Big Bang? More Like Big Thud!

With the coming of HBOMax, and what feels like an endless lock down, I decided I would start watching a series that a lot of people have told me over the years was right up my alley. That show is, The Big Bang Theory. As of this writing, I'm one or two episodes shy of finishing season three, and I honestly don't know if I'm going to make it any further.

How It Was Sold To Me

The Big Bang Theory was sold to me as a show about four guys who live in a world of pure geekdom, making reference after reference to pop culture while trying to instill their science fiction knowledge on a female neighbor across the hall.

The Reality

The Big Bang Theory is a show about a group of scientists who talk a lot about a bunch of scientific facts that neither interest nor amuse me, while sometimes making standard references that any mom would get about pop culture.

The characters in the show seem driven to each other for no other reason than they don't have any other friends, and even then, they don't usually act in a manner that would make someone looking in from the outside feel like they even like each other. In fact, they often times say they don't.

The Characters

Unlikable is the first word that comes to mind.

Leonard Hofstadter is who we'll call the "main" character, as the show seems to often evolve around him. Though he's portrayed as a scientist and nerd, the truth of the matter is that he's a bully, argumentative and controlling.

He is often shown bossing the group around, typically pitting them against Sheldon, in an effort to remain painted in the light as the cool one among them. His on and off again relationship with his neighbor, Penny, depicts a man who is so afraid of losing the one and only girl he's ever gotten to be with him that he oversteps his boundaries, becoming controlling. This often leads to his characteristic of arguing. Doesn't he sound like the ultimate boyfriend?

Sheldon Cooper, who we'll call the other "main" character lives with Leonard. Why? Who knows.

Of the guys, he appears to be the smartest of the bunch, scientific wise. This is a characteristic he seems to have no problem with flaunting to everyone. He is often the one proclaiming how much he dislikes everyone, and as noted above, the others reciprocate this towards him.

The man strikes me as borderline, if not full fledged psychotic. He acts in the manner of someone who hides a lot of dead bodies. He's condescending, rude and of the four men, the most unlikable. The oddity surrounding this matter is that he also somehow manages to be the funniest.

Howard Wolowitz, our first B team character.

A Jewish man, who also just so happens to still live with his mother, filling the stereotype of thirty year old virgins who will never get out of their parent's basements. To make matters worse, he's also a raging pervert.

The word creepy comes to mind when I think of him. He's constantly chasing women out of his league, and he's not even doing it because he wants any form of long lasting relationship with them. He just wants sex. Howard thinks he's some form of Casanova, but manages to only induce cringes in his demeanor and tone. He's the kind of guy you would find skulking around a playground, because tail is tail.

Raj Koothrappali, our second, and final, B team character.

I have yet to figure out what purpose he serves to the show, other than being an ethnic check mark. His character rarely has any lines and he remains the least fleshed out of them all.

His only shtick appears to be that he can't openly talk to women - unless he's got an alcoholic drink in his hand. However, this doesn't explain why he doesn't talk much beyond that.

He's often relegated to the back of the crowd, literally trailing behind the others as they make their way from scene to scene. I suppose you have to have "the shy one" when putting together a list of characteristics you need a character to have.

Penny is the final character, and apparently she has no last name. How to put this....I hate this character.

Penny is the kind of woman who lives to serve as an energy vampire. She wants to be loved and accepted, but will not reciprocate said love. She bounces around from relationship to relationship and bed to bed - sometimes seeing, and sleeping with, a new guy from one episode to the next. In short, Penny is a slut.

The girl hangs around the guys strictly to eat their food and take advantage of them. To make her all the more unlikable, she keeps Leonard in a yo-yo emotional relationship.

If those characteristics weren't bad enough, she's also the only character with no career. She works in a restaurant, failing at becoming an actress in the interim. In a relationship, the only real attribute she could bring is love, and I've already covered that this is clearly not in her repertoire. As such, Penny has simply failed at life and as a human being.

The Verdict

Watching The Big Bang Theory can be funny at times. However, in terms of character development, there seems to be little to none. After (almost) three seasons, none of them appears to have grown or shown any form of plot development that feels like it's actually going somewhere. Yet somehow this show managed to dredge on for a whopping twelve seasons. If the series is showing this kind of fatigue in the third season, I can only imagine how bad it gets over an additional nine.

The only expansion of the story seems to focus on Penny and Leonard being in an on again off again relationship, sprinkled in with bouts of jealousy and envy on the part of Leonard when they're not. I get the feeling you're supposed to want these characters to indefinitely end up together, but honestly I wish they'd get as far away from each other as possible. Leonard clearly has more feelings for Penny than she is able to reciprocate, which makes their relationship seem sad and pathetic.

In general, I get the sense that all the relationships in this show are built on a structure of convenience. There's nobody else around, and therefore it beats the alternative of being alone. As I said above, the characters openly admit they don't like each other. So why would I like them?

As I watched episode after episode, I found myself Googling the series to see just what exactly starts happening in it. It turns out, not much. Three of the four guys end up getting married throughout the series, sadly this involves Leonard and Penny. So essentially my take away from this is the show eventually ends up being about how most of them find love, get married and go on with their lives, leaving Raj to be alone and sad.

I honestly don't see myself investing anymore time into the series to find out if my theory is true, so I'll just go with it. It all went out with a big, THUD!

Disclaimer: This article is written for entertainment purposes only. My opinions of these fictional characters does not represent any direct opinions of the actors or creative team behind the series.

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