The Big Bang Theory isn t great TV but maybe it isn t quite quite! as wretched and loathsome
as the internet d have you believe. Before all of you unsubscribe at once
let me explain myself. I was starting to plan out a pretty fun video idea I d been sitting
on for a while, which would touch in part on that most reviled of all televisual properties,
the adventures of Shellman Coopo and friends, The Big Bang Theory, bazinga and I was searching up
reviews, video essays, and so forth on this show, to just get a vibe on how YouTube feels about it,
and one thing I rewatched was this Wisecrack video from a few years back: The Big Bang Theory
What Went Wrong? I say rewatched, because I ve been subscribed to Wisecrack for years,
I really enjoy most of their content, and when I clicked on this the other day,
I realised I d seen it before, and that even then, back before I had a YouTube channel of
my own I didn t think it was a great video. And I still don t. So I thought I d make a quick video
pushing back against the ideas in that Wisecrack piece, because while I am certainly not a fan of
The Big Bang Theory, I do think the legacy it has as the worst, most incompetent thing ever,
is unhelpful, and a little bit unfair and with over two million people having seen that video,
with it being one of the top search results on the internet s premiere video-hosting, media-criticism
platform? It s not only a telling microcosm of the way the internet sees this show it s also had,
and is still having, a tremendous impact on spreading that perhaps hyperbolic vision.
Their video should be linked up in the corner now, if not, it s in the description, but if you
don t want to go watch that whole thing first: Wisecrack s thesis is essentially as follows:
The Big Bang Theory isn t just a bad comedy, in fact, it barely functions as one because
of the show s referentiality. It isn t merely that the show relies on references,
it s that the show almost exclusively substitutes actual jokes for references.
(clip WISECRACK JARED: Now in case you missed the laugh track, Sheldon giving
Penny the definition of friction was the joke. You see, it s funny because it s a reference.)
The ideas here are interchangeable, supposedly we re not laughing at what Sheldon says, we re
laughing at the fact that he referenced science. (clip WISECRACK JARED: The actual science isn
t the joke, but the fact that they re talking about science is. friction isn
t funny. The refence to friction is funny) We re laughing at him because he s a funny
nerd. The video is really arguing two things one, that this empty referentiality is a reflection
of the destruction of reality philosopher Jean Baudrillard laid out in Simulacra and Simulation,
and two that any laughs here ultimately result from these characters being dunked
on. It all kind of comes together, and the philosophy stuff is undoubtedly intriguing
to think about longtime viewers here will be aware that I, too, am a Certified Baudrillard
Enjoyer but the heavy lifting here to turn the Big Bang Theory from just bad,
just mean-spirited, into, like, a really bad show, a metaphysical void of meaning,
something deserving of this reputation as the worst of the worst, that s undoubtedly performed
by that idea of references-as-humour. (clip WISECRACK JARED: The Big Bang
Theory is proof that meaning is dead) But the case Wisecrack s video makes for
this isn t a strong one. To be sure, we are shown a couple of examples where a joke uses
jargon to set up an unrelated punchline (clip SHELDON: do you recall when I said I was going
to revolutionise humanity s understanding of the higgs-boson particle, and you said
Sheldon it s 2am get out of my bedroom ?) In that case yes, you could swap that out.
The science isn t the joke. But this just isn t the case in some
other examples the video tries to give. One example they hit hard is the DMV scene.
Y know what, I ll just play you that clip in full, together with what they say about
it. There s no real other way to do this might mean I run into copyright issues,
but I ll do my best to appeal them. Anyway, here: (clip WISECRACK JARED: more often than not, jokes
rely on characters cramming in whatever scientific explanation is relevant to the action.
SHELDON: when are roadways most slippery? Now, look, there are three answers, none of which are
correct. The correct answer is, when covered by a film of liquid sufficient to reduce the
coefficient of static friction between the tyre and the road to essentially zero, but not so deep
as to introduce a new source of friction . WISECRACK JARED:
They re references for the sake of references.) So I want to make two, maybe bold, claims here.
One that is a joke. It isn t a reference, it isn t laugh because nerd said science words it is a
joke. And I m going to demonstrate that using Wisecrack s own criteria. Their recent video
on conservative comedy, also linked below, uses Todd McGowan s following definition:
Comedy occurs when we are surprised by a conjunction of lack and excess. An excessive
response to lack or the emergence of lack occasioned by excess reveals how every lack
is excessive and every excess is lacking. When the coincidence of lack and excess
surprises us, this is the comic event. If you want a better picture of what that
looks like in other works hey! Go watch that video it s a characteristically good piece from
Wisecrack. But let s bring that idea back to the Big Bang Theory, Smellman Kubrick,
and the DMV. What are we seeing here? Well, a conjunction of lack and excess. On
a basic level, Sheldon is asked for a right answer by a questionnaire, a test, which,
due to poor wording, doesn t offer the right answer. Sheldon decries a lack of specificity
in this situation, but watching it, we find excess in that complaint there s no need for this
level of specificity in this scenario. But this only works if Sheldon is right about something,
if we understand he s right. So the science isn t a reference here. Wisecrack plays the DMV clip as
an example of this pattern (clip WISECRACK JARED:)
but it isn t! You couldn t swap that out for another science phrase, some more jargon. It
wouldn t work. Sheldon s explaining in, let s be honest, a high-school physics level retort why a
common question, a question most drivers will have answered at one point or another, doesn t
actually work at least when phrased like this. So we re not laughing because funny nerd said
science words we re laughing half because Sheldon s misunderstood the function of this test, and
half because, in doing so he is right, and they are wrong. it is, in some small way, a victory.
There, too, we see a conjunction of lack and excess. Think about the space this is
happening in. This is the DMV. I m not American, obviously, so I ve never had the pleasure to
step inside a DMV myself, but I ve watched TV! I know how you guys feel about it! The DMV appears
across American culture as a dreaded, almost Kafkaesque space of bureaucratic tedium beyond
comprehension. (DIALOGUE IS INDISTINCT CHATTER ABOUT FILLING OUT FORMS AND WAITING IN LINES)
The DMV is bureaucratic excess, it s the ultimate symbol of too much red tape, of being tied up
with form after form, line after line, of simple goals being drowned in mounds of paperwork. The
whole idea here is, no, you can t just sign up for your licence, or do this, or do that again,
I don t really know what the DMV is, I ve just seen jokes about it on TV no, it s complex,
you have to follow their rules, abide by their bureaucracy, even if you don t understand why
because they do, they re in charge, and they know best. What Sheldon does here, though, is reveal
that this excess is lacking. They don t know best. Technically? Their test doesn t have the right
answers on it. At the end of the day, the DMV isn t the arbiter of truth. You don t have to give
the right answer you have to give their answer. It's a jab at the hypocrisy of all these maybe
mismanaged systems and offices which make you jump through hoops all day long, reject the letters or
forms you submit if there s a single error all while their own paperwork is flawed. And sure,
with a bit of common sense you can muddle through, you can tell that the DMV form isn t actually
asking for the theoretical situation when a road would be the absolute slippiest possible but there
is a flaw here. There is a basic lack of logic in this excessive network of rules. In this moment,
Sheldon becomes all of us tearing our hair out at an incomprehensible government website. He becomes
Amy Santiago pointing out the impossibilities of the New York permit office. He becomes Jerry
Seinfeld raging against the car-rental machine (clip ATTENDANT: unfortunately we ran out of cars
JERRY: but the reservation keeps the car here, that s why you have reservations!
ATTENDANT: I know why we have reservations. JERRY: I don t think you do!)
And that brings us to my second claim this isn t just a joke - it s a good joke. It is
well known that nothing kills a joke more than explaining it, let alone doing so with theory,
so I m not expecting any of you to be in stitches right now, but as we ve seen there
s a fair bit going on here. This isn t a lazily written joke. I like this moment.
I think this is a Funny Moment. It s a breathe slightly more heavily out of your nose moment.
Bazinga. And that s subjective, obviously but what I think is less arguable is that per a
definition Wisecrack endorses in a more recent video there is some amount of real humour here.
This doesn t need to be a long video. Some of the other criticisms Wisecrack makes,
particularly in this section on The Big Bang Theory s referentiality, don t really
sit right with me like the way they try to fit the empty-referentiality label onto that Mystic
Warlords of Ka a scene, I think there is a general reference being made here to the juxtaposition
between the kind of silly naming conventions and creature rosters you see in trading card games and
the intensity, the seriousness in which they re treated or employed by players - but I don t think
there s much to be gained by going through the video with a fine-toothed comb, because I think
we can see from the way they try to deploy that DMV example that Wisecrack s thesis doesn t really
work here or at least, it isn t exactly supported by the moments they cite. Now if they d have gone
through enough episodes, they could have found sufficient examples of the empty referentiality
they re discussing but I think the fact that within the number of episodes they watched,
there weren t enough instances of actually, really empty referentiality to fill out their
video might tell us that it isn t as dominant a trend in The Big Bang Theory as the video
suggests. It does sort of feel like they went into the planning of that video with the intention of
writing about Baudrillard and the destruction of reality, then watched the episodes, realised the
shoe didn t quite fit, and jammed it on anyway knowing nobody was going to leap to this show s
defence. I think it s either that or they went harder on that moment, on a few other moments,
too, because it s The Big Bang Theory, because of that almost inescapable perception of the show
as unfettered failure, as an utter televisual abomination. Of course, this perception is not
unfounded but it erodes nuance, and tarnishes otherwise solid critical efforts. In taking
the show s utter failure as a given, in making a video in which the very presence of any functional
humour whatsoever is all but denied, in which the details of jokes are ignored, and dismissed
as empty references simply because they include a bit of scientific terminology, Wisecrack shows
us this. And, look, The Big Bang Theory doesn t deserve much but it deserves more than that.
This show is often a poor one, especially as the seasons drag on. Frequently, it s downright
mean-spirited. Any moment in it which celebrates nerd culture, or fandom, is inevitably sandwiched
between 3 or 4 moments mocking these characters and their identities, again, increasingly so as
the years went by. A lot of the points where the show brushes up against social issues have aged
incredibly poorly I ve linked a great video by Cheyenne Lin in the description which gets into
the bad way the show s women are written - but! It isn t an utter technical failure. The jokes are
jokes, mostly, and some of them are even funny. (clip SHEDLON: I ll have a diet coke
PENNY: Ok, can you please order a cocktail? I need to practice mixing drinks.
SHELDON: Fine, I ll have a virgin Cuba Libre PENNY: that s um, rum and coke, without the rum.
SHELDON: Yes. PENNY: So, coke.
SHELDON: Yes. And could you make it a diet?) Is that a low bar? Absolutely. The Big Bang
Theory isn t great TV but maybe it isn t quite quite! as wretched and loathsome
as the internet d have you believe. Cheers for watching! Drop a like if you
re feeling generous, and big thanks as always to all my Patreon supporters you re seeing now,
especially Daniel Goldhorn, Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and Weirdybeardy.