shut up and let me see your jazz hands

1. Big Bang Theory. There's no one horrible thing that has made me want to stop watching. I'm just feeling more and more like the annoyances outweigh the enjoyment, not just in terms of things I find problematic about it, but also that it feels like it's the same jokes every week.

2. Modern Family. This has always been one that hits my embarrassment squick a lot, but this season there have been eps I had to just stop watching and more and more that I fast-foward through more than I watch.

3. Community. The season finale last year was bad, so very, very bad, but I thought maybe I could still watch it. I have been, but it's just painful. I've gone from loving Troy and Abed to hating every joke and deliberate bit of subtext because the show is so fucked up about queer people and it's just enraging. There is one actual queer character on the show and that's the dean, whose sexuality (and kinks, because kinky people are such a joke) is only brought up to be a punchline. Then there was the recent episode about lesbians, which I seriously can't even begin to talk about because I have nothing but RAEG for it. And I just can't find the Troy/Abed joking funny or cute in the middle of all this. I think it's to the point where I wouldn't even be able to enjoy them in fanfic, though I haven't tried.

There is also Pierce. I am so, so, SO sick of this sort of character. He is the Sue Sylvester of this show, the character who is there so the writers can indulge in every ism they've always secretly wanted to because he's the designated Bad *ist Character, so when they have him say and do all these horrible things, they are free from any guilt or blame and so is the audience. Everyone is free to laugh at the things they say, to enjoy that vicarious thrill of the forbidden things they could never say for fear of the "PC Police". But just because the character is a Bad Person doesn't mean it's okay! There is no purpose to this sort of character except as a way to be "un-PC" and get away with it.


Parks and Recreation is the only one I'm not considering dumping (yet), but the fact that they apparently decided not to keep Natalie Morales on this season and the constant fat hate are not very happy-making. :-/

( Spoilers )

Also I watched a couple more eps of Parks and Recreation and am definitely liking it more. I think it was just a slow starter for me. I read this essay that blueswan linked on my previous post and really agree with what it says.

I don't watch 30 Rock, but I was mentally substituting Britta from Community instead of Liz Lemon. It sounds like it's a similar sort of situation. Britta is the feminist who ruins everyone's fun and doesn't like other women. She's the sort of character you're supposed to roll your eyes at and go ugh, feminists (though personally I like her).

Leslie Knope, on the other hand, just thinks women are really, really awesome. And that they can and should excel at everything men do. She idolises her mom and wants to be just like her. She likes other women and her code is "hos before bros, uteruses before duderuses, ovaries before brovaries". ♥

(Also in the same episode as the above quote, I really loved when she kept asking Tom where he was from and he's like, South Carolina, and she's like, but you came there from somewhere else, right? And he's like, yeah, my mom's uterus. XD And when she asked him why he changed his name to Tom Haverford, he said because brown guys with Muslim-sounding names don't go far in politics. And then of course she's like um, Barack Obama, and he's like, well if I would have known that then... XD)

Almost done with season two! I don't really have any particular thoughts on the show, except that I continue to enjoy it a lot while cringing at a lot of stuff. But here are some random things:

1. Raj continues to be really hot. I am sad to see this actor has not really been in anything else, because I would totally watch him in stuff. I need an icon (anyone know where I can get caps or bases?).

2. I noticed that when Sheldon uses a happy voice, he sounds like Mr Rogers. Like really, really like Mr Rogers. (I happened to pick up on it because he said the word "neighbor" in said happy voice, but since that revelation I notice it all the time.)

3. I changed parts of my journal title on both LJ and DW to Sheldon quotes. On LJ, I changed the title so it's now "there is no law of diminishing returns with space poop", which happened to go really well with the Penny Arcade subtitle I already had, which was "I'm always abiding by shit".

On DW, my subtitle is now "you have to imagine me with a giant squid head", from when Sheldon was doing his Admiral Ackbar impersonation, and my reading list is now called "it's a trap!"

So Big Bang Theory. It seems like everyone and their mother is watching it. Literally. Last time I went out to breakfast with my mom she was talking about how much she likes it.

I watched all of season one (17 eps) in three days. I like the characters, it's funny, and best of all, unlike a lot of comedies, I never have to pause it due to embarrassment squickage. (Contrast with Modern Family, which I usually have to pause several times per episode.)

Sheldon is easily my favorite, though Raj and Leslie are close seconds (and while not really related to the show, did you know Sara Gilbert is a lesbian? I had no idea, but Wikipedia tells me it is so). Leonard and Penny are okay. The less said about Howard the better. (I lie. I have more to say later.)

What I don't like, the main thing I don't like, is the laugh track. It does get a little better as the show goes on (and it gets easier for me to ignore it), but it is especially hard in the early episodes, hammering you over the head time and time again that these are not people you're supposed to laugh with, but people you're supposed to laugh at. If I didn't know so many of my friends loved it and thus it must have some value, I would have stopped watching partway through the first episode. The laugh track does laugh at actual jokes and things that I find funny as well, but it also comes on at the mere mention of anything geeky. People watch DVD commentary? HAHAHAHAHA! That sort of thing.

I really don't understand the point of a laugh track. Even if the show is filmed live and these are real people laughing at what's actually happening on the screen, it's not a sign of anything. It's not spontaneous. There are signs that light up to tell them when to laugh or when to go awwww. Is it supposed to be a form of peer pressure? "If you don't find this funny, you're wrong!" So you pretend you find it funny? I don't understand. I'd rather make my own decisions on what's funny or not, and having a laugh track highlight things as supposedly funny when they're really not just pisses me off.

Which leads me to Howard. I don't dislike Howard completely, but he's creepy and gross and is pretty much there so that we can all laugh at sexual harrassment, because isn't it FUNNY!? HAHAHA! Tonight I watched some episodes from the middle of season two because apparently this season two batch torrent did not actually include the first nine episodes. Oops.

Anyway, so episode twelve starts off with just that. Howard being his gross self harrassing Penny even more than usual and she calls him on it. She calls him creepy and is really "mean" about it because when she tries to put him off politely he just won't stop. In fact, it turns out that while she's thought she was turning him down all this time, he thought they were flirting. She really lays into him and what is the reaction? The other guys look at her like she's a horrible person. The laugh track goes awwwww, because she was mean to poor Howard, who is just awkward and can't be expected to treat women like human beings. He's a nerd, after all! They call her a killer robot (she has no feelings! She has (verbally) attacked Howard! She is a Bad Person!) and Leonard makes her go over and apologise to Howard later because even though they all agree that he's creepy and gross, they need him to help with their robot, and that is clearly more important than Penny's feelings. She goes and apologises and tries to explain to him why he shouldn't act the way he does and he tries to kiss her and she punches him, and at the end of the episode he is the same person as ever and he has not learned anything. I'm sure his behaviour will be exactly the same in the episodes after this.

(This episode also featured People With Speech Impediments Are Funny! and the recurring Jewish Mothers! Obnoxious, Aren't They!?)

And then there's Penny herself. If they had to make a show about four guys and their female neighbor, I really wish the neighbor could have been someone like Leslie. She is smart, take-charge, snarky, and just as geeky as them. Instead we get Penny, who is not just less smart than the geniuses, but a total airhead. I don't dislike Penny, but it's frustrating.

She does get better as the show goes on, thankfully. I read an article comparing season-one!Penny to current!Penny even before I watched the show and I'm glad I did. (For one thing, in the first season she talks in a high cutesy voice, which later changes to a more normal voice.)

Anyway, as usual I seem to have talked mostly about the things I didn't like rather than the stuff I did, but I do really like the show a lot. It's got a lot of problems, though.