Now look I have no problem with offensive humour, stuff like South Park or Family Guy crack me up, but they're aware that they're insulting and they have fun with it. TBBT is constantly being unintentionally insulting and is constantly patting itself on the back for how it's brought nerds into the mainstream as cool when if anything it is highly insulting to nerds. The reason why I think this is because while the male characters do behave like nerds, the show makes fun of them for it; "Oh look they're playing dungeons & dragons, how silly is that?" "what? they speak Klingon? can you believe they're obsessed with this dorky stuff!?" we're supposed to be laughing at the nerds, not with them, this is not a positive representation of nerdy culture. While in other shows they celebrate nerd culture, such as in How I Met Your Mother, the obsession the characters have with Star Wars isn't laughed at because both the characters and writers genuinely see Star Wars are awesome (rightly so) so no one is ever told to laugh at the dorks who love Star Wars.
But apart from the nerd culture, TBBT makes fun of so many different cultures. For example they are constantly making fun of Howard being Jewish or Raj being indian, the difference being that they acknowledge they are being offensive about this by ending the joke with someone saying "hey, that's racist!" and this is supposed to make everything better? No, acknowledging that you're being offensive doesn't make it any less offensive, nor does it make it any funnier. But they do this with everything, religion, race, sexuality, the show seems to think that acknowledging your being offensive makes it okay, when in reality it just makes the writers come across as cowardice, it's like those people that start off their sentences with "I'm not racist, but...".
And without a doubt the worst offense is their representation of mental health. Now I don't care what the creators of the show say, Sheldon has autism and that is a fact, when multiple professional doctors have stated that Sheldon shows clear signs of autism you can't brush it off by saying "Sheldon is just Sheldon". No, he's not just Sheldon, he's autistic, the only reason why you refuse to admit this is because even you're not willing to cross that line to admit you're making fun of someone with a mental health issue, if they just straight up said Sheldon is autistic (which he is) then suddenly it doesn't become as funny when they make fun of him for something he can't control does it? All I can say is FUCK YOU!
And even if we were to take the offensive humour out of it, the show is just so repetitive, every episode the characters will make the same jokes over and over and over and over and over again without any variation on them or an attempt to give them new jokes, don't believe me? I'll prove it. Leonard: "I'm awkward and self-conscious about dating someone way out of my league" Penny: "I'm dumb in comparison to all of my other friends so i'll just have a blank face and drink some wine" Amy: "I'm sexual deprived and horny for Sheldon or Penny" Raj: "I'm foreign and potentially gay but really I'm just lonely" Howard: "I'm Jewish and my mother is annoying and I'm horny" Sheldon: "I'm autistic and don't understand basic social conventions but i'll use some slang which is funny because I don't normally say stuff like that...bazinga!" Bernadette: "I'm short". There, try and find me a single episode where the characters don't rely on those repetitive jokes, it doesn't have to be all of them, just try and find me one episode where one character doesn't use their stereotypical joke.
This isn't a nerdy show, this is the equivalent of a hot girl wearing fake glasses and thinks that playing Call of Duty makes you a nerd.
-Danny
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