When I was a teenager, our family suffered from the embarrassment of not having cable television. We had only five channels to watch, and my brother and I were mortified by this travesty. One year, we hit on a strategy that solved our problem. My dad’s cousin (Rod Gilbreath) played infield for the Atlanta Braves, which were televised on the “Superstation,” WTBS out of the Peachtree City. Steve and I gave dad the installation of the cable and one month’s subscription costs as a Father’s Day present that spring, hoping that he would be hooked on the ready access to baseball and shift the ongoing costs to the family budget. The strategy worked and we found ourselves finally blessed with thirty channels of static-free programming.
I mention this because of the strange ability of cable TV to bring new life to old series. We all know that older series like The Brady Bunch enjoy a form of semi-eternal life on the upper-tiers of non-broadcast television. Even still-extant series can benefit from the broader exposure. I never watched Wings in its first-run form, but when it moved to reruns on cable, I got hooked even as I ignored the overlapping new episodes that aired during prime time.
I have found myself doing the same thing with The Big Bang Theory, which now is the most popular prime-time sitcom. I could not tell you when the first-run episodes air each week and I had to think for a while to remember that its home network is CBS, but when the show hit that aforementioned Superstation, the aggregated ratings exploded and I likewise found myself watching regularly.
When the show originally premiered, some critics said that no one would voluntarily watch a show about funny physicists. Being an academic myself, I can attest to the warped humor of physicists but I had a hard time picturing how that would wear over time. And how the obligatory blond bombshell next door would interact with the guys. My thought was that some dolt at network programming had read all of the pundits and politicians begging for the U. S. to embrace “STEM” education initiatives (“Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math”) and figured they would do a public service by producing a sitcom for the STEM age.
The show is definitely a product of that sort of thinking, with enough scholarly esoterica to inherit Frasier’s former viewers, and a surplus of whiteboards with formulaic scribbling on them to assert at least a flavor of academia. The show’s relative hostility to religion, which has offended more than a few of my friends, reflects current academic culture. Likewise, the show’s almost desperate appeals to sex as a substitute for meaning reflect how hedonism has infiltrated elite academia.
Yet the show is not really a show about STEM but rather about life itself. The show is a dynamic setting for asking life’s biggest questions: Does my work have meaning? What if I get caught not knowing all of the answers to life’s questions? How can I be considered a real adult when I still have a roommate (or live with my mother)? What is the good life? Now that I have rejected religion, how do I deal with being just a meat machine in a random universe? Will I ever be loved?
Indeed, these are just the right questions to ask in the STEM age: Science reveals much to us, but meaning is not a part of its work. Science enables us to do many things, but its methodology offers nothing in the way of answering not only what may we do but also what must we do. These are exactly the kinds of disruptors that the nerds of the show find most vexing: How do we cope when reality rudely intrudes on the ivory tower worlds that we have generated? Science may describe the universe, but it doesn’t always help us understand that same world; the humanities and metaphysics help us with those questions. That which is human is exactly the part of us that matters the most; this conflict not only produces interesting comedy, it also reminds us that life is bigger than just the measurable material world, including “the whole universe” of the show’s opening theme song.
March 14th, 2013 | 4:06 pm
This is an interesting commentary. I think the show is pretty stupid (Full disclosure: I’m a physicist myself, though one who has never played video games and has never been impressed with science fiction). TV sitcoms these days typically depict men as bumbling and immature, regardless of their level of professional success. I’m tempted to add that shows like this depict men as completely lacking in moral depth, but The Big Bang Theory does the same with its depiction of women as well. Frankly I can’t see much difference between the characters The Big Bang Theory and those in Two and a Half Men, who aren’t particularly manly either.
March 14th, 2013 | 4:34 pm
I’ve watched a few episodes, and to be honest it just strikes me as yet another example of Americans being unable to write (funny) comedy.
The premise, four (far too) intelligent friends trying to make sense of a world outside the laboratory isn’t a bad one, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Get some Brits to write it.
March 14th, 2013 | 4:45 pm
I just started watching this show about a month ago. It is refreshingly funny – much different than any sitcom I’ve ever seen. Sheldon is a hoot as he plays the role of the stodgy over-smart genius who just doesn’t get it sometimes. I love the rest of the characters as well and how colorful the sets and wardrobe always are. The writing is quite creative-it’s the only show on TV that makes me laugh out loud!
March 14th, 2013 | 7:09 pm
I’m a neuroscientist and one of those “Frasier” viewers that was captured by “Big Bang”
esoterics of which you write.
The issue is the nature of the understanding of which you write. If we wish to understand causation, i.e. “how” or “why” some particular natural phenomenon occurs, then science is the preferred method of inquiry. However, if we wish to understand “purpose” or “meaning”, then other methods of inquiry are needed.
In almost every class I teach, a point arises when the question turns to “purpose” as we explore the functional value of an action (such as nest building in birds). I enjoy these conversations because they provide me an opportunity to teach students in a science class about the historical origins of our queries (natural theology) and humans apparent teleological needs.
I agree, STEM is not the end-all, be-all. Perhaps we should revisit the trivium & quadrivium.
March 15th, 2013 | 7:16 am
I am not a physicist–I married one. My wife is extremely intelligent and works for the Navy. Neither of us particularly likes science fiction and rarely read it. As far as video games, she likes puzzles and the only game I like and play is a WW II submarine combat simulation–a guilty pleasure I don’t advertise to even the closest among our friends.
But our friends through the year have been mostly academic/science types–the general population of which has been overwhelmingly men. The female minority in this group we have found to be even more intelligent but somehow more grounded–although compared to the normal population that might not be saying much. What my wife and I find so funny about “Big Bang” is we have met and know academic/science individuals who are exactly like those on the show. These are persons who are absolutely brilliant and “cutting edge” in mathematics and physics yet are horribly awkward in normal human interaction and possessing either bland or bizarre fashion sense. Many like Amy strive to be like “normal” people and share in the normal joys of life; but their attempts copy only stale stereotypes of what they think “normal” people are like–thus they are doomed to fail. Nevertheless, if you are around these types long enough and become attuned to them, they are genuinely likable and lovable.
Alternatively, the blond “bombshell” as you put her, Penny is a rather normal person whose comedic effect is to be made the oddball in the rare world these intelligent oddballs occupy.
My wife and I think “Big Bang” is very funny and yet rings true. Besides, who hasn’t occasionally felt out of place and socially inept among “normal” human company?
March 15th, 2013 | 10:02 am
I am a fan of “The Big Bang Theory” and never perceived it as being hostile to religion. Sheldon Cooper is the show’s most overtly agnostic character but, on ocasion, he has been shown to praise God in crisis moments. Sheldon’s mother is a devout Christian and is portrayed as a warm and caring person, a point that has been repeatedly emphasized by Sheldon’s roomate, Leonard Hofstadter. At times, she is portrayed as being a little kooky, but no more than any of the show’s other characters. In contrast, Leonard’s mother (a scientist) is potrayed as being just the opposite – cold, clinical, and without feelings. Another character, Bernadette, is a self-described “good Catholic girl,” and while that is played for laughs, Bernadette is consitently one of the most grounded and sensible characters on the show.
March 15th, 2013 | 11:11 am
Andrew Velkey wrote “If we wish to understand causation, i.e. “how” or “why” some particular natural phenomenon occurs, then science is the preferred method of inquiry.” But, truth to tell, science very often dispenses with the notion of causality and manages very well without it.
Thus, Newton did not ask himself what caused the apple to fall; he asked how fast it fell. This is something measurable. That measurement he was able to correlate with others: of force, mass, distance, time. By treating them as variables in differential equations, the constant relationship between them can be expressed. It should be stressed that “force,” in this context, is not a causal term. Force is equal to the product of the mass and the acceleration. It is simply the label given to one of the variables used in the equations. These equations are powerful predictive tools, but they do not profess to be causal explanations. They are descriptions, pure and simple and none the worse for that.
It was a weakness in Newton’s system that he required a “God of the gaps” and a merit in Laplace’s that he had “no need of that hypothesis” (Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là)
March 15th, 2013 | 11:29 am
You might look at this essay for someone who agrees with you in part and disagrees in part.
“The humour in The Big Bang theory relies on the audience siding with and relating to Penny, the character coded as “normal” in comparison to the main four guys. It also relies on the audience having a sense of superiority over Leonard, Raj, Sheldon and Howard. We’re supposed to feel like we’re cooler than them and that we’re better than them…
…If you relate to Leonard, or god forbid Sheldon, you don’t feel entertained, you just feel belittled. The way that even the three guys laugh at Sheldon seems especially cruel. Yes, he’s painted as annoying, as an inconvenience and as just plain rude, however he is also read by many as autistic. So much so that my friend who works at a school for autistic children believed he had Asperger’s Syndrome and once asked me how they got away with ridiculing a character with special needs.
March 15th, 2013 | 4:42 pm
Sheldon Cooper is the show’s most overtly agnostic character but, on ocasion, he has been shown to praise God in crisis moments. Sheldon’s mother is a devout Christian and is portrayed as a warm and caring person, a point that has been repeatedly emphasized by Sheldon’s roomate, Leonard Hofstadter
Actually I believe he is explicitly an atheist. Interestingly in pop culture atheists are *never* portrayed as right. Invariably whenever you have an atheist character and atheism as a plot point, it will almost always circle around the atheist character being one upped by the non-atheist character(s).
March 16th, 2013 | 2:09 pm
The great majority of aspies, i.e. people with Asperger’s syndrome, like myself and fellow participants in aspie forums, greatly enjoy TBBT. And we know perfectly that Sheldon is a very good caricature of an aspie.
Understandably, the series’ writers will always say that he isn’t, that he’s just Sheldon, so that they are not constrained when writing the script. But actor Jim Parsons, who was free to speak his mind, said in an interview that, in his opinion, Sheldon “couldn’t display more traits” of Asperger’s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper
The best real-life paralell of Sheldon Cooper is Paul Dirac, who was a clear case of Asperger’s, and about whom Einstein said: ‘This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful,’. There’s a book on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strangest_Man
reviewed here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1240909/The-extraordinary-love-affair-British-scientist-Paul-Dirac-chatterbox-divorcee.html
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