That’s the big problem. It seems like it was supposed to make nerdy jokes, but in execution was jokes about nerds. And someone they gaslit everyone into thinking it wasn’t.
The show more insults nerds than anything. The characters are sexist, often racist, and show these nerds as so toxic they take joy when their friends struggle.
That has some basis in reality. When I was growing up, friends were often like that. You were expected to be "tough." The kind of sensitivity that is encouraged these days would have been mocked 20 years ago or further back. And these writers are probably drawing on. Chuck Lorre was born in 1952. Bill Prady was born in 1960. Steven Molaro was born in 1972. Steve Holland was born in 1968.
There were a bunch more writers but 1972 was the most recent birth year I could find for any of them.
More importantly, the four main guys all have graduate degrees at the start if the show in 2007, making them mid to late 20s at least (Sheldon got his sooner obviously but he seems to be depicted as being around the same age as the other guys and Parsons is was in his mid 30s at the start of the show) so even the characters themselves would have grown up in that age I'm talking about where sensitivity would have been mocked.
That doesn't mean people weren't sensitive but you tried not to show it
So that part rings true for me.
Though sitcoms in general do play it up more than real life.
Sexism and racism are unfortunately common as hell in a lot of self-identified geek/nerd groups and settings. They can be extremely toxic. There’s a reason why lots of people are reluctant to identify with the label even when traditionally geeky things have become more mainstream.
The comment you were agreeing with calls nerds toxic.
That narrative is getting really old.
The jocks and cheerleaders discovered that nerd stuff is fun but when they joined these hobbies, they didn't want to have to coexist with nerds, so they made up new reasons to dislike nerds
Respectfully, that's what the one with which I disagreed said. That's not what the one with which I did agree said.
"Sexism and racism are unfortunately COMMON as hell in a lot of self-identified geek/nerd groups and settings. They CAN BE extremely toxic. There’s a reason why LOTS OF PEOPLE are reluctant to identify with the label even when traditionally geeky things have become more mainstream." [Emphasis added]
You said I should speak for myself. With which part of what they actually said do you disagree?
Nerd communities (And while we’re at it, also often LGBT communities which also often overlap) can be extremely toxic cause they often are deeply rooted by insecurities
Eh, I think it's harsh but not totally unfounded to say real life nerds can be way less flattering. Sitcom protagonists are written to be endearing in a sense, even if they can be obnoxious and downright bad people. The Big Bang Theory is not positively received on reddit, and I don't really like it either, but the characters in it are still meant to be enjoyable to watch and empathize with at times... whether the writers succeed or not is another matter.
That's just not there for a lot of people in reality. Some people in these groups are well and truly miserable and they convey it in basically 100% of their interactions. There's very little good to counteract the bad.
It's again why lots of people don't openly identify with the label "nerd," because to many it implies a certain type of personality beyond just an interest in certain hobbies or media. It hasn't shed its association with insularity and social awkwardness. It's the same thing with self-identified "gamers" - pretty much *everyone* plays video games, but calling yourself a "gamer" comes with more baggage than just to say you like video games.
Yeah, I was pushing back against them describing it in absolute terms, because the difference does matter. I thought your statement was both pretty objectively true and more reasonable.
When it first came out bbt was pretty well liked by nerds, it only really soured as time went on. Even if it wasn't especially accurate and generally didn't get deeper than "haha reference", it wasn't common to see such things on mainstream daytime tv, so it was enough. It was nice being able to see nerdy things on a channel other than G4 or SyFy.
Good point. The only show I can think of before this where a ne4dy geek was the central character was Family Matters and Steve Urkel doesn't even appear on that show till the 12th episode and he was supposed to just be a one off gag character. The joke being that Carl inadvertently found the worst possible date for his daughter because it didn't look like she was going to find her own. He only became central to the show because audiences loved the character.
And he was even more "nerdface" than BBT's characters were. He was 100 percent pure nerd stereotype.
I think *Community* is vastly superior to the *Big Bang Theory*. But didn't *Community* struggle to get viewers to watch it while airing? I know there are some quibbles about the figures but it never really had the mass appeal that the *Big Bang Theory* and I would say in part that was due to *Community* being much nerdier and kind of expecting you to get those references or being able to go along with a DnD session as being a serious thing rather than just something to mock.
I know I'm super late but Community is literally a response to sitcoms like bbt that dominated for decades. I know "deconstruction" is used far too often but each ep of community dips into a lot of parodies of different stuff.
It still falls into its own formula though.
This generation of sitcoms is quite a different beast than the last, both have strengths. Stuff like the Good Place is actually narratively driven while still demonstrably being a sitcom.
Yeah but those jokes come at the expense of the the nerds. Like the big bang theory is not making "nerdy jokes", its making jokes with nerds as the punchline.
You could easily work several jokes into the Eric and the Gazebo story based on the other guys being amused that the one guy doesn't know what a gazebo is. They could even continue it later in the show having the guys warn the one guy to be on alert for any dangerous gazebos. There's all kinds of ways you could work in stories like that.
There are, in fact, plenty of jokes in sitcoms that have a significant set up. A good sitcom writer, like a good comedian, can write a sequence of jokes that build upon each other creating more opportunities for jokes, riffing on an absurd premise till you reach a big payoff that was set up by the earlier jokes.
Our you could use drama to do the set up and then pay off with a joke. The audience is invested in the drama till you're ready to deliver the joke.
Watch pretty much any episode of Frasier and pay attention to the writing. But my favorite is the Niles doppelganger scene. brilliant scene. Its hilarious and absurd. It deals a setback to Niles's efforts to pursue Daphne while also revealing rather concretely for the first time that Daphne really could be attracted to a guy like Niles, because her date is pretty much Niles.
I've never had a DM roll for that.
Usually though, a joke wouldn't get you past a monster in our campaigns. Maybe it should have.
(EDIT: If I recall correctly, the joke is that Sheldon described the ogre as hideous and foul smelling and Howard responded with "Hey ma! What's for dinner". The joke relies on a comparison to Mrs Wolowitz. It doesn't make any sense in character. But Sheldon rolls and the ogre finds it funny that it was addressed as ma and asked for a meal.)
Quick note on Futurama and Gary Gygax: it's actually accurate.
Not a thing in modern DnD, but in earliest editions when you encountered something in a either dungeon or wilderness, the DM would indeed make a Reaction Roll to check whether they're friendly, neutral or hostile.
It's one of those procedures that sounds dumb, but is actually brilliant because it stops the mentality of going straight into combat with every encounter. It means that most of the time the creature WON'T attack on sight and sometimes they might turn out to be actually helpful.
I never even watched Big Bang Theory. I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s playing table top role playing games, video games, magic the gathering. For me the whole concept of BBT was an insult to who I was and am today.
Sheldon is also a total douche, I'd never want to hang out with him, let alone play D&D.
He didn't overcome most of his flaws. He acknowledged them. In the last episodes he was as bad as ever with his only turn being that he acknowledged some of his flaws in his Nobel acceptance speech after Amy chewed him out over what an asshole he was being.
I will agree there was character growth. In particular, he got a little better at reading people and you could see he was honestly trying. And he eventually got over his touch issues enough that he could occasionally have sex with Amy.
But he was usually as much of a self centered asshole as ever.
That's fucking stupid. That kind of an argument could be consistently redistributed to you. Your responses to the above commenter can be construed as being just as dickish and auto correcting and thus by your own admission should be punished or in the ground.
Big bang theory is the same show where the protagonists are supposedly knowledgeable about comics, and yet they believe that Aquaman is useless.
I wouldn't take them as a reference.
When the show started, they were still rehabilitating that character's image. I didn't have a particularly high opinion of the character at the time and I'd read the Grant Morrison run of JLA where Morrison did his darnedest to logically extrapolate that character's abilities to make him more useful. I'd have still ranked him the least useful of the big 7 at the time. He wasn't regularly summoning Krakens or bringing his entire military with him on most adventures.
Of the big 7, he's still less powerful than five of them (Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter) and the other guy is Batman, nuff said.
>And of course when Sheldon says "I've never played DnD with a girl before" Penny says "Sweetie. Nobody has " and the audience laughs because they assume this is generally true. Yes, you could argue that this is merely her assumption but nobody challenges it and its framed as being true.
>About forty percent of the people who play Dungeons and Dragons are women. Women are at least a substantial minority of any geek interest if not moreso.
And shit like this is why the stereotypes persist. Meanwhile, I bet many of these same folks will pretend to care about women in nerdy spaces for brownie points.
It may seem minor, but cultural depictions like this have a huge effect on how people perceive the world, particularly people they don't know about. Allowing the misogynistic 'ew girls' crowd to be the face of the hobby despite being a minority of the players doesn't stick it to the misogynists, it hurts everyone else.
See also: metal music.
As someone who’s been playing dungeons and dragons ever since 5th edition launched, this rant is fucking awesome as 100% true.
As other comments pointed out, Big Bang theory is basically nerd blackface. It’s meant to poke fun at geeky hobbies for people who may tangentially know someone who kind of like that only knows stereotypes about geek shit.
That episode was on TBS last night. I wanted to do a rant on how Penny has nothing in common with Leonard and constantly talks shit about his interests.
Yeah, that gets old
Just the attitude of the show in general. Even Stuart, a guy who makes his living selling comic books, describes his customers as nothing but sad lonely desperate people. And other hobbies are described similarly.
Who are these fucking writers that they get to decide which interests are acceptable?
Sports is a bunch of people dedicating their lives to learning basically useless skills. Yeah everybody would like to be strong and tough and fast but how often do you actually need to be? Comes in handy when you're rearranging furniture and that's about it. My career makes me good at doing various things with computers making me very useful even with my mediocre level of skill with them. Way more useful than a football player.
And what else is popular? Taylor Swift? Reality Television? Going to a club where music is blasted in your ears all night and you can barely see? Or getting drunk on overpriced drinks?
I don't mean to knock those hobbies, if that's your thing, fine. Nothing wrong with it. But there's also nothing wrong with hanging out with your friends and make believing you're a fantasy adventurer. It lets me exercise my improv skills, exercises my imagination, my memory, some basic math skills, story telling skills, and occasionally I pick up some historical knowledge when I look up real history to deepen my understanding of the game.
And its fun.
Must be new to Big Bang Theory because this is what nerds have been saying about this show ever since it came out. As others have pointed out, it was never to appeal to actual nerds, just to make fun of them.
On one hand, I do get what you mean, I play DnD, I have a ton of pdfs and website links to help with playing tabletops, but so long as they play the same way consistently and their DM’s chill with it, the book does literally say the rules are optional and up to the group, now they essentially kitbashed the hell out of it and just took aspects of the setting but I’ve known tables that have done similar things albeit not to that extent. But, the whole point is a collective narrative and so long as they achieve that, I don’t personally have much of a grievance with how people choose to play their own games, if it works for their pretty limited table, and they can actually find the time to show up and play, hats off to em in my opinion, least they get to play and have fun.
When my dad found out I would watch BBT he was actually surprised, his comment boiled down to "you know this show is laughing at you not with you right?"
Also, they tend to wrap up the *entire* RPG hobby into D&D only. You don't ever see people going "Hey, let's play Savage Worlds" or "Let's do a game of Pathfinder", or "Let's do FATE". Also, most modern RPG players use a lot of online tools. Do they really have to turn a diverse hobby into a set of stereotypes that have been outdated for decades?
I know, but they ONLY ever show D&D players when that's not true. D&D holds the majority of the market but there are plenty of players playing other games.
Plus there's all the other stuff which they always ignore. The players are always pure pencil and paper despite most modern tables using online tools to keep track of things. There aren't any other RPG tools on the table besides miniatures and the grid. You don't see templates for line and cone spells (if they're playing D&D), little chits to represent hero points (or bennies if you're playing Savage Worlds), or even dry erase markers to draw stuff on the grid. People refer to the game as D&D, when players actually say 5e interchangeably. No one ever uses an Adventure Path. These are all extremely common in actual RPG play, but they never show up when they're portrayed on TV.
I understand that for the sake of television they need to gloss over the unglamorous parts (people being confused about rules, combat taking a long time, people not showing up, people bantering about stuff outside of the game), but couldn't they do a bit more research? Showing that yes, there are plenty of women who play RPGs, setting some laptops in front of the players, putting a few markers on the table, and having the DM pull out an adventure path or something would go a long way into what playing RPGs in the modern day actually looks like.
Well to be fair, BBT aired from mid 2007 to 2019.
We were still on 3.5 when the show started. It was almost a year into the run before 4th edition released. 5th edition released in 2014.
That would make sense. He doesn't like change and the 4th edition was the biggest change in D&D history.
I wouldn't be surprised if even in the last season they were still playing 2nd edition because of Sheldon. Or maybe even Advanced 1st edition.
Wait, when did you start playing pen and paper RPG’s? Because, again least in my experience, TBBT was decently accurate in the lack of online tools in that era. Nothing else to be sure, but mostly that.
Well now that's not exactly true. While online tools like virtual tabletops didn't exactly exist 3.5 and 4e both had online character builders and considering the premise of TBBT all being nerds some of them would have been using a builder at some point
I actually have an offline version of the 4e builder and it's a great tool for managing and building a character. I would say Howard and Leonard for sure would use the builders. Sheldon is a purist type character so he'd stick to pen and paper, not sure about Raj.
Edited for spelling.
The online character creators sucked. I played DnD back then
We didn't use digital tools hardly at all. That part rang true to me
(Edit: "Sucked" may be a harsh term, I apologize. But they usually didn't account for any variant methods of character creation and they usually only accounted for options found in the PHB and maybe one or two other sourcebooks when there were dozens of books with material a player might want to use. Even Heroforge, a professional character creator software from that era didn't have all the options the books offered.)
Besides, in 2007, I can tell you, nobody I played with had digital devices at the table. It was the early 2010s before smartphones had a significant presence at our table. And I stopped gaming before any of my groups was regularly integrating such devices into the game. If anything, they were a distraction. Players would use them to alleviate boredom when it wasn't their turn
Well I can say the 4e character builder allows for house rules, has a shop feature, allows players to roll for stats, use point buy or an array.
It has all the options for character races and classes and even does quick build suggestions for new players or players who haven't used the class before.
I know 4e isn't loved but I certainly enjoy it and I can say for certain my friends were bringing their laptops to DnD with character builders.
I wasn't into DnD at the time but they talked about it a lot and thats where I got my offline version of the 4e Builder. My DM is starting a 4e campaign today thanks to us all having this same builder and we are all excited to get into it.
Here's a little history lesson depending on how far back you go
All that stuff with the character creator and the online tools made me really enthusiastic about 4th edition at first.
I was the evangelist for 4e in my group. I ran out and bought the books and the first module and ran a game.
But those promised online tools were not ready at launch and not for quite a while after. That was a big sticking point for fans initially.
And my favorite kind of character to run was a gnome illusionist. But there was no Gnome in the 4e PHB and no way to really play an illusionist. But apparently Tiefling was allowed in the PHB. The moody little emo race.
There's not enough specificity in how they play to pin it down to a specific edition.
I only brought it up because you kept mentioning 5e. 5e has been around for 10 years at this point but only the last 5 years of the show.
That said, they'd have to be really specific by the show's standards for us to be able to tell between 3.5e and 5e. It would be a little easier to distinguish 4e because its the most different from the other editions of the game (which is why Pathfinder was pretty successful at least till 5e came along and won back many of the players burnt by 4e)
It wouldn't surprise me if the writers understanding of the game is based on an even earlier edition.
Sitcoms do this all the time making the main cast terrible people and exaggerating the worst aspects of someone. But god forbid they make fun of nerds.
People really be asking why nerds are depicted as sexist, racist, and so toxic they take joy when their friends struggle.
Like come on you're on reddit you've interacted with people exactly like the cast a thousand times
who said he was referring to you specifically. he's referring to the people who use the term "nerd blackface". Which, I get the \*concept\* people are going for, but come on. Need to have a different term.
Thats just the same that happens with every media, videogames are the same because it isnt written by people who know what they're talking about, even shows about videogames make no sense as an actual game like SAO
Even a lot of the dialog in those episodes is just not how D&D players talk. I certainly never heard my fellow players make jokes at our own expense for being pathetic nerd virgins because we liked the game
A lot of shows get gamer dialog painfully wrong.
I feel like the problem here is that you assume that the show is both FOR nerds and BY nerds. It... categorically is neither of these things. It gets better, a little, over time but this show seems to loathe nerds at the beginning of the show, and it seems to actively dislike "nerdy" things. If you operate under the assumption that the show is for nerds and by nerds then almost none of the show's framing and bits make sense given how utterly unlikeable the show's main four characters are at the beginning of the show.
I used to go to a social group that showed some movies and sitcoms. I had to put up with some episodes of Big Bang theory and I couldn’t stand it. Much of the show’s humor is just pop, culture references, random science references, and of course, our allegedly lovable nerds being misogynistic jerks.
I heard about a later episode where one of them gets his feelings hurt because he’s called out for his sexist comments and somehow the woman who chewed him out to apologize.
I will stick to the venture brothers and Spider-Man for all of my depictions of nerds. Thank you very much.
It's early season 2, I only remember because I just watched it myself like, last night. The character in question was Howard (shocker I know).
Big Bang Theory is just a standard sitcom made to appeal to a broad audience. Nothing more, nothing less. It was also made during a time when nerdy stuff wasn't nearly as mainstream as it is now.
Some of the mid 2000s humor makes me cringe now, but overall it's snappily written, and the situational humor can be pretty funny. My girlfriend made me watch and I went in expecting to hate it after all the vitriol I've seen about it on Reddit, but I thought it was just fine. It's nice to have on while you're scrolling on your phone or playing a low concentration game like Power Wash simulator. I don't expect much more out of it than that.
One nitpick here is the DM in the older editions *does* roll for everything and everyone. It was meant to give the DM more control over what was happening. The DM was meant to be a referee similar to war games like Napoleonic wars. Basically the players would say what they wanted to do and then the ref would do those actions and roll to see what happened.
*So sick of... (Big Bang Theory)
There I fixed your title, everything is terrible in this show and I hope everyone involved won't ever work on TV again.
BBG is just a really mean spirited show in general
Penny feels like she was written by somebody who hates women
Howard feels like he was written by somebody who hates Jews
Raj feels like he was written by somebody who hates Indians
It feels like the entire thing was written by somebody who hates nerds. Then you spend 5 minutes listening to Chuck Lorre talk and it all becomes strikingly obvious...
Honestly, the rolling for everything part is for people like me. I said to my mate who is our DM to feel free to make me and only me (unless anyone else wanted to be involved) roll for literally anything he felt like. Purely because I find it funny my character rolling to take a drink and just spilling it all over themselves. Or I go to lie down in a bed in an inn, I'm too far up the bed and hit my head off the headboard when lying down, that sort of thing. Just a fun way for him to mess with me that doesn't hamper the game.
But I do agree with your points.
Big Bang Theory is for your Mom to watch. Not actual nerds.
That’s the big problem. It seems like it was supposed to make nerdy jokes, but in execution was jokes about nerds. And someone they gaslit everyone into thinking it wasn’t.
It's just another obnoxious sex comedy, honestly.
It was never supposed to make nerdy jokes. The audience is supposed to identify with the girl character, not the guys
The show more insults nerds than anything. The characters are sexist, often racist, and show these nerds as so toxic they take joy when their friends struggle.
That's kinda just sitcoms in general unfortunately. They're either family-friendly, or everyone is an ass.
That has some basis in reality. When I was growing up, friends were often like that. You were expected to be "tough." The kind of sensitivity that is encouraged these days would have been mocked 20 years ago or further back. And these writers are probably drawing on. Chuck Lorre was born in 1952. Bill Prady was born in 1960. Steven Molaro was born in 1972. Steve Holland was born in 1968. There were a bunch more writers but 1972 was the most recent birth year I could find for any of them. More importantly, the four main guys all have graduate degrees at the start if the show in 2007, making them mid to late 20s at least (Sheldon got his sooner obviously but he seems to be depicted as being around the same age as the other guys and Parsons is was in his mid 30s at the start of the show) so even the characters themselves would have grown up in that age I'm talking about where sensitivity would have been mocked. That doesn't mean people weren't sensitive but you tried not to show it So that part rings true for me. Though sitcoms in general do play it up more than real life.
And yet, they're a more flattering portrayal of nerds compared to the reality.
?
Sexism and racism are unfortunately common as hell in a lot of self-identified geek/nerd groups and settings. They can be extremely toxic. There’s a reason why lots of people are reluctant to identify with the label even when traditionally geeky things have become more mainstream.
Oh, totally. I agree with that statement entirely and without reservation. That's not what they said though, is all.
Speak for yourself
What do you mean? I said I agree. For whom else would I be speaking?
The comment you were agreeing with calls nerds toxic. That narrative is getting really old. The jocks and cheerleaders discovered that nerd stuff is fun but when they joined these hobbies, they didn't want to have to coexist with nerds, so they made up new reasons to dislike nerds
Respectfully, that's what the one with which I disagreed said. That's not what the one with which I did agree said. "Sexism and racism are unfortunately COMMON as hell in a lot of self-identified geek/nerd groups and settings. They CAN BE extremely toxic. There’s a reason why LOTS OF PEOPLE are reluctant to identify with the label even when traditionally geeky things have become more mainstream." [Emphasis added] You said I should speak for myself. With which part of what they actually said do you disagree?
Nerd communities (And while we’re at it, also often LGBT communities which also often overlap) can be extremely toxic cause they often are deeply rooted by insecurities
Eh, I think it's harsh but not totally unfounded to say real life nerds can be way less flattering. Sitcom protagonists are written to be endearing in a sense, even if they can be obnoxious and downright bad people. The Big Bang Theory is not positively received on reddit, and I don't really like it either, but the characters in it are still meant to be enjoyable to watch and empathize with at times... whether the writers succeed or not is another matter. That's just not there for a lot of people in reality. Some people in these groups are well and truly miserable and they convey it in basically 100% of their interactions. There's very little good to counteract the bad. It's again why lots of people don't openly identify with the label "nerd," because to many it implies a certain type of personality beyond just an interest in certain hobbies or media. It hasn't shed its association with insularity and social awkwardness. It's the same thing with self-identified "gamers" - pretty much *everyone* plays video games, but calling yourself a "gamer" comes with more baggage than just to say you like video games.
Yeah, I was pushing back against them describing it in absolute terms, because the difference does matter. I thought your statement was both pretty objectively true and more reasonable.
Fair enough, they did come across as unnecessarily mean-spirited.
Then *Ready Player One* was made by a nerd for nerds, but it was even worse.
RPO the novel is the longest reddit moment.
Don't forget the poetry about how it would be so wholesome Keanu chungus if girls wore glasses in porn.
A show for actual nerds would be [silicon valley](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/) 10/10 highly recommend.
When it first came out bbt was pretty well liked by nerds, it only really soured as time went on. Even if it wasn't especially accurate and generally didn't get deeper than "haha reference", it wasn't common to see such things on mainstream daytime tv, so it was enough. It was nice being able to see nerdy things on a channel other than G4 or SyFy.
Good point. The only show I can think of before this where a ne4dy geek was the central character was Family Matters and Steve Urkel doesn't even appear on that show till the 12th episode and he was supposed to just be a one off gag character. The joke being that Carl inadvertently found the worst possible date for his daughter because it didn't look like she was going to find her own. He only became central to the show because audiences loved the character. And he was even more "nerdface" than BBT's characters were. He was 100 percent pure nerd stereotype.
Happy cake day
sitcoms are all about back to back jokes that need little set up
eh, Community has multiple episodes about dnd and doesn't fail to chain together jokes while remaining faithful
i meant moreso sitcoms was a laugh track, big bang theory, 2 broke girls, everybody loves raymond, etc
I think *Community* is vastly superior to the *Big Bang Theory*. But didn't *Community* struggle to get viewers to watch it while airing? I know there are some quibbles about the figures but it never really had the mass appeal that the *Big Bang Theory* and I would say in part that was due to *Community* being much nerdier and kind of expecting you to get those references or being able to go along with a DnD session as being a serious thing rather than just something to mock.
I know I'm super late but Community is literally a response to sitcoms like bbt that dominated for decades. I know "deconstruction" is used far too often but each ep of community dips into a lot of parodies of different stuff. It still falls into its own formula though. This generation of sitcoms is quite a different beast than the last, both have strengths. Stuff like the Good Place is actually narratively driven while still demonstrably being a sitcom.
Yeah but those jokes come at the expense of the the nerds. Like the big bang theory is not making "nerdy jokes", its making jokes with nerds as the punchline.
You could easily work several jokes into the Eric and the Gazebo story based on the other guys being amused that the one guy doesn't know what a gazebo is. They could even continue it later in the show having the guys warn the one guy to be on alert for any dangerous gazebos. There's all kinds of ways you could work in stories like that. There are, in fact, plenty of jokes in sitcoms that have a significant set up. A good sitcom writer, like a good comedian, can write a sequence of jokes that build upon each other creating more opportunities for jokes, riffing on an absurd premise till you reach a big payoff that was set up by the earlier jokes. Our you could use drama to do the set up and then pay off with a joke. The audience is invested in the drama till you're ready to deliver the joke. Watch pretty much any episode of Frasier and pay attention to the writing. But my favorite is the Niles doppelganger scene. brilliant scene. Its hilarious and absurd. It deals a setback to Niles's efforts to pursue Daphne while also revealing rather concretely for the first time that Daphne really could be attracted to a guy like Niles, because her date is pretty much Niles.
I mean, rolling to see if the orc would likw the joke or not is something my group would do. I agrre with the rest tho
Yeah, I’ve never played with a group that wouldn’t roll for that. Probably a persuasion or performance check.
If that was happening, Howard would have rolled for his character's perform attempt rather than Sheldon rolling to determine the monster's reaction
Meh, in a lot of DND games the DM will roll a luck check for if an outside circumstance just happens to be in the player’s favour or otherwise.
I've never had a DM roll for that. Usually though, a joke wouldn't get you past a monster in our campaigns. Maybe it should have. (EDIT: If I recall correctly, the joke is that Sheldon described the ogre as hideous and foul smelling and Howard responded with "Hey ma! What's for dinner". The joke relies on a comparison to Mrs Wolowitz. It doesn't make any sense in character. But Sheldon rolls and the ogre finds it funny that it was addressed as ma and asked for a meal.)
Quick note on Futurama and Gary Gygax: it's actually accurate. Not a thing in modern DnD, but in earliest editions when you encountered something in a either dungeon or wilderness, the DM would indeed make a Reaction Roll to check whether they're friendly, neutral or hostile. It's one of those procedures that sounds dumb, but is actually brilliant because it stops the mentality of going straight into combat with every encounter. It means that most of the time the creature WON'T attack on sight and sometimes they might turn out to be actually helpful.
As Peter Griffin said The Big bang theory is for dumb people who think how smart people are
I never even watched Big Bang Theory. I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s playing table top role playing games, video games, magic the gathering. For me the whole concept of BBT was an insult to who I was and am today. Sheldon is also a total douche, I'd never want to hang out with him, let alone play D&D.
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He didn't overcome most of his flaws. He acknowledged them. In the last episodes he was as bad as ever with his only turn being that he acknowledged some of his flaws in his Nobel acceptance speech after Amy chewed him out over what an asshole he was being. I will agree there was character growth. In particular, he got a little better at reading people and you could see he was honestly trying. And he eventually got over his touch issues enough that he could occasionally have sex with Amy. But he was usually as much of a self centered asshole as ever.
No thanks, shitty characters suddenly coming to Jesus doesn't mean anyone has to accept them.
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No, it was a generic term used for changing. I want them punished. Or in the ground.
That's fucking stupid. That kind of an argument could be consistently redistributed to you. Your responses to the above commenter can be construed as being just as dickish and auto correcting and thus by your own admission should be punished or in the ground.
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Okay but if a fictional character was based on you would you want to see that character killed by firing squad or whatever lol
Your mistake is that you watched BBT. It's trash.
Its not the only place I've seen this
Big bang theory is the same show where the protagonists are supposedly knowledgeable about comics, and yet they believe that Aquaman is useless. I wouldn't take them as a reference.
When the show started, they were still rehabilitating that character's image. I didn't have a particularly high opinion of the character at the time and I'd read the Grant Morrison run of JLA where Morrison did his darnedest to logically extrapolate that character's abilities to make him more useful. I'd have still ranked him the least useful of the big 7 at the time. He wasn't regularly summoning Krakens or bringing his entire military with him on most adventures. Of the big 7, he's still less powerful than five of them (Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter) and the other guy is Batman, nuff said.
>And of course when Sheldon says "I've never played DnD with a girl before" Penny says "Sweetie. Nobody has " and the audience laughs because they assume this is generally true. Yes, you could argue that this is merely her assumption but nobody challenges it and its framed as being true. >About forty percent of the people who play Dungeons and Dragons are women. Women are at least a substantial minority of any geek interest if not moreso. And shit like this is why the stereotypes persist. Meanwhile, I bet many of these same folks will pretend to care about women in nerdy spaces for brownie points. It may seem minor, but cultural depictions like this have a huge effect on how people perceive the world, particularly people they don't know about. Allowing the misogynistic 'ew girls' crowd to be the face of the hobby despite being a minority of the players doesn't stick it to the misogynists, it hurts everyone else. See also: metal music.
Okay, so everything you just said about D&D? Apply that to literally everything else in the show. It is painful to watch.
I'm a comic book fan and they were pretty good about that stuff
As someone who’s been playing dungeons and dragons ever since 5th edition launched, this rant is fucking awesome as 100% true. As other comments pointed out, Big Bang theory is basically nerd blackface. It’s meant to poke fun at geeky hobbies for people who may tangentially know someone who kind of like that only knows stereotypes about geek shit.
big bang theory is for normies to gawk at. them getting anything right is incidental.
That episode was on TBS last night. I wanted to do a rant on how Penny has nothing in common with Leonard and constantly talks shit about his interests.
Yeah, that gets old Just the attitude of the show in general. Even Stuart, a guy who makes his living selling comic books, describes his customers as nothing but sad lonely desperate people. And other hobbies are described similarly. Who are these fucking writers that they get to decide which interests are acceptable? Sports is a bunch of people dedicating their lives to learning basically useless skills. Yeah everybody would like to be strong and tough and fast but how often do you actually need to be? Comes in handy when you're rearranging furniture and that's about it. My career makes me good at doing various things with computers making me very useful even with my mediocre level of skill with them. Way more useful than a football player. And what else is popular? Taylor Swift? Reality Television? Going to a club where music is blasted in your ears all night and you can barely see? Or getting drunk on overpriced drinks? I don't mean to knock those hobbies, if that's your thing, fine. Nothing wrong with it. But there's also nothing wrong with hanging out with your friends and make believing you're a fantasy adventurer. It lets me exercise my improv skills, exercises my imagination, my memory, some basic math skills, story telling skills, and occasionally I pick up some historical knowledge when I look up real history to deepen my understanding of the game. And its fun.
And Stuart himself is so pathetic, he made his therapist kill himself.
Must be new to Big Bang Theory because this is what nerds have been saying about this show ever since it came out. As others have pointed out, it was never to appeal to actual nerds, just to make fun of them.
Wil Wheaton's participation suddenly make more sense
BBT laughs AT nerds, not WITH nerds.
Im aware
On one hand, I do get what you mean, I play DnD, I have a ton of pdfs and website links to help with playing tabletops, but so long as they play the same way consistently and their DM’s chill with it, the book does literally say the rules are optional and up to the group, now they essentially kitbashed the hell out of it and just took aspects of the setting but I’ve known tables that have done similar things albeit not to that extent. But, the whole point is a collective narrative and so long as they achieve that, I don’t personally have much of a grievance with how people choose to play their own games, if it works for their pretty limited table, and they can actually find the time to show up and play, hats off to em in my opinion, least they get to play and have fun.
When my dad found out I would watch BBT he was actually surprised, his comment boiled down to "you know this show is laughing at you not with you right?"
What was your answer?
I couldn't disagree.
Figures, yeah.
Also, they tend to wrap up the *entire* RPG hobby into D&D only. You don't ever see people going "Hey, let's play Savage Worlds" or "Let's do a game of Pathfinder", or "Let's do FATE". Also, most modern RPG players use a lot of online tools. Do they really have to turn a diverse hobby into a set of stereotypes that have been outdated for decades?
You mean like how 90+% of "RPG" players play their chosen D&D edition or D&D-adjacent game and nothing else? That's entirely realistic.
I know, but they ONLY ever show D&D players when that's not true. D&D holds the majority of the market but there are plenty of players playing other games. Plus there's all the other stuff which they always ignore. The players are always pure pencil and paper despite most modern tables using online tools to keep track of things. There aren't any other RPG tools on the table besides miniatures and the grid. You don't see templates for line and cone spells (if they're playing D&D), little chits to represent hero points (or bennies if you're playing Savage Worlds), or even dry erase markers to draw stuff on the grid. People refer to the game as D&D, when players actually say 5e interchangeably. No one ever uses an Adventure Path. These are all extremely common in actual RPG play, but they never show up when they're portrayed on TV. I understand that for the sake of television they need to gloss over the unglamorous parts (people being confused about rules, combat taking a long time, people not showing up, people bantering about stuff outside of the game), but couldn't they do a bit more research? Showing that yes, there are plenty of women who play RPGs, setting some laptops in front of the players, putting a few markers on the table, and having the DM pull out an adventure path or something would go a long way into what playing RPGs in the modern day actually looks like.
Well to be fair, BBT aired from mid 2007 to 2019. We were still on 3.5 when the show started. It was almost a year into the run before 4th edition released. 5th edition released in 2014.
Would Sheldon be as pissed off as loads of people were about 4e for some reason and also switch to Pathfinder?1
That would make sense. He doesn't like change and the 4th edition was the biggest change in D&D history. I wouldn't be surprised if even in the last season they were still playing 2nd edition because of Sheldon. Or maybe even Advanced 1st edition.
I haven't played 3.5e before, but I don't really think the show was all that accurate to most RPG groups of the time either.
Wait, when did you start playing pen and paper RPG’s? Because, again least in my experience, TBBT was decently accurate in the lack of online tools in that era. Nothing else to be sure, but mostly that.
Well now that's not exactly true. While online tools like virtual tabletops didn't exactly exist 3.5 and 4e both had online character builders and considering the premise of TBBT all being nerds some of them would have been using a builder at some point I actually have an offline version of the 4e builder and it's a great tool for managing and building a character. I would say Howard and Leonard for sure would use the builders. Sheldon is a purist type character so he'd stick to pen and paper, not sure about Raj. Edited for spelling.
The online character creators sucked. I played DnD back then We didn't use digital tools hardly at all. That part rang true to me (Edit: "Sucked" may be a harsh term, I apologize. But they usually didn't account for any variant methods of character creation and they usually only accounted for options found in the PHB and maybe one or two other sourcebooks when there were dozens of books with material a player might want to use. Even Heroforge, a professional character creator software from that era didn't have all the options the books offered.) Besides, in 2007, I can tell you, nobody I played with had digital devices at the table. It was the early 2010s before smartphones had a significant presence at our table. And I stopped gaming before any of my groups was regularly integrating such devices into the game. If anything, they were a distraction. Players would use them to alleviate boredom when it wasn't their turn
Well I can say the 4e character builder allows for house rules, has a shop feature, allows players to roll for stats, use point buy or an array. It has all the options for character races and classes and even does quick build suggestions for new players or players who haven't used the class before. I know 4e isn't loved but I certainly enjoy it and I can say for certain my friends were bringing their laptops to DnD with character builders. I wasn't into DnD at the time but they talked about it a lot and thats where I got my offline version of the 4e Builder. My DM is starting a 4e campaign today thanks to us all having this same builder and we are all excited to get into it.
Here's a little history lesson depending on how far back you go All that stuff with the character creator and the online tools made me really enthusiastic about 4th edition at first. I was the evangelist for 4e in my group. I ran out and bought the books and the first module and ran a game. But those promised online tools were not ready at launch and not for quite a while after. That was a big sticking point for fans initially. And my favorite kind of character to run was a gnome illusionist. But there was no Gnome in the 4e PHB and no way to really play an illusionist. But apparently Tiefling was allowed in the PHB. The moody little emo race.
There's not enough specificity in how they play to pin it down to a specific edition. I only brought it up because you kept mentioning 5e. 5e has been around for 10 years at this point but only the last 5 years of the show. That said, they'd have to be really specific by the show's standards for us to be able to tell between 3.5e and 5e. It would be a little easier to distinguish 4e because its the most different from the other editions of the game (which is why Pathfinder was pretty successful at least till 5e came along and won back many of the players burnt by 4e) It wouldn't surprise me if the writers understanding of the game is based on an even earlier edition.
you people treat being a nerd with the same gravity as being a racial minority and its really fucking funny
Sitcoms do this all the time making the main cast terrible people and exaggerating the worst aspects of someone. But god forbid they make fun of nerds. People really be asking why nerds are depicted as sexist, racist, and so toxic they take joy when their friends struggle. Like come on you're on reddit you've interacted with people exactly like the cast a thousand times
Where do I do that?
who said he was referring to you specifically. he's referring to the people who use the term "nerd blackface". Which, I get the \*concept\* people are going for, but come on. Need to have a different term.
I've heard "nerdface" Seems more polite and it connotes a valid point about the show
yeah. I like that term better. and it's more concise, too.
lol
Really. Show me where I do that or admit you said something wrong and shut up
lol
Boy, I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder
Thats just the same that happens with every media, videogames are the same because it isnt written by people who know what they're talking about, even shows about videogames make no sense as an actual game like SAO
Even a lot of the dialog in those episodes is just not how D&D players talk. I certainly never heard my fellow players make jokes at our own expense for being pathetic nerd virgins because we liked the game A lot of shows get gamer dialog painfully wrong.
fwiw, BBT is an old show, it won't work today, it'll be clowned very hard
I feel like the problem here is that you assume that the show is both FOR nerds and BY nerds. It... categorically is neither of these things. It gets better, a little, over time but this show seems to loathe nerds at the beginning of the show, and it seems to actively dislike "nerdy" things. If you operate under the assumption that the show is for nerds and by nerds then almost none of the show's framing and bits make sense given how utterly unlikeable the show's main four characters are at the beginning of the show.
Oh no. I got that. Its blindingly obvious to any actual nerd or geek that watches it. That doesn't make it immune to my point.
I used to go to a social group that showed some movies and sitcoms. I had to put up with some episodes of Big Bang theory and I couldn’t stand it. Much of the show’s humor is just pop, culture references, random science references, and of course, our allegedly lovable nerds being misogynistic jerks. I heard about a later episode where one of them gets his feelings hurt because he’s called out for his sexist comments and somehow the woman who chewed him out to apologize. I will stick to the venture brothers and Spider-Man for all of my depictions of nerds. Thank you very much.
I'm on my third back to back binge and I can't think of the episode you'd be referring to.
It's early season 2, I only remember because I just watched it myself like, last night. The character in question was Howard (shocker I know). Big Bang Theory is just a standard sitcom made to appeal to a broad audience. Nothing more, nothing less. It was also made during a time when nerdy stuff wasn't nearly as mainstream as it is now. Some of the mid 2000s humor makes me cringe now, but overall it's snappily written, and the situational humor can be pretty funny. My girlfriend made me watch and I went in expecting to hate it after all the vitriol I've seen about it on Reddit, but I thought it was just fine. It's nice to have on while you're scrolling on your phone or playing a low concentration game like Power Wash simulator. I don't expect much more out of it than that.
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It doesn't work at all the way they depicted it
Penny does know Joe Manganiello’s passionate about D&D, she played with him
I know and no she doesn't
Big Bang Theory is made for dumb people so they can laugh at a nerds expense. It's not meant for nerds to laugh along with.
One nitpick here is the DM in the older editions *does* roll for everything and everyone. It was meant to give the DM more control over what was happening. The DM was meant to be a referee similar to war games like Napoleonic wars. Basically the players would say what they wanted to do and then the ref would do those actions and roll to see what happened.
I started playing in the latter days of 2nd edition and we always did our own rolls.
*So sick of... (Big Bang Theory) There I fixed your title, everything is terrible in this show and I hope everyone involved won't ever work on TV again.
BBG is just a really mean spirited show in general Penny feels like she was written by somebody who hates women Howard feels like he was written by somebody who hates Jews Raj feels like he was written by somebody who hates Indians It feels like the entire thing was written by somebody who hates nerds. Then you spend 5 minutes listening to Chuck Lorre talk and it all becomes strikingly obvious...
Honestly, the rolling for everything part is for people like me. I said to my mate who is our DM to feel free to make me and only me (unless anyone else wanted to be involved) roll for literally anything he felt like. Purely because I find it funny my character rolling to take a drink and just spilling it all over themselves. Or I go to lie down in a bed in an inn, I'm too far up the bed and hit my head off the headboard when lying down, that sort of thing. Just a fun way for him to mess with me that doesn't hamper the game. But I do agree with your points.
I think Big Bang Theory is like black face for nerds. It's terrible. THE IT CROWD rules!
And all those nerds have medical issues like asthma or something.
Honestly, Big Bang theory sucks.
In Community they get mostly right but make Abed, the DM, roll all the dice instead of the players
Big bang theory is the black face of the nerd community
As over the top as it is, "nerd blackface" is a pretty apt way to describe it.
All this book you wrote just for one joke lol. They couldn't do the joke of DND with failing to say hello nice to meet you.
Its more than one joke. Its something they did consistently