First season or two was alright. Not great, but alright. Early on, it felt more like a show made for nerds. There were lots of niche references to nerd culture that the casual viewer wouldn’t catch. They intentionally kept them niche and vague, because they knew that’s the kind of shit nerds love.

But as the series progressed and they began aiming at a wider audience, the references were aimed more at the casual viewer. It shifted from a show that was for nerds, to a show that was making fun of nerds. The viewership shifted away from former nerds, and suddenly it was the former bullies watching it instead.

It truly lost itself when it became a relationship drama. At that point it was just a bland milquetoast sitcom with one-liners and “will they won’t they” types of writing. Name a sitcom and you can probably think of a few solid jokes from it… But that isn’t really true for BBT. It didn’t really have any solid memorable scenes, because they all eventually blurred together.

Aged like a first-class bottle of milk.

I watched two episodes before bouncing off hard. No idea how it got as popular as it did, because the jokes were just low effort and lazy.

Laugh track bullshit that basically tracks as “you-know-of-star-trek-then-you-know-nerd”

Call them all nerdy!… then give them miracle careers, a girlfriend with porn doll voice and no real heartache and yea…

hey penny! i´m a nerd without social skills. here´s a niche pop-culture reference you won´t understand. BOTSWANA

It’s for nerds that hate themselves.

My brother, my dad and I watched it together some 10+ years ago. I think people get too angry about it. Most sitcoms aren’t really funny, BBT isn’t unique. “Oh it has too much of a laugh track” they all do. I also think this idea that the show makes fun of nerd culture gets taken a little too far as well, for the same reason. The characters are sitcom characters. Name any sitcom and there will be dozens of youtube videos about how the characters are horrible to each other and don’t make good decisions. If they were decent, rational people then there wouldn’t be as much drama, so no show.

In our dub, they forgot put the canned laugh in the first seasson, you just hear silence when they make a pun, at that point i thought it would be a tragedy/comedy series in a sweat/bitter sabour. Then they put canned laugh and i leave

I refer to it as geek culture black face.

I loved it for the first 3 seasons. Then they turn it into the usual couples sitcom and lost all its appeal.

I liked the dynamic of having all main characters “fail” in life. Penny failed as an actress, Leonard failed in dating Penny, Howard failed as a playboy, Raj failed talking to women and Sheldon failed at social integration. They were all adorable losers that had fun while losing. For me it kinda was giving a lot of hope, like you don’t have to succeed in life to have a good time.

Then they made them all winners, they all became rich, and achieve all their goals. And all hope was lost. And the message was “you better succeed in life” which was depressing.

The “laughs” all felt from the outside. There was very little humor aimed at the people who would self identify as nerds and way more “haha look at these nerds and how quirky they are” set ups. Sure there are misogynist asshole nerds but usually they need to grow beyond that to find friends and partners. As far as I could tell none of them did. Sheldon and Howard were still super sexist, Leonard was still passive and whiny, but the story pushed forward foisting “perfect matches” on them.

Throughout the whole thing there was very little actual geek humor, and it felt denigrating to actual nerds.

If a show requires a laugh track to tell its viewers when to laugh, then it lacks substance enough to cause it without.

The autism representation is what happens when a writer has never met another person before.

I watched it for a time because other friends and coworkers did and it gave us something to talk about. But, generally speaking, I found the characters to be kinda awful people and while on the surface seemed like my friends and myself, they were at best poor approximations. The show was very clearly making fun of them most of the time, filled with horrible laugh tracks that prompt the viewer… I eventually just couldn’t stand it anymore and left. Honestly, I had forgotten about this show.

Around that same era there was a show called Community that was full of weird people and great storrytelling and was damn near the opposite of the Big Bang. Community is a show I still rewatch from time to time.

It made people with either mental or emotional or social dysfunction the butt of pretty much every joke.

Haha, he’s awkward.

Haha, he has a weird family dynamic.

Blegh.

It gave the audience the opportunity to laugh at ostensibly intelligent and educated people for enjoying nerd culture.

I honestly think it’s an abomination.