The earliest sitcom I remember loving—I mean really loving—was Good Times, a show about a black family who lived in the Chicago projects, the central feature of which was their struggle to navigate life in poverty. It was an imperfect show: There was a strong message of bootstraps, which simultaneously challenged narratives about the Welfare Queens to whom Ronald Reagan had not yet given a name, and indirectly entrenched judgment of anyone who would accept “a hand-out.” But it was an important and challenging show, which did not shy away from discussions of racial and feminist justice. And it loved its characters deeply.
For all the times Parks and Rec has made my teeth grind with its Jerry bullying, I have known, always, that the show loves Jerry, and wants us to love him—and when the other characters are thoughtless or cruel to him, it is they who are wrong. It is their flaw, their envy, their self-involvement—not anything wrong with the inimitably lovable Jerry.
It is so rare that I love, really love, a sitcom that I feel overwhelmed with a bounty of riches that there are two shows currently airing that I adore: Parks and Rec and New Girl, about which I have written before that “the thing I like most is that it loves its characters. It asks me to root for them, and I do!”
I didn’t like TBBT the first time I watched it, which was just some random episode in the middle of the series. But then I watched it from the beginning, when it went into syndication, and I liked it a lot. It’s never been a show I’ve loved like the aforementioned shows, but it was a show I enjoyed quite a bit, anyway—and I thought it did a pretty swell job of exposing Nice Guyism for the garbage that it is.
Mostly, I liked Penny.
I really liked this female character, despite her tokenism, who was routinely drawn as a complex human being despite the guys’ objectification of her. I liked that she was allowed to be funny, and clever, and have sexual agency, and teach the guys by example how to stand up to bullies.
The show, I thought, liked Penny, too.
And I really liked the additional female leads that were added in time. I liked Bernadette—even though she has a terrible case of Bailey Quarters which compels us to pretend that she’s not beautiful because she wears glasses and someone else is supposed to be the sexpot on the show—and I loved Amy Farrah Fowler. (I really like Leslie Winkle whenever she shows up, too.) I liked most of the scenes between the girls, and I was glad Penny wasn’t isolated in a tower of Exceptional Womanhood anymore.
And, this season, the show seems to have lost every trace of the love it once had for Penny.
Penny isn’t allowed to be good at anything anymore. She can’t accomplish this, she can’t understand that, she’s not even smart enough to take science classes at community college. This is the same character who used to (literally) kick ass on earlier seasons, and now her entire oeuvre consists of drinking wine and making sure Leonard still thinks she’s sexy.
There was an episode earlier this season, in which Penny was taking a history course, and couldn’t even write a decent paper on her own. Leonard was being a complete asshole about it, and, watching the show, Iain and I were bitterly complaining that the show had rendered Penny incapable of writing a 101-level essay. When at last Penny presented Leonard with a B+ paper, we were so happy—only to be immediately crushed by the reveal that Bernadette and Amy had helped her, and only helped her enough to get a B+, because they wanted it to be “realistic.”
Every time Penny trudges by in her waitress uniform, I now cringe. Because it’s just a reminder about how the show won’t let her succeed. At anything.
Which certainly doesn’t make for a better show. I would have found an episode about Penny and Leonard trying to navigate their relationship while she’s taken away by a movie role (professional success! yay for Penny!) exponentially more interesting than the last episode, where I instead watched Penny put on sexy glasses to give Leonard a boner to assuage her insecurity after another woman flirted with him.
The fact is, TBBT has officially fallen out of love with Penny. And that makes TBBT pretty damn unwatchable for me.
Take note, sitcom writers: I can’t love your characters more than you do.
———-
Yes, thank you, I have felt a very similar feeling about this season of TBBT – esp with Amy Farrah Fowler who is so different from the character they introduced. If they want her to be a ‘normal’ girl, rather than the rather Sheldonesque lady of earlier seasons, then she needs a boyfriend who actually cares about her. It’s making me depressed to watch her come up with elaborate ploys just to get some affection….
Recently, i’ve decided do abandon TBBT for the same reasons as you, and some more. TBBT used to be one of my fav’s sitcoms ever, since it’s very first episode. But then, it was ridiculous the way they completely changed Amy’s character, she became suddenly desperate for sex and affection, and also demonstrating several stereotypes about women (like when Sheldon needed to be forgived for something and he gave her a tiara, and she was like, over the moon about it). And then came the episode in wich Sheldon says the most disgusting things about women, and we see harassment and sexism as something that’s supposed to be funny. That was the end of the line for me. I also don’t like the fact that Raj is put as the less atractive in the group.
I stopped watching it when I noticed that Penny couldn’t succeed. I just KNEW that she would eventually get a role or something and it just never happened. I hated how she was just portrayed as the dumb blonde.
I’d really recommend watching “Miranda”, made by the BBC, for a really, really good sitcom full of cheer and loveable characters (as the sitcoms you listed suggest you like). It’s short, which makes it easy to watch, but it makes me sad that there’s only 18 episodes!
Plus it’s female fronted and written, which makes for a refreshing change, comedy-(…and every other media!)-wise.