They reached Friends/Seinfeld levels of pay now.
what I’d like to know is, why is this news or relevant?
Wasn’t Charlie Sheen also pretty much getting that in Two and a Half Men?
Yeah he was but that shouldn’t be surprising. The shows are hits even though they suck. Most of America doesn’t have a sense of humor, I guess.
Actually, that’s the lesson of this.
The fact that companies spend millions on superbowl commercials trying their hardest to be funny proves that most of America does have a sense of humor, it just so happens that due to sheer population size, said sense of humor is very broad and overly on the nose. I preface the rest of my post by saying I’m not hating on anyone who likes TBB, fans of the show continue enjoying it, just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I can’t respect someone else liking it.
The Big Bang Theory more than any other show I’ve ever seen perfectly encapsulates the main problem in all the major entertainment industries (TV, film, print, internet, etc). The Big Bang Theory like almost all super popular shows openly condescends and panders to anyone who watches it by literally repeating the same joke over and over and expecting audiences to laugh at that singular joke no matter how many times it’s remixed. It screams at the top of it’s lungs every second “hey look at how socially awkward and nerdy these nerds are!, they’re too lost in their nerdiness to know or care that they are nerds so lets all laugh at them because it’s not okay to be nerdy”. The show beats audiences over the head over and over again with this mentality, repeating that one joke constantly, with every single action and line of dialogue meant to serve as a thinly veiled excuse to remix that one joke and expecting audiences to never notice or care. The writers of the show are openly mocking anyone who watches it at every opportunity telling audiences “hey you guys are too stupid to think independently and connect the dots so we are going to make everything super obvious and spoon feed you exactly what you should be thinking and how you should be feeling at every moment so that your little tiny brain doesn’t get confused okay little baby?”.
Another issue I have with the show is how the characters themselves are not nerds, but wooden, cardboard cutouts, it’s clear the creators of the show have no idea what real world nerds are like and just lazily stiched together every cliche and stereotype of what they think a nerd behaves like and pass it off as the real thing. This is a sympton that the play makers in entertainment industries know that to be profitable they must be as lazy and creatively bankrupt as humanly possible, instead of writing characters they can just perpetuate obsolete and overly simplified stereotypes that have been in place from the media of decades past with no accounting for how dynamic, contradictory, and complex humans are. Everytime I see any of the characters do or say something in that show my first thought is “even the most typical nerdy nigga I know is nothing like that” they’re just too predictable and stilted, it’s kind of like asking a 8 year old to copy and replace the sistine chapel using a wet paper towel and 3 broken crayons.
The most popular pieces of entertainment like The Big Bang theory insult the intelligence of anyone who watch them because there is simply too much money to be made given the number of people who watch TV, so shows must be as bland, watered down, politically correct, and above all as universally appealing as humanly possible so the companies who create them get as much money/ratings from the maximum amount of people. The fundamental goal to make money first and a quality product as a secondary goal if a goal at all is not new, but it hasn’t always been that way in entertainment industries, take video games for example. In the 80’s and 90’s video games were still a niche hobby, not a large pecentage of the human population played them much less put down the money to buy consoles and since the market was smaller it was easier for publishers/developers to target their demographic and make games that catered to a specific audience, because those companies knew from the beginning they weren’t going to make as much money as say a film at that time and so they could afford to aim for quality over sales. Fast forward to now where gaming is as mainstream and universal as books, TV, film, etc and it’s not a question of whether you like games as much as it is a question of which type of games you like. Since everybody and their mom plays video games now the market is exponentially larger than it was back then and publishers/developers are all too aware of that so much so, that the focus of game development is return on investment rather than making a quality game that satisfies gamers looking for that particular game. That is why you have super linear level layouts, flashing neon arrows pointing you where to go, overly long tutorials that spell out every tiny thing, overly long cinematics, and other such elements in most big budget games, because publishers/developers are scared that if they don’t hold gamers’ hands and coddle them then they will get frustrated and feel stupid and thus not spend money on games in the future.
Since Raz0r and 99% of GD won’t read this rant:
TL:DR Fuck The Big Bang Theory and all shows like it, they cater to the lowest common denominator and I respect myself too much to watch that stuff.
I’ve sat down and watched the show. It’s on every channel these days. Anyway, if you remove the laugh track you will notice the jokes fall flat on their face.
That show is all kinds of annoying.
I watched one episode of the Big Bang Theory…I felt insulted.
Same with 2 and a half Men.
Only the three of them teamed up to get that million? That speaks volumes for solidarity on that show.
The other 2 girls already signed contracts last year, and the other 2 guys signed contracts right after the main trio. They start off making $750k an episode, then that amount keeps rising and by season 10 they will make the same as their co-stars.
The other 2 main stars signed a 500k-750k agreement or they would be kicked out of the show. lol
Silicon Valley is a hit AND fucking brilliant AND american.
I think it just proves network TV could sell anything to people if they tried hard enough / long enough and that popularity rarely has to do with quality (for better OR worse).
As for the BBT itself? I can’t stand it but some of the people on it seem genuinely funny outside of the show. It’s kind of weird. Like the writers sap all the funny out of these people.
The show is unwatchable, I cannot get through a single episode without the urge to leave the tv, it’s horrible.
I’ve heard Silicon Valley is good I’ll check it out sometime. I’ve only seen a few episodes of TBB, and as unfunny as I find it the actor who plays Sheldon seems to be a very good actor.
Big Bang Theory was decent during the first season, when the main characters felt like they were actually people, instead of blank slates used to make fun of nerds.
I’ve only watched this show on rare occasions to check out Kaley Cuoco.
…story-wise—are we supposed to believe that extremely fruity guy (the “main nerd”, I guess) is actually straight? That’s hilarious if the audience is supposed to go along with that.
There’s worse shit than Big Bang Theory making a lot more money. Every CSI, for example. Or Law & Snore-der SVBoring.
Big Bang Theory is great if you have the Tidus laugh instead of the shitty laugh track.
Spoiler
Show is shit.