lizdexia:

brofessornicholas:

This entire gifset showcases quite superbly my main beef with this show:

The “hey look let’s dress a gaggle of men in outlandish clothing and have them quote obvious pop culture references which we are then told to find nerdy and endearing.”

Most commonly, this manifests itself into the gifset above, where we find the main characters exposed to a Lord of the Rings ring, them each, in turn, quoting the book/movie until one of them cracks the epitome of a hilarious joke: “Holy crap, are we nerdy.”

At this point, canned laughter is released with a gusto while the audience is told that somehow this overstereotyped caricature of “nerd” culture is hilarious and what these people are doing is funny. In reality, they passed a metal ring around and quoted a well known book/movie while then proceeding to misuse the word “nerd.”

nerd /nərd/ n.

intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession.

What they were going for, I assume, was geek. However, by classifying themselves as nerds they are only making themselves appear foolish and socially inept. 

This is a common and overused trope in mass media, and most importantly, television. Geeks and nerds have become socially inept laughingstocks that are so caricaturized and extreme that any semblance of truth hidden below the stereotype has withered and died, until all that remains is the long dead skeleton of a once beaten horse. 

But, when you really get down to it, this isn’t funny stuff. This is a show revolving around an ensemble of people that really only quote Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and crack the occasional and badly written physics joke while in the background the word “MATH!” echoes like a recorded resounding gong. Canned laughter is misused while they all sit and laugh at how utterly “nerdy” they are, the leads reveling in their social ineptness. 

tl;dr Nicholas has ill feelings towards Big Bang Theory.

It’s basically the same thing that New Girl does to no greater success: take a likable lead, have them make a Lord of the Rings reference and do some kind of kooky dance or gesture, and have that be shorthand for geeky/nerdy. Because, you know, God forbid you take on the challenge of writing a character who actually IS kind of socially inept or consumed by their interests to the point of being an asshole to others, or a character whose geeky interests are slightly more obscure than Lord of the Rings (which, to be fair, I’ve never been interested in, because I don’t like fantasy). The writers seem to share a reference pool the size of a kitchen sink with Olivia Munn. (Remember when Sheldon incorrectly explained the origin of the name X-Men? Yeah.)

And, I mean, I’m not just blaming the writers here, because for all I know they could actually be wanting to write about hopelessly smart but obtuse and mean or timid and shy or even totally functional but also super geeky people, but the producers and people up top at CBS are going “THE AUDIENCE WON’T GET THIS! SMACK SOME GLASSES ON THAT HANDSOME GUY WHO WAS NAKED ON BROADWAY IN THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED AND PUT EVERYONE ELSE IN A COMIC BOOK T-SHIRT AND CALL IT A DAY!” Which I get, because it’s nearly impossible to write a really smart show that dumb people will watch after work — what was the last huge hit show to also be kind of smart? Lost? — but it’s still essentially a show about nerds for the popular kids who just want to laugh at them, rather than being about nerds, for nerds.

In short:

(Source: blesslopez)