I have been watching BBT for a while now and although found the first season quite enjoyable, the status quo seems to slowly drift when the girls start to show up. When they did, I found them to be a great addition as I saw them quirky, witty and layered characters each with their own shtick. Nevertheless, their kind of comedy seems to rely on putting the boys down due to their "nerdisms" and "geekisms".
As a matter of fact, it is a tendency of the show to make "nerdisms" feel off-putting and "wrong", making the characters feel bad they have certain eccentricities and passions that adhere to their pop culture cellebration. Often we see Leonard apologise for "behaving nerdy" and that shines a negative light on the perfectly harmless habits we as nerds and geeks have. Surely his case is played in contrast to the non-geeky Penny, but the same joke almost applies in the other cases too with fundament behind it. You would imagine Amy and Bernadette would understand better the eccentricities of their partners more than perhaps Penny would of hers but they don't as much. I prayed the show would be more lenient and showed a different approach to the incursion of this "life style" in the rest of society and yet the show never delivered... Until this episode.
If pitched to me the idea of a sitcom where we follow the adventures and misadventures of four geeky scientist friends interacting with society and other "normies" like Penny; I would have imagined a light-hearted and playfully critique of a back and forth exchange between both where contrast and a sort of "fish out of the water" approach would become the foundations of the comedy. And I even hoped it would "change the tidewave" by perhaps shining a bit of light on the difficulties that can be found sometimes in the interaction of both of these worlds, hoping that they would respect and be tolerant of the people who consider the behaviors and at times rituals that a passion for pop culture media entails. To acknowledge and accept the importance it can have on their lives.
So seeing this brilliant episode right after the great and similar-natured "sexual harrassment" one, snapped me out of my stagnation and monotone "background noise" frequency the show had seem to have fell into. The dark understudies of what it means to embrace your passions, no matter how eccentric or quirky they may be; and the first time the girls show an interest in what they have been so constantly critiquing of their boyfriends really felt like a breath of fresh air. So far I had been feeling a bit unsympathetic with the girls' "problems and complaints" about their boyfriends because I saw no problems whatsoever. A healthy relationship relies on you accepting your partner's interests and habits, granted they are not harming to themselves and others; or have long term repercussions.
Unfortunately the show doesn't embrace this sort of satirical approaches nor does it try to layer more the comedy of the show. It has an incredible and catchy premise, but it never really delves into it and tries to push the limits of the scenarios nor the comedic aspects of it. So I will hope the show provides more quality and "darker" nuanced reflections on its topic like these past two episodes, but if it doesn't evolve and given the road society is taking where more and more people embrace the "nerdom" and we are more "socially accepted", the more this show will become outdated and even offensive in the future. Rendering itself a poor reflection of the lives of pop culture fans that are not as generic as the show indicates. That there are other ways of "living" and other passions that may not conform with the preestablished.
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