The Characterization Quandary

I’ve spent the last few days catching up on the most recent season of The Big Bang Theory.  When this show started 7 years ago I loved it. Finally there was a mainstream network show that represented nerds like me.  It was like Friends but nerdy. Perfect.  But as the years went on I started to lose interest in the show.  But how could that be? The characters were becoming more fleshed out and were actually growing as people; even to the point of marriage. Now I think I’ve figured it out.

The Big Bang Theory has a simple premise: nerdy guys meet hot dumb blond chick – hilarity ensues.  That joke worked for a few seasons, and then as audiences actually became invested in these characters, they needed to grow. And so they did. Except they don’t really grow all that much, with a few exceptions. The characters are stuck somewhere between stereotypes and fully fleshed out.

In the first few seasons, the main focus was on Leonard, seemingly the most level headed of the nerdy group, Sheldon, the outlandishly socially inept roommate, Howard, the hopeless and creepy guy, Raj, the ultimate shy guy, and Penny, the “bimbo”.  They each filled a stereotypical “nerd world” role, and played their parts like clockwork.  So the joke still worked.  Another reason the joke still worked, in my opinion, was because the novelty of having a show “for us, about us” on primetime network TV was still fairly new.  But slowly things began to change. Characters who had been perfect puzzle pieces started to suddenly do things and want things that they hadn’t before, and it broke the pattern.  Leonard gets the girl (Penny) and now the focus is not on how the nerd guy would never be with a girl like that but on how they make a relationship work.  Fair enough, that makes for really interesting stories.  Howard, who saw women as objects to be won and defeated suddenly is in love and changes his ways. That was actually really beautifully done. Sheldon, against all probability, finds himself with a girlfriend and slowly starts to adapt to caring about someone besides himself. These things have all the earmarks of plot and character growth, but here’s the problem: While the characters may be growing and changing, the show that houses them does not.

With the addition of Howard’s wife Bernadette and Sheldon’s girlfriend Amy, the show could now say that it was representing women, and not just a bunch of nerdy guys.  But the women on the show are far from fleshed out. They are even more stereotypical than the men were in the first seasons.  It’s seen as perfectly acceptable for geeky smart men to spend their time on fiction, games, toys, comics, etc., but not one girl on the show has ever been shown to also enjoy those things.  While on the surface the show may be saying ‘Look! We have smart women! Yay women! Girl power! Women scientists! , in reality, those woman are still being used as the butt of a joke, as if to say those women just don’t understand what us nerds enjoy. 

Why is it so infeasible for a woman to enjoy Star Wars, for instance, just as much as a man?  Almost every episode features the guys talking about the girls or vice versa as if they could never be on the same page. Comics and movies and toys are for boys, yet all the women enjoy doing is getting together to drink and make jewelry (yes that actually happened.)  

 "It sucks being a woman, unless you're making a gay joke."

There are general women stereotypes, and then there’s specifics.  For instance, I feel like the show missed a great opportunity with the character of Amy.  I like Amy. Of all the women on the show, I think she’s the most interesting and real, but she could have been much more.  She is painfully lonely and isolated but wishes for the opposite, and yet finds comfort in Sheldon, someone more isolated from social norms than anyone.  She is the show’s main representation for nerdy women. (I find that Bernadette, while a scientist, doesn’t usually identify as a nerd)  Instead of giving this nerdy girl interesting quirks and personality, she is more often than not used as the butt of overused jokes.  Her self-proclaimed interests are harps, Little House on the Prairie, and Medieval poetry (immediately played as boring and uninteresting for a laugh, of course).  Instead of taking the chance to have a smart girl actually enjoy the same nerdy things as the guys in the show, they made her purposefully dull and uninteresting.  Because who would ever believe that a girl could be just as fun as a guy? Talk about fantasy worlds!

The character of Bernadette suffers from a similar problem.  As the catalyst for Howard’s 180 degree attitude change towards women, she would have to be a pretty strong willed character, and she is.  The problem is, this strength is portrayed as “bitchy for no reason” more often than not and results in countless situations for “poor Howard” to now be henpecked at every turn (to replace all the rejections he used to get from all those mean women who didn’t like being disrespected. What bitches.)

I still like certain aspects and characters in this show. It’s not devoid of humor, though I do believe it was much funnier in earlier seasons.  I feel it could be a lot funnier if it dropped some of the stereotypes that it fights so hard to hammer into our brains. One character that comes to mind is Stuart, the helplessly lonely comic book shop owner.  I would love to learn more about this character, but unfortunately every time I see him on screen I’m supposed to be laughing at how pathetic and lonely he is. Except we never really learn enough about him besides being socially awkward to explain where that loneliness comes from.  Raj’s loneliness comes from blatant character quirks that the show has delved into and pulled apart; even resolved in an attempt to further his character’s story.  But Stuart, after seven seasons, is still the butt of the same joke every time we see him. “Nerds are pathetic and lonely, don’t be a nerd.”  Wrong. THAT nerd is lonely and has low self-esteem. Guess what, lots of nerds do.  But it’s not what defines them as a person.  Those traits are parts of a larger whole, only a small part of what makes up a well-defined, real human being.

 Seriously, show writers, you're just going to ignore the kickass 

cosplay and make another 'Lonely and pathetic' joke?

And that is where my problem with this show stems from.  It started out by filling in stereotypical silhouettes that the average Joe on the street could identify as “nerdy”.  But when you find an actual nerd on the street and actually begin talking to them, 9 times out of 10, you will realize after 5 minutes that that person is so much more than just one thing. Just like you would if you went up to a sports jock, or a business executive, or a busy mother of six.  This show started with cookie cutter people, and as it tried to fill them in, realized they were losing the easily recognizable “nerd” shape they started with, so reverted to the same cookie cutter jokes.  The world, apparently, is not ready to see fully fleshed out human beings with hopes and dreams in cosplay without being given permission to laugh at them (as opposed to with them) and call them inferior or “other”.

Am I saying that no one can laugh at a nerd? Of course not. I am one, and I do it all the time. Hell, usually at myself.  But there’s a difference between having a sense of humor about your and others’ quirks and only showing one side of a group of people and making it the butt of a joke.  To go back to a comparison I made earlier, the show Friends was about six friends with different personalities facing the world with six different points of view and coming together despite those differences. The Big Bang Theory comes pretty close to doing the same thing. But instead of telling a story about a group of friends facing the world with all their quirks and differences who happen to be nerds, it is a show about nerds who attempt to be part of the everyday world but they’re nerds so that can’t be allowed to happen. There will always be something about these characters that keeps them from fitting in except with other nerds (Penny being the exception).  It paints a picture of nerd culture that is unfair and inaccurate. Nerds are part of every corner of society and believe it or not, can lead perfectly normal lives without that aspect of their personalities taking over their lives completely. 

I'm glad this show exists and I hope it gets better, but it has a long way to go in regards to accurately representing the group of people it capitalizes on.