I've watched every episode (up until around late April, I think.)
I was always really bothered by the fact that Sheldon's own 'friends' don't seem to like or value him. Maybe it's me who doesn't understand friendship well, but I feel like the only really convincing friendship on the show is between Howard and Raj.
(...)
It's true that watching Community leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy about my fellow Human Beans. TBBT doesn't.
Here's the thing, TBBT
used to give me warm and fuzzy feelings. Finally there was a show who portrayed the friendship and different-ness of nerds. I saw myself in them, my bf saw himself in them. Having Penny getting to know them was always the core of the show for me. I have two favorite moments on the show: the one is the Christmas ep where Sheldon hugs Penny, the other is when Penny defends the boys from a newly moved in neighbour who's clearly taking advantage of the boys - like Penny herself used to do. It shows us the change/growth of the Penny character, these are two very different types of people (Penny vs her neighbours) who learns to get along and even become friends.
That's the thing, the heart of the show to me was always "it doesn't matter who you were in high school or what your interests were/are, we really aren't that different after all", best portrayed by Penny and specifically Sheldon and Leonard. I loved the first two-three seasons. After that, the show has worked itself steadily towards an uninteresting Sitcom. I don't know if that's because the show grew big and the more experienced writers were brought in from the Network to give them work. I have no idea. The jokes started becoming more flat, and the show didn't have the interesting twist it had when it started out.
For me, the show went downhill when they decided to "normalize" the boys: The relationship between Penny and Sheldon seemed forced to me, and happened too fast. Howard was always more interesting when he was a sleaze ball who never got it right. (The episode where Penny is a bitch to him, then apologizes, leading to Howard trying to kiss her, is awesome.)
Then there is the fact that they for some reason felt they needed girl nerds in there, which would have been fine had they not been brought in simply as love interests. (Leslie Winkle did a fine job of "girl nerd", they didn't have to bring in regulars in my opinion.) They brought in Bernadette and Amy as love interests to Sheldon and Howard, two boys who in "the normal world" wouldn't have any interest in slash would have had problems with having a girlfriend/ getting married. Don't get me wrong, Bernadette is super funny and her actress is brilliant, but she started out as way more interesting than she is now (in the first ep we see her she clearly doesn't get any of Howards jokes and is a lot more "Sheldon-ish" than she is now - plus they later decided to give her an attitude ("you bitches got a problem with that??")), and would have been better as a guest appearance. Her character has probably suffered the biggest change over the seasons. I thought the concept of Amy was nice, but really, she's just "female Sheldon", and while I thought it was a fair way for the producers to introduce a girlfriend to Sheldon and explore all the weird ways "a Sheldon" would interact with a girlfriend, it just... it doesn't work to me. Why would Sheldon really be interested in having a girlfriend at all? People of the likes of Sheldon do end up getting married, but not in the way Sheldon boyfriended Amy.
I think.
Anyway I agree on what has been said on the other boys making fun of Sheldon and appearing not to liking him one bit. That's another writing flaw imo. In the first seasons, Leonard (and the others) might make fun of Sheldon, but you could still understand why they enjoyed his company. In the latest episodes, it really is hard to tell why they bother being friends with him at all.
Anyway, this rant is turning out kinda unreadable, so I'll just end it by saying yes, I still watch the show, but I'm not looking as much forward to it as I did, and I do feel it has lost its charm. They've made some bad decisions with the plot and characters, and instead of being charming and quirky, it seems like the main goal is to "normalize" the guys as much as possible. And to give everybody love interests. In the latest episodes - Raj. (I have no idea why they never followed up on the whole Penny/Raj thing. I think that was kinda hot.) Why does the human interactions in the show have to be about romantic relationships? The friends aspect of it was always more interesting to me than all the romance. Anyway I understand you need some sort of character development to keep the show alive for what is it, 7 seasons? and if they didn't introduce new characters and new situations for the boys (and girls), the show would have stood still and probably would have been canceled by now. But maybe they should have done just that - idk.
All I know is, the moments I've been having on "...wait, Sheldon would never say that" etc has been increasing over the last seasons and I quite often now experience disagreeing with the script. And the only thing really keeping this show alive is the actors, specifically the actors playing Sheldon and Leonard. I loved what Penny's actress did to her characters the first seasons, but I can't blame her for being confused about the turn her character's been taking. I have no idea where they want to go with Penny, and tbh I think the writers are having problems too. Which is a shame, because the character of Penny has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I love how they wrote her sorta dumb, but still street smart, and capable of taking care of herself in a way the boys didn't. That was always another key to the show to me - what is "smarts" really?
Okay I'll stop now.
