The Big Bang Theory: What Went Wrong? – Wisecrack Edition

What's up, guys? Jared again. Today we're talking about one of the most nuanced views of geek culture that exists: the Big Bang

theory

. "Bazinga." Yeah, no, not even close. It's bad, really bad. In fact, it's become kind of a running joke that we hate on this show. So when you sadistic maniacs asked

what

went

wrong

, we contacted one of our unfortunate writers, Thomas. But instead of making this poor bastard watch all 5,175 minutes of this show, we just hopped on IMDB and grabbed the 10 highest rated episodes. (Sorry, we can't afford to pay this man's therapist.) But I digress: why is a show that's about science, comics, and all that Wisecrack so good, good, so bad?

After hours of exhausting research, we suspect it might have something to do with references. “So it's settled. The fate of Dr. Who's Tardis will be decided in a Game of Thrones-inspired deathmatch on the Thundercats vs. Thundercats battlefield. Transformers.” You see, The Big Bang Theory isn't just bad. It's deeply bad. It is so bad that it requires philosophy to understand how bad it is. So join me as I try to convince you that the Big Bang Theory is proof that meaning is dead. Welcome to this Wisecrack

edition

of The Big Bang Theory: What Went Wrong? And a big thanks to the real MVP, Thomas, for watching this garbage.

The Big Bang

theory

loves referentiality. They reference cornerstones of nerd culture, like Star Trek, "Sheldon's Log. Stardate 63345.3" or Battlestar Galactica, "That's my original flight suit from the Battlestar Galactica series," and even scientific facts and formulas. math. comes to remind us, again and again, that Leonard, Sheldon and company are die-hard nerds. They buy comics, do science experiments, and sometimes describe very basic things, like getting into a bathtub, like this: “No wonder, yo. Do not have a safety mat or adhesive stickers that allow purchasing on a surface with a low coefficient of static friction.” Now, in case you missed the laugh track, Sheldon giving Penny the definition of friction was the joke;

You see, it's funny because it's a reference. Now, if you're wondering why you feel a little cheated in the punchline, that's right. probably because that definition of friction was just thrown in there. Any other scientific statement about the nature of reality seems like it could have had the same effect here, like gravity, for example. “God, I have to go to the emergency room.” "Well, assuming you're right that your right humerus is no longer sitting in the glenoid, I certainly think so." They could have replaced the words “humerus” and “glenoid” with gibberish and most wouldn't know the difference.

And that's the problem: the real science is not the joke, but the fact that they are talking about science is. Friction is not fun, REFERENCE to friction is fun. Instead, consider this brief Futurama reference. For someone who barely understands math like me, the reference will probably avoid detection. the mathematical symbol for an infinite set of countable numbers: You will notice that cinema implies that there are an infinite number of screens. Not only is this an Easter egg for math lovers, but more importantly, the joke is the impossibility of a movie. theater with infinite screens The joke is about the THEME of aleph-null, not the mere reference to it.

The reference gives the joke additional meaning, while The Big Bang Theory achieves the opposite. that was going to revolutionize humanity's understanding of the Higgs boson particle, and you said, 'Sheldon, it's 2:00 a.m. m., get out of my room.'” These jokes are at best lazy writing and at worst a small step toward the complete annihilation of reality. Yes, it may seem extreme, but these kinds of topicless references are exactly

what

kept French philosopher Jean Baudrillard awake. For Baudrillard, we live in a state where reality has been erased. He gives four levels of representation. The first level is like an image: a perfectly accurate representation of reality.

The second level of representation is the unfaithful copy: a filter that makes you look prettier, thus obscuring your real face. Below is the third level of representation, one that deliberately hides the fact that there is no reality represented, like an artist representing you where you have never been seen. And finally, the fourth level is reserved for when signs and representations begin to reference other signs and representations, and all sense of reality is thrown out the window. This is when people start photoshopping a photoshopped image or creating memes from other memes. In Baudrillard's eyes, we already live in a world controlled by a system of fourth-order simulacra, where any reference to the original reality is lost.

Which might explain why he technically considers our reality a simulation. Now, if we are optimistic, the Big Bang theory is a distorted vision of true nerd culture: the second order of representation. It gets a lot of details

wrong

, but it's still about true nerd culture. But if we're pessimists (and oh, we are), it's a show about nerd culture that has no relation to reality, the third order of representation: a copy of something that never existed. You have science without real science. It's about nerd culture without actual nerds, they're more like what someone who's never met a nerd thinks they are.

This is where bad scientific references become relevant for Baudrillard. Most of the time, the jokes are based on the characters cramming whatever scientific explanation is relevant to the action. “When are the roads slipperiest? Now, there are three answers, none of which are correct! The correct answer is, when it is covered by a film of liquid sufficient to reduce the coefficient of static friction between the tire and the road to practically zero, but not so deep as to introduce a new source of friction. They are references for the sake of being references: jokes that are not based on any understanding of science, but rather on the simple recognition that it is a scientific reference.

It's the difference between Sheldon explaining how locks work when Penny's locked: "I can't get the damn key out." “Well, it's not surprising. That Baldwin lock on your door uses traditional edge-mounted cylinders, while the key on your Volkswagen uses a center cylinder system,” and when Leela and the Professor race in Futurama: “One more lap!” “No, half turn. You forgot about the Mobius strip, two turns are one turn.” "Hahaha, you kids and your topology." In the first, the joke does not depend on the audience understanding how locks really work. Reality is irrelevant, as long as we recognize that Sheldon is being unnecessarily clever.

Whereas in Futurama, we laugh at the real science referenced in the joke. For Baudrillard, as things progress, these copies of reality end up becoming his own reality. And this is where we see Baudrillard's bleak vision reflected in The Big Bang Theory. These copies divorced from reality, in whole or in part, signal not only the death of meaning, but make all ideas interchangeable. Because the jokes on this show are meaningless, the characters are essentially able to spew meaningless nonsense under the guise of a meaningful joke. Like in the show's game, Mystic Warlords of Ka'a, which starts out as a sort of joke on Magic the Gathering: "Invisibility Spell." “Luminescence spell.” – and then quickly descends into complete nonsense: “Two-Headed Tiger.” "Three-headed lion." "Sulfur." "Sulfur." It doesn't matter if they said two-headed tiger, three-headed lion, seven-headed ethical Logan Paul, or Frankfurt-school-jam-beetle-monster.

The joke will work with the audience no matter what they say, because the show works at the level of selling you an empty joke under the guise of a meaningful one. So here's the big question: "This isn't over, is it?" If the Big Bang Theory's use of reference for the sake of reference ultimately points to nothing, then what are we laughing at? "My hair is growing at a rate of 4.6 yatemeters per femtasecond." Or, at least, what is the studio audience laughing at? "It is scientifically impossible for a person to tip a cow." Seriously, someone please tell me! "Your news seemed important, but what you're forgetting is that it was an achievement in the field of biology.

It's about soft, gross stuff." Well, after conducting some rigorous study, our team of media experts has come up with an answer: the show basically just shits on its characters. "Princeton, a great institution. The place where Albert Einstein taught and where Leonard got his PhD, so it could have gone downhill." Like when Leonard and Raj think about buying Howard a prostitute after a recent breakup: "She's exactly his type, a prostitute... You know, I bet if we hired her, that would cheer him up." "We're not going to get him." a prostitute to Wallowitz." "I feel so lonely and so horny that I can open this t

went

y-dollar jar of peanuts and be done with it." Or, as when Sheldon defends his girlfriend: "Stuart is a little interested in Amy." "Oh, of course it is.

She is very interesting. Did you know that when he was fourteen, he cut the webbing between his toes?" It turns out that attacking people is actually how the philosophy of humor began. In the West, the first theory of humor is the Superiority Theory , which began with Plato saying that laughter was a form of contempt. We are generally unaware of how horrible they are, which invites laughter. Later, Thomas Hobbes modified this a bit by saying that laughter was the result of our own. competitive nature. When we laugh, it is because we are triumphing over others or because we are seeing their nature.

Hell, even Descartes got into the discussion, calling laughter the result of contempt, which “comes from our perceiving some small evil in a person. We laugh, it's at the expense of others to make ourselves feel good. While this may seem pretty obvious, the Big Bang Theory is not Seinfeld. These are not horrible people who deserve our contempt, he literally said. showrunner Chuck Lorre. , “the show is not about geeks or nerds, about extraordinary people.” So if they are so extraordinary, why do they deserve to be given shit? Which brings up the overall problem: Instead of building nerd culture, the Big Bang Theory tears it down when the show simply pays off.

Paying lip service, mechanically inserting any reference for reference, the show reveals its disdain for true nerds. The details of nerd culture are irrelevant, as long as they sound like assholes, it's pretty close. I'm trying to see my work as a fleeting peripheral image to activate the superior colliculus of my brain." And while the show may fall back into laughter or tear apart its characters, "How long has it been stagnant? ""Intellectually? About 30 hours. Emotionally? Approximately 29 years." Ultimately, this does a disservice to all of us nerds, from Buffy fans to Marvel fans. Instead of finding ourselves reflected on the screen, we see cartoons that are just thrown around.

So, what do you think? Wisecrack? Are we being too harsh on the biggest show in the world? Or are we being a bunch of jealous haters?