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[PA Comic] Monday, January 21, 2013 - Royalty
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It's this.
It's a "reality" TV show on TBS. As with everything on TBS, it's been advertised so much I had no desire to watch it anymore (as if I did).
http://www.tbs.com/shows/king-of-the-nerds/
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The next episode will be what makes it or breaks it for me I think
If anyone was the punchline in that episode, it's non-nerds.
But I'll grant you the bit about Howard calling his mother undercuts the whole thing.
But nope, the payoff is those guys are just weird, and normal people find them weird.
Even if that weren't the case, it's not something that should be complained about anyways. The sort of humor has been around for awhile and poking fun at social groups is certainly acceptable. A classic example is the SNL "Da Bears" sketch which mocked hardcore sports fans that had fanboyish views on their favorite team, and hipsters are made fun of all the time. Nerds shouldn't be an exception to that!
People gotta come up with all sorts of weird logic to justify hating it (the worst I've ever seen is a term that has been floating around the internet: "nerd blackface", which is such a fucking stupid term for a variety of reasons and the people that use clearly it don't understand why) when they can just say "I don't like BBT because it's an unfunny sitcom".
Why do you demand that the conversation stop at "unfunny"? People aren't allowed to discuss why it isn't funny?
One of the major motifs of the show is how these characters are basically terrible, and the worst aspects of their personalities are played up for laughs, conflict, and plot. Whether it's Abed and his obssessive personality and borderline autism, Shirley and her evangelical Christianity or Pierce and his being old and white. They're all caricatures, Abed is a nerdy caricature, and if the show were full of varying flavors of him instead of just being one it would probably piss off nerds too.
On the black screen
I caught on to their doing that right away. I had to see a few more episodes to realize that the majority of the other jokes were "<character> is a nerd! Hah!"
I guess if you find it funny, it's funny. But for me you have to put a little more work into that kind of thing, subvert some expectations or something, otherwise it's just being a dick without bothering to actually make a joke.
That said, in general I'm not fond of a show doing that. It's one thing if it's something like South Park, I'm pretty sure at this point every single group/cliche/whatever has had many jokes directed at them. When it's just ganging up on one group constantly? It gets old and starts to get offensive. Obviously South Park has constant Jew jokes from Cartman, but that's because 1 character happens to be super offensive and anti-Semitic, the show isn't 100% that.
Whatever a sitcom is about is what it will make fun of. The real success is getting you to care about the characters while laughing, and that's why my family watches BBT. Asperger's runs in the family; do you know how useful it is to be able to point to an example of Sheldon doing something and saying "like that"? My brother also has a "spot" that he's obsessive over, and while I wish he wasn't and it can be quite trying, if I just tell a guest "You know how Sheldon has a spot? That's my brother's, so try not to sit in it" while making a wry face, it goes over a million times better than trying to explain the details of his behavior.
And hey, sometimes they play Catan and make the same dumb Catan joke everyone does when they play, and we laugh because we do that too and now it's on TV!
[/soapbox]
So... Having managed to escape the advertising, what's the point of becoming King of the Nerds? Do you get a cash price or a trip to Wil Wheaton's house or something?
*Apologies!
This... The humor is just so cheap. It's basicly just making a punchline of things people already know as a punchline, so they laugh at it because that's what you're supposed to do, right? I agree that every sitcom makes fun of it's characters in some way, but I don't think it's mostly because of 'who' they are, but rather the way they react to a certain situation or event. I don't really recall obvious jokes in the Fresh Prince that boiled down to 'This is a black kid into hip hop, doing stuff that black kids into hiphop do.'
Going from Mike's comments, I think I will check this show out. It sounds pretty genuinely pro-nerd.
I just happen to like big bang theory. It is a form of abnigation for me. Same reason I watch top gear when I come home.