Unlike a lot of other popular sitcoms, it seems as though Big Bang has a group of people that absolutely love the show but also a large contingent of people who think it is stupid and don't understand why anyone would like it.
I didn't watch the show when it was still being produced, but out of boredom I recently started to watch the show in a rather intense binge session and I wouldn't say it is the best thing ever, but I also can't understand how anyone could really say they hate this show. I think it is pretty inventive and funny.
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Seeing that picture above, I haven't gotten to the part where Penny cuts her hair off and I'll go ahead and say that I think that was a mistake.
I'm sure everyone is familiar with this show already as it was the most watched show on TV when it was still being made. They started to see dwindling numbers like most series as it entered the 8 year mark, plus the actors were getting paid a hefty sum for each episode so maybe it stopped being cost-effective. I think I speak for most people when I say that Sheldon is probably most people's favorite character and even though there is no "main character" in this show just like there was no main character in Friends, Sheldon seems to be the center of attention.
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A couple of interesting things about the person who plays Sheldon, Jim Parsons:
Sheldon is meant to be a boy genius in the show who is in his early 20's. Yet, when he was cast for the role he was already in his late 30's and must have had to work pretty hard to get the role. He does look like he is a lot younger than he really is and still does. He is currently 49 and still looks a lot younger than his age would indicate. I guess there are some people out there that are just lucky with father time.
Parsons was a minor stage actor and auditioned for up to 30 TV pilots, he was awarded very few roles in these pilot series and the ones he did get were never picked up for production.
Parson's agent tried to negotiate a higher salary per-episode for him due to the agent and probably most viewers. Upon learning about this Parson said he would not accept the higher salary unless all the other main characters also received percentage raises matching his own. So I guess he is a pretty good guy in real life because he didn't need to do this and also made the other actors VERY wealthy in the end. I think we could argue that basically any other character could have been written out of the cast without affecting the show a great deal. Sheldon however, was not replaceable. He could have been greedy but is genuinely friends with the rest of the cast.
He was the highest paid TV actor in 2018 according to Forbes where he made a reported 26 million dollars in one year.
Now let's move on to the show in a general sense and why I think it is a good show.
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Although shot almost entirely on a sound stage with very little on-location settings and the fact that the show has a canned laugh-track and these are two things I normally dislike, the show had really good writers and they differentiate themselves by being a more intelligent comedy including very complicated science which I suppose is a good thing because almost everyone in the show is meant to be a genius.
The episodes are kind of connected in that there might be some sort of underlying theme, normally centering around one particular character's relationship with their significant other, but the episodes are also "standalone" meaning that you can just pick and choose any episode to watch in the middle and previous information that you may not have seen is not a huge factor in understanding what is going on.
The episodes are only 20 minutes long, so it is a very easy show to binge watch. These days, I sometimes want a low-commitment show from time to time and this one is definitely that. It goes by quickly and it is very easy to binge watch.
Some of the jokes are corny, but for the most part I feel as though it is very well-written and I laugh a lot when I'm watching it. I'm guessing most other people feel this way seeing as how it was the most watched show on TV for most of the time that it was on air.
Now for one thing that I consider to be a major flaw of the series and this isn't specific to Big Bang. Most sitcoms are guilty of this as well.
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They repeat a great deal of the content over and over again. The main problem being that one topic that the return to over and over again is to create relationship strife between the characters on a regular basis. This is something that is in nearly every episode as the nerdy boys introduce women into their lives. You can count on Penny and Leonard having an issue in their relationship in at least every other episode, which they normally resolve in the same episode. This is true in all the other relationships in the series as well.
Basically, you could see where this was going: Everyone was eventually going to get married and once that happened, there wasn't really anything else to do with the show. This has been true with many other sitcoms in the past and I guess they kind of have to do it. Big Bang made it 12 seasons and 279 episodes before marrying everyone off, so I guess they kind of paced themselves.
So what did you think of this show? I am currently watching it and am enjoying it but when I tell people about this half of them will say things like "you actually like that crap?" and others will say "oh I love that show!"
There seems to be a big divide as far as what people think of it is concerned.