PieFedIt's no contest
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big bang theory is about what dumb people think smart people are like.
apologies for the pixels, I stole it from reddit
bbt is blackface
Reddit ass comment
Not true. Blackface can be funny.
Anyone down voting you never saw tropic thunder or did and have no sense of humor, probably think big bang theory is banging.
It’s just a dude dressed up like a dude, pretending to be another due.
This is a charged topic that needs grace and nuance to do right. When blackface is done with the input, support and consent of the black community, it can re-open discussions about how black identities continue to be co-opted by white media.
Tropic Thunder is a great example of blackface as social commentary.
Sarah Silverman did it, too, as...I think a statement on stereotypes? There were levels there but I don't think they were intentional.
Tropic Thunder had input, support, and consent of the black community?
I don't believe it was, no. I said what I think should be done, not necessarily how things have been done.
I still think Tropic Thunder did it well, since it's not making fun of black people, it's making fun of how out of touch white people can be. I'm basing that off what Brandon T Jackson and other black performers have said about it in the years following its release.
I wouldn't say dumb people. It's a caricature, much like Dennis the Menace is a caricature of small children in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. Only Big Bang Theory wasn't based on an existing comic. So more like Friends being an unrealistic caricature of a late-20's/early-30's group of people living n NYC.
Entertainment doesn't always have to be authentic.
Actually a pretty good comparison given how awful Friends is.
Yes, it's a horrible caricature, Henry Cavill is basically the template for most geeks these days.
Big bang theory is about nerds.
Also, BBT stayed entertaining for the most part throughout the 8 or so seasons it was on. IT started great and then dropped to "meh".
How can you stay entertaining when you were never entertaining in the first place?
Oh look, a dumb person.
Calling a person dumb because they like watching sitcoms is like saying Gordon Ramsey isn't a chef because he likes fast food burgers.
No explanation necessary:
This changes my perspective on the entire show... I'm going to have to watch it again for the 152nd time with this in mind now.
I might require some explanation.
Autism.
Oh shit, I'm a high masker.
Getting through the day be like:
Subject: Fire. "Dear Sir stroke Madam, I am writing to inform you of a fire which has broken out at the premises of..." No, that's too formal. "Dear Sir stroke Madam. Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark. Help me, exclamation mark. 123 Carrendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. All the best, Maurice Moss."
0118, 999, 881, 999, 119, 725...3.
Mid AF over here.
Oh good. I first thought this was some racist image editing joke based on skin colour. And everyone was happily going along with it.
I love this so much.
This image?
The show?
"Yes!" 💯
If he's low masking, how did he just have a chat about that ludicrous display last night?
Id be tempted to swap jen and roy tbh
It’s cuz they work as a team. An IT team. Team, team, team. Team players, each and every one.
do you like saying the word Team, and that picture on your desk, is it of your family?
No. It’s the A-Team.
The jewelry man.
You think that's a picture of my family? No! It's the A-Team!
God I loved that character. Wish he lasted longer, I found his absurdism waaaay funnier than his son's rape jokes.
What a way to go though.
He was actually a big get to start the show. But only agreed to do the two seasons. But I absolutely would have loved to see where the absurdism went. He had such a dry deadpan delivery that just made it everything he did funny.
ARE YOU SURE!?
ARE YOU SURE!?
ARE YOU SURE!?
ARE YOU SURE!?
ARE YOU SURE!?
Yes
Exclamation mark
Yes
Exclamation mark
To whom it may concern... No too formal
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Because, similar to blackface in its time, people love to point and laugh at exaggerated caricatures of something different from themselves.
And CBS airs lowest common denominator garbage that the masses devour.
The term you're looking for is minstrel shows https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show
BBT is a minstrel show to humiliate smart people, anti intelligence sentiment is high in America
I watched both, and yes.
I watched none, and yes.
Start here
I watched only TBBT, and no.
You should explore your horizon a bit more, it is a great show.
Expand*
What is it called?
The IT Crowd
In my mind, I still picture this as the archetype of an office's boss inside a boss's office. If it doesn't have the 4th breaking wall picture, then it's a fake boss
See, a real boss, ready to work for the greater good
FATHEERRRRRRR!!!!!
Ps: that's how you know that J. Jonah Jameson wasn't the boss at the daily Bugle, there was no self referential picture
Chris Morris is a legend. I love Matt Berry but Morris is legitimately one of the most influential figures in British comedy.
The Day Today and Brass Eye put him on the map.
Jam is one of those shows that I doubt many people outside the UK would really get.
Jam is one of those shows I doubt many people inside the UK would get.
IT Crowd S02E01 is probably the funniest episode of any sitcom I’ve seen
The second episode of season 2 has the greatest introduction to a new character ever. You meet Matt Berry at his most Matt Berryist!
FAAAAAAAAAAAATHEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!
Edit: Here's the scene for anyone who hasn't seen it or just wants to enjoy it again, slight spoilers but it won't ruin the first season.
SPEAK, PRIEST
Just moments after getting in a slap fight with the priest.
That shit lives in my head rent free and I ain't even mad about it
When ever I think of that show the scenes that come to mind are Matt Berry's introduction, moss rambling about Richmond not being in his room, he's supposed to be in his room, why isn't he in his room!? and the line " My thighs are as red as fire truck from here to here, with an undershot of his groin and Roy's face just staring, IT crowd was a masterpiece of comedy.
The little theme tune he hums as he sprints towards the coffin is great.
How did they steal your wheelchair?
Mournfully: “I don’t knooooow”
Cracks me up every time
“I’m disabled”
The situation just keeps getting more and more ridiculous and amazing
Absolutely. My favourite of the IT crowd.
Aside from all the hilarity inbetween, the set ups to the last few gags are ridiculous and the payoff is brilliant.
Jen, talking to Roy, figuring out why on earth he's in that wheelchair only to turn around in desperate need of a drink, to see Moss politely ready to serve her at the bar...
"Willys, willys, I like willys"
"I love willys..."
"What?"
"It's I LOVE WILLYS!"
"---Sir, would you keep it down!?"
My favourite too, mate. So bloody good.
"A gay musical... called 'Gay'. That's quite gay."
"I'm disabled."
What kind of disabled?
Leg disabled
“Willys, willys, I like willys!”
“It’s I LOVE willys”
"Sir, can you keep it down?"
That episode is a masterpiece
Yes yes. That's my introductory episode for people who haven't seen the IT crowd yet.
https://youtu.be/cj490uNht4o
The Big Bang Theory was frustratingly bad.
Saw a critic call it, “Nerd blackface”
IT crowd is about nerds for nerds. Big Bang theory is about nerds for non nerds. "Nerd blackface" is more succinct though.
Amazing
Omfg, that describes it adequately.
perfection.gif
Blackface is a bit more complicated and disturbing than “pretending to be like a black person for comic effect.” I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare it to to depictions of nerd culture.
It’s what stupid people think smart people sound like. I’ve never been able to watch it, but I remember hearing Sheldon brag about Ubuntu being his favorite Linux distribution? Like, can you imagine someone saying that in a room of Linux nerds?
It’s stupid and disrespectful to geeky people, but it’s not perpetuating harmful and violent narratives.
H-hey!
I think the comment was also made by Sheldon? Sheldon’s character should be the kind of person who chews people out on forums for not reading the Arch Linux wiki, or to launch into the “GNU/Linux” copy pasta reflexively when Linux is brought up.
But that would require them to have more then a surface level understanding of the culture they're making fun of lol.
Why???
Ironically, that would be hilarious.
It got so popular, had occasional Star Trek references, even a cameo by Leonard Nimoy, and I still couldn't get myself to enjoy it. It's such a a shame.
My grandparents used to watch it. I think it had one (1) funny moment I saw in all the show's run that I caught when living with them - when Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls up Bill Nye and says "I hear you've been talking shit about me", and Nye immediately hangs up the phone in abject terror.
Their cameos in SGA were funnier. "Way to make all the kiddies cry neil, feel like a big man??"
I watched a lot of it back in the day and by like season 10 (I have no clue how long it ran) I realized it was super boring and bad. There would be jokes as lame as “dude owns a Nintendo 64”. That was the entirety of the joke.
Also there is a long running arc about a main character who is physically incapable of talking to women unless he is intoxicated (aka alcohol).
At some point the "humour" was just pop culture references.
is this not comedy gold?!
I saw some clips on YT where they removed the laugh track.
It's really hard to find the show funny when they take out the bit where it tells you when to laugh.
I hate laugh tracks.
Fun fact. That show was filmed in front of a studio audience.
Although I don’t know if they augmented the audience with canned laughter in post.
Same with Friends and most shows with laugh tracks
I watched and enjoyed TBBT, but I don't rewatch it. I saw one of these videos with the laugh track removed and was honestly surprised at how awkward the show was without it. It didn't change the fact that I liked it when I watched it though.
It's mostly awkward because suddenly you have long times of silence normally occupied by the laugh track. If it was intended to be without a laugh track there wouldn't be awkward silence.
Yeah, I've wondered what it'd be like if someone did one of those laugh track removal experiments, but re-edited to remove the quiet parts
This is kinda off topic, but there's a show called Kevin Can Fuck Himself that plays around with sitcom tropes, wife and I enjoyed it a lot.
I've seen that. Cringeworthy.
Deleted by moderator
I like to say that Big Bang Theory was a stupid show about smart people, and Arrested Development was a smart show about stupid people.
Yes, it's the "Friends" of it's era - the comedy is in the laugh-track, I mean studio audience.
watched it, it was okey lol. don't put too much thinking in it
For sure it's no contest. Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
Cooper always tries to walk it in.
No no IT Crowd is a show about sysadmins, not geeks lol. There's a very clear difference.
And Moss was a nerd not a geek. He wasn’t obsessing about comics, videogames etc. like the characters in BBT.
Yeah, it's an interesting difference.
There was a lot of pop culture references in IT Crowd, all the music posters, the retro computers, etc. but the cast didn't even acknowledge it.
I also think this is a cultural difference. The comic book obsession seems more like an american thing. In the Netherlands and Belgium there is also a big comic book appreciation, but it's much less about heroism and more humorous.
Okay but he didn’t obsess about the British equivalent of comic books either. Geeks obsess about consumerist pop culture whether it’s comics, LEGO or Harry Potter. And Moss did non of that.
Flashbacks to the rett & link "nerd VS geek" music video
That came out 12 years ago
The IT crowd came out almost 20 years ago
Yes, in the proportion of furries vs weebs.
I've always saw BBT as just a way to re-normalize making fun of neurodivergant people.
And a way of renormalizing misogyny.
I think that's right but at the same time I think you're not doing it justice by implying that's all it is.
No... the IT crowd is a sitcom FOR geeks. That other shit just makes fun of us
I believe this is what happened to Dr Who. When it started it was for science and history nerds, science sounding gobble-de-gook, cos play outfits, very low production values (the infamous duct tape boots). All just good fun.
When it was rebooted the focus had shifted. The Doctor as the cool guy, a Jesus figure, became more and more pronounced. They started to make fun of nerds on a regular bases. Amazing writing and production values, but at some point during the Tennant era I stopped watching in disgust.
The original Doctor Who was an educational show mostly aimed at school aged children that used a sci-fi gimmick to teach history lessons (much of which are a bit outdated now). They would alternate storylines between future and past settings through most of William Hartnell's run.
Towards the end of classic Who it was already much more like modern Who than those first seasons.
I only started with NuWho, watching it as it came out in 2005.
I found it magnificent, exactly because it shied away from glorifying violence, made emotions be the focus of things and there was clearly some large over-arching thing with "Bad Wolf", but it wasn't like in the American shows, where if there's a clue to be seen, the camera zooms in on it, making sure you can't miss it.
I gather you are right, and NuWho is way more American and hero-centric than Classic Who — but because it was and I was a teenager enjoying shows like Prison Break at the time — I got into Who, and then into better British shows, better shows in general, chasing that sort or good pacifist writing. Star Trek is ofc prolly the best franchise when it comes to actual philosophy. Doctor Who elicits emotions more than thought when compared to the Star Trek Ethos, albeit in a more profoundly British way.
Uuh there's actually a new episode of Dr Who tonight that reminded me.
Oooh, it's out already. And I have a few glasses of rum left. And a steak. And a pint of red. Ooooooh. This is turning out to be a nice day.
Anyway tldr completely agree with you, but I think going a bit American with NuWho was a crucial step in luring in more watchers to start appreciating the good things. Kinda how for a kid, it's easier to learn to eat a new dish when you introduce it bit by bit or with copious amounts of ketchup or something — slowly teaching them that the bitterness is what makes it tasty.
If BBT was made today it would be accused of being written by AI. Fully flanderised characters, and endless filler episodes.
AKA "The Chuck Lorre Special"
I've only seen the one episode of BBT, I think the first one, where a goddamn theoretical physicist spends a whole day forgetting the basic properties of light.
My family stared at me the whole time, expecting me to find it funny. Then THEY got mad at me when I said that was the dumbest shit I've seen in a while. Later I found out that Sheldon uses Ubuntu and brags about it.
But, okay, dumb jokes aside - the show doesn't explore any concepts or situations in new and interesting ways And THAT'S why it's bad.
Shelden uses linux. Hahahaha. That's it. A good writer could make a whole episode about that, alone, and it would be hilarious. Imagine him on internet forums. Imagine him fumbling during a talk because his laptop wouldn't work with whatever vidchat/system/software his hosts used, and getting haughty about it. Imagine Sheldon traveling across the country to "fix" an entire auditoriums tech to run on Arch after his failed remote speech. Walking away all "You're Welcome" as the staff can't figure out how the fuck to use it.
Funny, but now you're talking about the layman being cut out. Ratings won't survive and it dies after one season. But that would be better lol
I mean, the IT Crowd ran for 5 seasons while actually being funny to people working in the field it portrays, unlike Big Bang Theory which many nerds (not just physicists) find un-funny
As a science nerd I think BBT is very funny, even when the writers make such glaring errors as having Sheldon stop his self-destruct device just before its countdown reached zero - even though he modeled it after Star Trek, specifically referenced a TOS episode the self-destruct was featured in, and even used the same password. Any true Trek fan knows the Enterprise self-destruct was unstoppable after the countdown reached 5 seconds - a fact that comes up in the very episode Sheldon mentioned. A deplorable writing error, to be sure, but I think such things are amusing in their own way.
The only remotely objective measurement I know is that enough people enjoyed the show to make it last 12 seasons. Y'all are welcome to your own opinions, but all the absolutist pontificating is pretty silly. There's no Kelvin scale of funny.
IT Crowd is hysterically funny as well, but it's written differently (not correctly or wrongly, just different) and was written and performed for a different audience, in a different country. There's really no point arguing which was funnier.
"I've only seen the one episode..."
Sheldon: "You certainly put a lot of effort into expressing an opinion you're woefully unqualified to form."
I watched one random episode of BBT after it was recommended to me by a few people. That one episode was enough for me to decide that I never want to see that show again, and also that I should disregard all recommendations from the people who said I should watch it.
I watched a scene where someone posted it without the laugh track and it was super cringey. Semi-related note.. Taking the laugh track out of BBT ruins it, but taking Garfield out of Garfield comics takes it to a new level, see here -> https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
Taking the laugh track out of anything ruins it. You are replacing laughter with dead air.
I'd be interested to see an edit of classic sitcoms with laughs (tracks or live), edited to remove both the laugh and the associated pause in the performance.
There would be more cuts than a fight scene from Taken. It would be super distracting.
Hmmm
I haven't watched many sitcoms recently. I felt like those pauses for audience laughs were often where they'd cut to other camera angles anyway (likely to distract from how unnaturally long the characters paused in the middle of their conversations)... But I don't have any concrete evidence to back up my feeling.
I do prefer the Realfield edits, that replace Garfield with a normal cat.
Gives mire crazy cat guy than mental illness vibes.
https://imgur.com/gallery/realfield-reposts-jMDXG
You might like the Heathcliffe without Heathcliffe posts right here on Lemmy https://lemmy.world/c/heathcliff
The laugh track alone is enough evidence
IT Crowd also has a laugh track.
IT crowd was filmed in front of an audience.
It tends to use it after actual jokes though.
There is a laughtrack in IT Crowd too...
The big bang theory was not for geeks or nerds. It was pure shit.
Misogynistic pure shit.
It had a good few first episodes with fun geeky jokes, but it quickly turned to bad jokes and lazy stereotypes and relied loosely on stereotypes to contain the geekyness.
I always felt like it was a show for moms of geeks and nerds that missed their kids once they moved out.
I'm a geek and a nerd and i loved it, sorry.
Hush you! Can't have people not joining in the dogpile on a TV show that ended 6 years ago...
BBT is a show about smart people for dumb people. The IT Crowd is a show about smart people.
IT Crows was amazing, I laughed to death. Where the bigbang theory was not so funny, too much detail IMO.
IT Crowd was three British goofballs doing elaborate running gags over 24 episodes.
BBT was four creepy bigots and a nice blonde woman doing pop culture references and calling one another stupid for 279 episodes before spinning out an 80s nostalgia prequel series.
It was the difference between a few cherished cleverly crafted comedy routines and endless derivative slop.
Next season might turn out to be IT Pigeons
Moss, how many times have I told you to shave those sideburns?!
I've usually seen big bang theory compared to jersy shore.
one is a smart show about dumb people, and the other is a dumb show about smart people.
if we follow this logic, does that make it crowd a smart show about smart people?
IT crowd 100%
I did not know The It Crew, going through the first episode and I'm quite liking it.
If someone else is curious: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQxUFrtzYaUmbH4EzI4dxqpQt5Dhu_6Gs
I've watched IT Crowd half a dozen times.
I haven't managed to finish an episode of BBT before I switch it off in disgust.
In other words, you have insufficient data to make a meaningful comparison.
It is amazing to me how people believe their subjective experiences automatically qualify for criticism.
I mean this is Lemmy. 98% of the people here believe that anyone who downvotes them is a Nazi and a fascist, plus whatever negative adjective you could think about
This place was way better before the exodus from reddit.
See also: Community.
Community, IT Crowd, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Scrubs... The 00's had a lot of great sitcoms. We didn't know how good we had it.
My name is Earl
(Since you're including things that began barely in the 00's, I'm going to include things that ended in the 00's)
Friends
Frasier
Both riddled with laughing tracks. Neither is funny either.
Laugh tracks usually have nothing to do with how funny a show's writing actually is, but studies regularly show that people have a more positive experience with TV comedies when they have a laugh track. I assume it's probably something parasocial.
Community had less than half a season in the '00s, so calling it an '00s show sitcom seems a bit of a stretch.
Oh wow, in my head I pictured it starting around 2006 or so.
Probably because of that gas leak
Yeah it was easy for me, because I recall that I first watched it in 2013, and binging all 4 seasons that then existed in a pretty quick timeframe. So I knew it had to be pretty close one way or the other. It ended up extremely close to that "less than half of a season", with 12 out of 25 episodes of season 1 being in 2009.
If you think otherwise, you're head disabled.
The problem with the r-slur wasn't the word itself but dehumanizing mentally disabled people; I guess being more overt about it is preferable, if we have to choose one or the other, but you're not circumventing anything.
It's a reference to the show, but thanks for the insight my dude.
Are they still pretending that Sheldon is not supposed to be autistic?
He was just cosplaying as the Doppler effect
neeeooooo
British humour is infinitely funnier than the laugh track pandering American sitcoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2AbqTBxao
Most humor is funnier than a laugh track sitcom. But humor being regional is ... an interesting phenomenon if nothing else. Like yea I enjoyed the hell out of Monty Python as a kid and even now. But ill take the office from Scranton ober the og any day of the week. But I also wouldnt expect peeps from across the pond to feel that way.
Is their anything from that late 90s era early 00s British tv had to compare the chapelle show? Honestly curious, I only have so much knowledge of British humor.
I don't think laugh track is inherently bad.
But I watched the Big Bang Theory for like the first 3 years, and it just kept devolving into shittier and simpler humour, and like really begging for the laughs with the puns, whereas in Britain it's genuinely considered somewhat important to keep it organic.
Like unfiltered BBC panel shows are just so much more hilarious than an episode of "hey come share laughs over archaic and super over-blown stereotypes".
Whatever cheap shit they've made over at the BBC is usually funnier than overproduced hyper-supervised multi-writer numbers-pleasing BS. I know that's subjective, and I won't die on a hill of "who's the funniest", because that's subjective, but that's my opinion on it.
It's interesting when America tries to make British panel shows (like the recent HIGNFY one). The competition aspect and the points, which are only a conceit in the British version, start having importance. They care who wins and it destroys the comedy. The right answer becomes more important than the funny answer.
The Office would like to have a word with you.
The American version of the office has a visual laugh track, every time a character sideeyes the camera and smirks.
But it isn’t though.
Some particular shows are better as Americans versions, I'll not deny that.
I haven't watched either of the Offices, but I have watched the entire American "Shameless" and that was glorious and fitting. The British version I glanced at was really meh. And whilst British comedy in general might be better, good comedy in a bad show is less valuable than mediocre comedy in a good show.
It's like good food. Good side dishes won't completely cover for a bad main dish, but if the main dish is really moorish, you won't care about the side dishes being so-and-so.
Edit also do you like to think your username is pronounced "rhee-ri", or "rhow-eh-ri". People ask me about the pronunciation of mine sometimes and just made me question how you think yours...?
Fair point.
do you like to think your username is pronounced "rhee-ri", or "rhow-eh-reh". People ask me about the pronunciation of mine sometimes and just made me question how you think yours...?
It’s “Rory,” but I’d never thought it could be pronounced any other way until now. Lol.
I’d imagine yours is pronounced: “Dah-suse”?
“Rory"
Yeah okay that's a simpler way of writing the latter way, then way I thought it probably would be.
Dah-sus is more or less how I imagined it originally yes. Like the "da" from "da man" as in "the" and the "sus" not from the phenomena a few years ago where everything was "sus", but from the Finnish word for wolf, "susi".
I know it's cringe but it was like 2002 when I came up with it.
And I've had friends go "deyh-sus" "deissus", sort of, and I'm comfortable with it, but it's not like how I meant it.
Rory.... Amy relation? (Pun intended.) (so bad-ass btw)
I warmed up to BBT after watching Young Sheldon. all the criticisms of BBT still stand but for some reason I just wasn't miserable watching it. had a few laughs even.
If anyone is wondering, it’s totally okay to like both.
I would say they're like apples and oranges but they're more like apples and hand grenades. They only vaguely resemble each other and I love them both.
The Brits try not to mix as much drama into their comedy. I appreciate that. BBT waxes pretentious then wains drama, I like it most when it's in the middle.
All that said, I've seen the entirety of BBT maybe one and a half times, I've watched ITC probably a dozen times.
Okay.
I 'm agreeing with you, not sure why they're dv you.
Please elaborate.
So, image there’s a pop band that a lot of people like called “Apples.” They like them because of all the reasons a typical person generally likes a pop band. For instance, the songs are easy to understand, the members are talented, the songs are catchy, they’re not too complicated… things like that.
Now imagine there’s another band people like, but they play rock, and they’re called “Oranges.” So, Oranges are liked because they’re a bit darker, but more topical. They’re a little grittier, but they’re more centered and realistic with their songs and similarly, very talented.
Now, picture a dude named Gary.
Gary likes both Apples and Oranges because his music tastes are diverse. He doesn’t care about falling into groups that feel the need to chastise and ridicule others for what they like when it doesn’t make a single difference in the lives of anyone other than Gary himself.
I'll alway remember the time I was hanging out with my GF at her parents house and she mentioned that she was going to play D&D later and her moms boomer-ass friend just immediatly started cackling about how "it's just like big bang theory!!".
There was no joke or anything just "oh, yea I'm going over to xxxx's house to play D&D later". That was enough for me to never bother with that show.
That is the joke to them though. That's literally what the show is like. It's so bad.
[avengers "I get that reference"]
BBT is a bad show, but that's not a good reason not to watch it, that's just a dumb person who can only relate to reality through media references.
Just to be clear I'm not saying to watch it, but that a stupid person liking something isn't a reason to reject the thing...
Except that IS what passes as a joke in BBT. Just references to things without any humour except a laugh track.
Historically I've found that to be a very good indicator that I'm not going to like something. I've learned to trust my gut and I've seen enough clips of it since then to know my gut was right.
Correlation vs causation.
Yes, big bang is dumb, but just to pull a famous example Paul Ryan likes Rage against the Machine, sometimes people can feel a beat even if they can't hear the lyrics.
Call it whatever you want I'm not changing my opinion. There's plenty of shit that people I actually respect like and have recommended to me for me to watch. I don't need to waste my time on slop that was created for morons.
I get you, but as someone who just started with the litrpg genre because i avoided it due to the people who liked it, I'm just saying that sometimes you may be missing something you love because most of the people who like it are dumb and most of the genre is garbage.
yeah, theres lots of litrpg trash, but most is certainly an overstatement. Also lots and lots of great novels. Not being bound by a publisher can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
I'm not sure why they were so weirdly hostile and yet kept engaging when they clearly didn't want to have a conversation about it.
In any case, I agree. Idiots are all over the place and like a lot of different things. Unless you only want to consume works that use obtuse language to scare away dumbos, you'll have to reconcile with that fact. That is, of course, assuming the person doesn't find certain forms of idiocy agreeable.
A older person has heard of DnD because of a sitcom and laughed when they meet someone who plays? And thats why youll never watch the show? I finally gave dnd a chance after freaks and geeks. Which for me was after almost two decades of playing magic.
Dont get me wrong, ive seen a few episodes of big bang and yea nothing you need to watch. But seems an odd reason to write it off if you like sitcoms ... which the more I think about it a lot of sitcoms were nerd comedy. Best dam line out of friedns was alwazy "Ill prove it like a therom!!" And Frazier... And while never as cool as Homer, Lisa was always miles above Bart...
Sorry most of that was not actually in response to your comment. Hope the campaign is going/went well!
I guess you had to be there. This was not a "laughing with you" situation, and it indicated to me that the show was mostly just making fun of nerdy people so I wouldn't enjoy it. That was enough for me. I've seen enough clips of it since then to know I was right.
You're correct
TBBT can be an okay show if you don't mind the overused surface level nerd culture references, casual misogyny, and Elon Musk's appearance. Other than that it can be a guilty pleasure of mine.
Except for that one transphobic episode that Graham Linehan has ruined his whole life over instead of going "Yeah, I'm sorry, that was a bit insensitive."
EDIT: since I don't want the top reply not to mention this, fuck IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan for the incalculable damage he's done to innocent trans people. He's a worthless, disgusting bigot.
Honestly, I always found that episode... Weirdly progressive? Even maybe by accident? Consider the following:
100% agree. It paints trans women favorably and makes Douglas the asshole like he deserves.
Yeah, it's kind of a Death of the Author moment. Ignore Glinner being a transphobic ogre and it's actually quite good.
Glinner is the biggest argument I've seen against Death of the Author, because once you know you're supposed to be laughing at the marginalised character and with the characters mistreating them, it's impossible to find it funny.
There's lots of examples of it too. The first time watching the theatre trip episode where a judge in drag opens the play, I'd read Roy's discomfort with the show being "too gay" as a joke on Roy being out of his element; we were supposed to laugh at his discomfort. But on rewatching it's hard to shake the idea that actually Roy's defence of "I don't want his sexuality rubbed in my face" is meant as something the audience is supposed to identify and agree with, and that far from being a knowing playful nudge at gay theatre the whole thing was a mean-spirited caricature of it. The meaning does get changed whether Roland Barthes likes it or not.
Douglas ruined a great relationship because he just couldn't stop himself being a transphobic bigot. Pity Glinner didn't learn any lessons from his creation.
I'm a ciswoman and I actually love April's ass-kicking. I'm sure it was meant to be a dig at her femininity but it's the first time in media where I felt like, yes. This is exactly how I want my gender displayed.
And her actress was gorgeous.
The fandom has universally decided that douglas did hear her correctly and still did not care and they lived happily ever after
Wait THAT'S the trans episode that everyone says is super-transphobic? In the context of being released in 2008 it's perfectly fine. There's probably be a few things that should be different if it were made today (and honestly, its been a few years since I've seen it so I might be not remembering some important yikes moment or something) but my takeaway was always that Douglas is still an asshole and April is an amazing woman who can do so much better than him
Edit to add: Honestly far worse is the Aunt Irma plotline. Most of the jokes are that "haha these guys are acting like girls" and that plot honestly kinda fell flat because of it
Honestly I think the only way it could have been less transphobic was to actually have a trans woman play the role? The woman that played April was quite fetching. And seemed like a pretty fleshed out person and not just a punchline. It would have been just as easy to find some beefy guy to put in a dress with bad makeup. Make a complete bigoted caricature. But they didn't. Matt Berry's character was always the butt of the joke. And in totality in the end still missed her. Honestly short of having a trans actress portray the character it really was one of the most positive and Progressive portrayals ironically at the time. Though I'm sure that has more to do with the staff involved then it does lineham himself.
Linehan has become much worse since that controversy, he's been on a proper trans hate crusade since like 2019. It wasn't about being insensitive, he's completely deranged and the episode was just an early slip.
Absolutely. I can't know what has gone wrong inside him, but even if this particular brainworm was eating him up 20 years ago, he could have just said something vaguely apologetic and let it blow over. Instead, he decided a trans hate crusade was more important than his family or his career.
Wow, I just looked him up on Wikipedia and you’re right. It’s way more than just producing a sitcom episode. Dude is legit on a crusade.
Which episode?
Edit: oof
Series 3, episode 4, "The Speech". Sadly, it's also the episode where they convince Jen a box with a flashing red light is the Internet, but it has a subplot where Reynholm un-knowingly dates a trans woman. He finds her stereotypically masculine behavior attractive until he finds out she is transgender and a physical fight erupts between them.
It's not even on the upper end of offensive comedy about trans people, but when the episode was criticized, Linehan doubled down and has kept doubling down harder for 20 straight years, to the point where he now spends all of his time harassing, dead naming and doxing trans women on Twitter. His wife left him, writing jobs dried up, he's just a miserable has-been Twitter checkmark asshole now.
Honestly, I found the episode pretty hilarious. And it was'nt even really offensive towards trans women. I always thought the joke was more on Douglas' fragile ego than anything else.
But yeah, sucks what's become of the author.
I also thought the joke was about fragile masculinity… but I can see it being off putting anyways and I’m open to being wrong.
https://screenrant.com/it-crowd-controversy-graham-linehan-april-transphobic-bad/
It is interesting to compare screenrants analysis to this reply here.
I wanted to make some quip about it being typical but actually not all men think this way or assume they know what women think. And I’m sure some women think this way. But it also tells me all I need to know about this tool. Good riddance.
What it means is that the writer is closer in personality to Douglas than the rest of the cast. And that’s telling.
It was long after the reunion which I realized this and I feel ashamed for all times I’ve rewatched the series since.
People be forgetting that the first season or two of the big bang theory was legitimately very good.
The first season or two of the IT crowd was... oh yeah, the whole show.
IT crowd's best episodes were best-in-class. tnetennba. But it had a lot of meh too.
The thing about the IT crowd is they always try and walk it in
I think the first couple seasons of BBT are brilliant and then it rapidly became worse. There are only so many maths and physics jokes you can crack before it gets boring.
Also, it seems like the characters went from likable, socially awkward goofballs to just straight up being assholes all the time. Except for Howard, who kinda always was one.
If IT Crowd had as many seasons with as many episodes as BBT it would probably end up in a similar state tbh. Thats the great thing about UK shows: they have fewer episodes and fewer seasons, so they leave out the bad ideas and never jump the shark. (except dr who 😅)
Agreed. I enjoyed up to season 3.
I would take the notoriously bad American attempt at the IT Crowd over big bang theory any day
I like both 🤷🏻♂️
By far. I think that Big Bang Theory has rotten the minds of lots of highschoolers (that now are at university, or have already graduated)
this thread feels strange to me. anyone else?
I've recently been feeling as though astroturfers have finally discovered lemmy (and recognized their lack of features to detect vote-rigging).
Just a feeling though, and nothing concrete to back it up.
I mean people are allowed to like different things. There is no gatekeeping to be done on something as subjective humor
no, but i can gatekeep it for its misogynistic and abelist rhetoric, or its racist depictions, or having musk in an episode.
Right? Like there can be no objective criticism of literature or something.
But yes, I haven't watch BBT but IT is better.
expressing dislike is not gatekeeping though..?
or am i gatekeeping gatekeeping now?
I loved both shows. IT crowd made me laugh harder making it the better show.
Young Sheldon on the other hand was very very good.
I remember IT Crowd as having some really funny moments back when I watched it, but also being very hit or miss. Looking back, the episodes with the theater gays and the trans woman were... deeply unfortunate. Also it turned out Graham whatshisface is a full-time transphobe. So it's consigned to the trash bin for me.
BBT, I never saw more than a few episodes and what I did see was very bland tbh.
TL;DR maybe they both suck actually
Not disagreeing that Linehan has some awful opinions and that has leached out into a couple of his writings. But, the theater episode, at no point, makes the fact that people are gay the butt of the joke it's the main characters that are terrible people in that episode, particularly Roy.
It's like getting upset that Father Ted is racist for the episode that specifically makes racists the target of the joke.
Not at all. My issue was with the portrayal of the characters themselves -- so vapid, touchy-feely, and simply stereotypical of the "theater gay" trope. Plus, after all her opining, whatshername was right about that guy's orientation.
Also, I found the theater material a bit, uhh... it felt to me like a Rocky Horror parody written by an adolescent person. Yes we're all singing "I love willies" because that's what being gay is about, yahaha.
Still all the normies be watching the big bang theorie.
While I like IT Crowd it’s unfortunately written by a TERF activist so I will never watch it again. Also explains why there is an episode about a trans woman getting beat up
Edit: before you downvote me maybe lookup what kind of activism Graham Linehan has been doing after he made IT Crowd.
A man so abhorrent his wife and family wants nothing to do with him.
Goddamnit. Father Ted and Black Books too.
I won't stop watching because shows are made by more than one guy, I just won't do it in any way that gives him money.
All three of those sitcoms had excellent comedians and writers in the cast, and they don't deserve to have their work overshadowed by one man's terrible views.
But Silicon Valley is better than either of them.
SV is too real. I was close to Bay Area tech when I was watching it, and that show hit too close to home sometimes.
IT crowd maintains a humorous distance from the really shitty parts of tech and I’m here for it.
Honestly both are very mid.
Much rather watch Black Books or Community.
These shows are both for morons who think this is how nerds act.
What? The whole charm of the IT crowd is that it’s pretty spot on for how IT people act with each other. It’s hyperbolic for sure but I felt like it was the most authentic representation of tech people in the media.
Someone writing on that show had to have worked IT at some stage.
A lot of things that happened in that show resonated with my IT support experience.
I often reference the IT crowd when a colleague is having issues.. "Have you tried switching it off and on again"
90% of the time it works, eyes roll, and we all have a laugh
The fucking unplugged pc.
(And the graveyard shift goth)
My old boss called me, said please come to my office... my laptop will not turn on and I cannot figure it out.
I get there, he tells me to please help him, he is probably being stupid.
I look at his laptop, I see his charger plugged in, I follow it down the desk, across the floor all the way to the wall socket where the plug lies...
He had walked the charger's plug to the wall socket and just left it on the ground.
I plug it in, he sees me do this, laptop turns on, I leave.
Given there was only one writer, and he knew nothing about computing other than how to turn one on, nope.
i have absolutely been called over to laugh at a circuit board. hell, i've done it myself
I agree; silicon valley also did a great job with this imo.