernon of emotional intelligence, done up in bright colors and a laugh track like the rictus smile below the dead eyes of an underpaid employee at strip mall McDonalds at three in the morning.)

[(Anonymous)]

Don't know where that extra "8" came from, in my previous comment. Just a weird typo ;)