So, as promised this week we will talk about the Big Bang Theory. Now, the reason I want to cover this show is not because of the number of references to 'geek culture' (e.g. the Green Lantern t-shirt dead centre in the pic above). No, the reason I want to talk about it is I can't work out what to make of it. Now I know a lot of people on here love the show, hell, the rest of my family seem to be addicted to it, but I can never work out if they are just taking the piss half of the time. Obviously I can only comment on what I've seen of it, but it seems to rely almost exclusively on the very old and tired stereotype of geeks being socially inept, sci-fi obsessed losers (see the first Sci-fi corner, when we covered Star Trek, for further details). I will concede that this doesn't happen all of the time and sometimes it its done in very clever and amusing ways, but for gods sake, I grew out of stereotypes when I was 15. People say that TV, and comedy in particular, is based on stereotyping, but that isn't true (something we will cover on the next Screen Spotlight when we cover one of my two favourite shows of all time: Red Dwarf). Considering the success of things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, New Doctor Who and the Star Trek reboot movies (in purely financial terms with the last one), stuff generally considered as "Geek Only" are becoming increasingly "For Everyone", so why keep bring up the geek stereotypes. No-one finds sports fans who collect their various memorabilia (signed baseballs, hats, football kits, old baseball/ football cards, posters etc. etc. I mean there's so much of this **** I could go on for ages) weird or funny, so why is collecting figurines of Star Trek or comics characters? And my main gripe, and this is purely personal, but because I love all of the comics, sci-fi, fantasy stuff they routinely use, it sometimes feels like my family are only laughing at stuff on the show because they recognise some of it from what I do (although I probably don't help myself in that respect).
But anyway, that's enough from me. As I said at the start, I know there's a lot of you who love BBT so it's over to you to convince me that I'm wrong about the show. Sorry for the rant, I've been ill all weekend and that's not conducive to being cheerful.
Next week we'll be going back to What Were They Thinking and looking at Marvel in the '90's.
