The Man Who Gets The Science Right On 'The Big Bang Theory'

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/09/23/224404260/the-man-who-gets-the-science-right-on-the-big-bang-theory

by AliCollins • 13 years ago

77 70 13 years ago

terhechte• 13 years ago

"Saltzberg says he became a scientist partly because of popular culture, such as Isaac Asimov's science fiction and the '70s TV show Space: 1999. He believes the rigor and passion for science he brings to The Big Bang Theory might inspire kids in the audience to one day become scientists, too."

Could be right there. When I searched Instagram for #bbt once, I found a couple of posts like 'I wish my friends were this smart' or 'I want to be a nerd too' with pics from the series. I think the series may give science a good image.

novum• 13 years ago

As an aside, I was watching BBT just yesterday (on a long plane ride with limited entertainment options) and I was reminded how uncomfortably awkward it makes me feel. In short, the core problem is that the characters are not sympathetic -- you're meant to laugh at them, not with them, to say nothing of the show's terribly backwards gender roles.

This essay was quite popular a while back and summarizes all this and more, quite well I think: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...

Edit: Interesting to see many of you have a completely opposite take on these characters. That's fine with me, as long as we don't have to watch BBT if I'm over at your place. :)

Edit 2: Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

lionheart• 13 years ago

I don't know. In my personal opinion those critiques are overly critical.

My circle of friends is pretty much exactly like the main characters in the show. Nerdy, 20-something PhD guys that play board games and watch sci-fi. A few were actually almost as bad as Raj in not being able to say a word when a woman was around.

And I love the show. Loved it as soon as it came out just because it reminded me so much of my friends. And I don't feel like the characters are meant to be laughed at.

So, just to say, there's more than one perspective on this.

stormbrew5• 13 years ago

I agree with this. Insofar as you're supposed to laugh at the characters, I think it's true of pretty much all sitcoms. Sitcoms are almost always about broad stroke "laugh at yourself, because you are funny" kind of stuff.

But more interestingly, often people who hold up this argument are fond of bringing up The IT Crowd as a counterpoint to BBT on this front and... I just don't get it. The people in IT Crowd are basically awful human beings I can't sympathize with, in spite of existing in a vaguely similar world as they do. The characters on BBT feel much more sympathetic to me. They're mostly trying to be good people at least.

Camillo• 13 years ago

I think the appeal of BBT is that some people like to see a reflection of their microcosm: they like to see people like them, situations like the ones they experience, references to things they like, etc.. It makes them feel relevant and part of an in-group.

It's the same appeal that xkcd has. It has been called "referential humor", but I don't think it should be classified as humor, although for some people it seems to be a completely satisfying humor surrogate. Indeed, BBT and xkcd are both full of nerd references, devoid of actual humor, and enormously popular.

mturmon• 13 years ago

People who think the show is not "close enough" to real life don't know enough elite physicists or Caltech grad students/research scientists. Even within the world of tech PhD's (a small community in the scheme of things), Caltech is especially unusual. I have been impressed that the creators of the show can capture some of that oddness and make a go of it for a mass audience.

The show does struggle with female roles. As does its real-life counterpart.

eco2• 13 years ago

I once heard Big Bang Theory described as "blackface for nerds"* and it made me suddenly realize why I was so uncomfortable watching that show.

* I hope no one thinks I'm trying to trivialize blackface which was, of course, far worse than what Big Bang Theory is doing.

stormbrew5• 13 years ago

I really wish people would stop saying this. Even if you don't mean to trivialize what blackface actually was, that is basically the net effect. It's a terrible analogy on pretty much every level.

changdizzle• 13 years ago

I prefer another saying I've heard - Big Bang Theory is a dumb show about smart people, and Arrested Development is a smart show about dumb people

shib71• 13 years ago

I personally find the characters very sympathetic and laughing at the BBT characters is like laughing at myself. It's refreshing to see the extreme qualities which other shows merely caricature be shown in the context of fully fleshed out human beings.

dkuntz22• 13 years ago

BBT doesn't flesh out those characters. Most other shows I watch do.

Ben Wyatt on Parks and Rec comes off as a much more realistic nerd than any of the characters on BBT.

Abed Nadir in Community is also a whole lot more fleshed out than the characters in BBT.

The BBT characters are the epitome of stereotypical, caricatures of nerds. None of them are ever shown to have interests other than the traditionally nerdy kind.

If by "fully fleshed out human beings", you mean they happen to be main characters, sure. But by any other definition of "fully fleshed out" vs "caricature", they're much closer to caricature.

soneca• 13 years ago

I started to feel this way watching Two and a Half Men, because of the character Allan. After some years of laughs I just felt awkward because there was this, incredibly unlucky, with no particular skill socially or professionally, mistreated by everybody, from his ex-wife to his brother's maid, humiliated by women, with no will-power to fight back. Really, it was just sad. Usually even the weak characters have some quality, some strenght you have to admire in them - as a pure heart. They stripped Allan from all that.

But I guess other people started feeling the same way because they change it a little bit. They gave him a beautiful, nice girlfriend, some qualities, some character, some opinion. As a result it is a more human character now, not a freak show.

And about BBT, I guess the writers give the characters some of these qualities, so I don't feel as awkward whatching it as I was watching 2&1/2Men.

phaus• 13 years ago

For me the awkwardness started when I realized that Charlie Sheen was playing himself. A morally deficient, manipulative, self-centered douche-bag who happens to be hell bent on self-destruction, yet he always narrowly avoids it due to his disproportionate amounts of luck.

rpgmaker2• 13 years ago

I agree, they made Allan so pathetic. I also learned that Jon Cryer is an incredibly good comedy actor. Charlie wasn't really acting, he was just being himself but Allan was a real piece of depressing work.

ajtaylor• 13 years ago

I felt exactly this way too. You know how you just cringe about something, knowing exactly how awful it's going to be or feel? That describes most of my reactions to Allan, and is part of the reason I quit watching. The other was that the raunchy factor seemed to know no lower bound. I finally reached a point where I couldn't take anymore and quit watching (around the time Ashton Kutcher came in).

brazzy• 13 years ago

In short, the core problem is that the characters are not sympathetic -- you're meant to laugh at them, not with them, to say nothing of the show's terribly backwards gender roles.

For the record: I disagree 100% with every single statement in there.

rpgmaker2• 13 years ago

For the record: I agree 100% with everything you said.

objclxt• 13 years ago

Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

No. Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.

Shooting a sitcom in front of a studio audience radically alters the pacing, the way jokes are told, and the setup (you're inherently constrained to fewer sets).

I think there is still a space today for comedies with live audiences (and the ratings seem to back this up). I love Arrested Development. I also love Frasier. AD would obviously never have worked with a live audience, Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track.

Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.

millstone2• 13 years ago

Can you elaborate on why Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track?

One show which benefited from a laugh track was Married With Children, because it was an unapologetically trashy show about trashy people, and the audience hoots and jeers contributed to its low-brow atmosphere.

But the Big Bang Theory suffers horribly for its laugh track. It's not just the disproportionate reaction to jokes, it's the laughter at things that aren't jokes at all. See for example this egregious example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE , in which the audience starts cracking up after "My new computer came with Windows 7."

nikatwork• 13 years ago

Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.

Or, y'know, you could have single camera comedies with no laugh track. The British seem to manage that just fine. I personally find laugh tracks equal parts desperate and condescending. "Hey dummy! There's a joke here! Laugh damn you... LAUGH!!"

yaeger2• 13 years ago

Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.

You are looking at it wrong. Do you know why the laughter is edited in post? You agreed that they film in front of a live audience (something most BBT bashers still can't accept from personal observations).

Now, one scene, multiple takes. The take that makes it into the show might have been the fifth one of the day. Of course the laughter that take produced is nowhere near as the initial response to the joke. So, you edit the laughter in post to make it fit. That has got nothing to do with "sweetening" anything. Unless you would rather they just use the laughter form the actual take, even though it was the 12th attempt and after seeing the joke 12 times the audience couldn't muster up so much as a snicker.

SeanLuke6• 13 years ago

Edit 2: Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

BBT does not use a laugh track.

BrianEatWorld• 13 years ago

You are right that its not canned laughter, but a laugh track can more generally refer to a separate track for the audience's laughter. This can be edited to compensate for jokes that require repeated takes or have its level's adjusted just like the rest of the sound in the show.

I don't watch the show, so I can't say for sure, but its possible that the way the laugh track is mixed makes it more obvious than other shows, such as 90s sitcoms.

dnautics• 13 years ago

I think a second core problem with BBT is that it really plays into the "trappings of being intelligent" - which is not how most intelligent people actually are. There are a TON of "signalling" devices, for example liking comic books, or having thick-rimmed glasses. Now, I'm not a physicist (chemist/biologist) and we may be more "down to earth" but I don't have a single scientist friend who HAS THE TIME to do a lot of those things that maybe in high school geeks/nerds did a lot of. I don't know anyone who plays D&D anymore, I don't know anyone who goes to Comic-Con (I'm in San Diego). We do stuff like - go hiking; I'm obsessed with social dance (where there are, incidentally, tons of engineers and scientists); I had a lot of math majors friends from college and of the ones that did math PhD programs, they wound up: climbing rediculous spires in red rock country, supermarathon running for fun... And one, after getting his PhD, joined the Navy and entered its pilot training program (he would have become a fighter pilot but there were no fighter billets available).

So, what bugs me about BBT in addition to having really awful people (watch "BBT without the laugh track" on youtube if you doubt it), is not only that it perpetuates stereotypes, it perpetuates really dumb stereotypes... And the life of a scientist, I think, swings from incredibly boring times in the lab, to super-exciting times in the lab, to "relatively normal social life" outside of the lab, except that that last one gets a lot less time, since, we're in the lab all the damn time.

lelandbatey• 13 years ago

Indeed, I've heard the style of the humor on Big Bang Theory as

    "Stupid comedy about smart things."

And I'd agree with that. The humor itself is really shallow, often mean spirited and uncomfortable. They can only pass themselves off as "smart" because they have peripheral details that relate to traditionally smart things.

vacri3• 13 years ago

BBT bugs me for the same reasons. I've yet to find someone actually in the life that enjoys the show. It seems to be an outsider's view of 'what nerds and geeks do', rather than written by nerds and geeks. This is given away in the article when they say they had to be shown students' apartments to see what they looked like.

It's interesting that the people I know who like it are the ones who like to be close to STEM or academia, but not actually in it. A sort of living-the-fantasy. Admiring the trappings you talk about, all wrapped around a fairly bog-standard sitcom.

contingencies• 13 years ago

It bothered me too, I thought about it and came to the same conclusion. Moreover, while watching the show (always at the behest of someone else, by now perhaps in four different countries) I am primarily left wondering how twisted the producers of such a show must be, and how sick the entire entertainment industry really is.

If you ask me, Buddhism got it right: communicating trivialities, distractions and divisive speech are things fundamentally unhealthy to ourselves and our environments that we should seek to avoid.

Hollywood, on the other hand, celebrates the same. Of course, people will interpret this as fundamentalism, and of course I'm not advocating zero entertainment (I believe we should all be free to make our own decisions about which company to keep and media to consume and produce). I am, however, advocating calling a spade a spade, and I do think novum's comments are right on the mark with this show.

SeanLuke6• 13 years ago

What baffles me is that David Salzberg is a professor works tirelessly to get the science correct on BBT, and yet this gentleman was unable to correct the incredible, mind-bogglingly bad episode "The Tenure Turbulence", where every possible aspect of tenure appears to come from some alternate universe unrelated to Earth. This episode is so far beyond wrong I don't know where to start. David knows how tenure works: indeed he might be the only person working for the show who does (besides maybe Bialik). Why wouldn't they consult him?

noonespecial• 13 years ago

There's a great big whopping difference between when your consultant says "change what's written on that board in the background" and "change the whole plot of the episode, that's not how the world works".

I'm sure he told them, I'm sure they know; but the whole plot turned on it.

Sometimes when you realize that superman flying around in space is impossible from a thermodynamic perspective no matter how "super" he is, you just gotta shrug and say "dude, he's superman".

vacri3• 13 years ago

I thought the same of the hacking scenes in Swordfish... then I realised that the movie isn't meant for me. It was meant for a mainstream audience that has no idea what hacking is - and instead they get a visual representation of 'hard, technical'. I imagine the same thing goes with that episode - I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing that tenure was just used as a mere plot device rather than a topic to explore.

SeanLuke6• 13 years ago

I thought the same of the hacking scenes in Swordfish... then I realised that the movie isn't meant for me.

No, I get that. But using this logic, BBT shouldn't be making any attempt to get the physics right either. After all, it's not a show for physicists.

Why the inconsistency?

beloch• 13 years ago

The show gets some interesting aspects of physics culture right. For example, there's the chauvinism of theorists over experimentalists. I was a bit surprised by this when I first encountered it, but I soon came to realize it's probably motivated by jealously and rejection. Experimentalists operate under the constraint of having to realize a test of one theory and stick with that same theory for months or years at a time, but they get all the cool toys plus the potential for real "Eureaka!" moments (even if those are exceedingly rare). Most theorists would never admit to being jealous of this but, at the same time, they cannot deny being jealous when their colleagues get to work with experimentalists. There are a lot more theorists out there creating material to test than there are labs able to test material! Theorists need to develop tough skin to handle all the times their theories are dismissed as "uninteresting" by experimentalists who define "interesting" as "something we can test". To make matters worse, many experimentalists are also damned good theorists. They're the physics-world equivalent of geniuses who are also first-class jocks!

It makes sense for Sheldon to be the ultimate theorist chauvinist since he works with string theory, which is, so far, not of much interest to experimentalists because its so impractical to test! Salzburg is definitely a theorist, and it shows. The whiteboards may be correct most of the time, but the lab scenes are just painfully bad! All they really amount to is, "Hey look! Lasers!". Having a consultant around to check your white-boards is fine, but they should send the writers to intern in an experimental lab for a bit if they ever want to move past seeing the world through Sheldon's eyes.

P.S. I specifically watched this show because, when you tell people you work in physics, BBT is the first thing they think of. If there's a TV show specifically about your profession it's surprisingly awkward to be completely ignorant of it!

Shorel• 13 years ago

I guess it is a counter-reaction to Einstein not getting more than one Nobel prize for all he did.

Back then, experimental physics was perceived as the 'real' physics, and guys like Einstein were 'mathematicians' meddling with physics.

Source: Einstein and Feynman biographies.

chiph• 13 years ago

About the only science I have liked/found interesting in the show was the time they bounced a modulated laser off the reflector left on the moon.

So far as funny? Can't get enough of the monkey + cigarette jokes.

robomartin• 13 years ago

Relax guys and gals. This show, much like most everything you see on TV and in the movies, is a caricature. It is not reality.

The formula is simple: Turn your brain down to "slow" and have a good time. Don't take any of it seriously. It's not real. It's television.

Some of the writing is hilariously funny. I have worked with people that exhibited some of these characteristics (not all). Some were great engineers but had the social skills of a brick. Most are nothing like these characters. They have varied interests and really full and active personal and family lives outside of work.

iliiilliili• 13 years ago

I'm always surprised this show is popular among the user base here. From what I've seen it's aimed at 14 year old girls who think they are ``nerdy'' because they wear glasses and have a Nintendo t-shirt. Bazinga!

WalterBright2• 13 years ago

I enjoyed seasons 1-5, but season 6 is just rehashing the same old stuff. Past time for the show to hang up.

WalterBright2• 13 years ago

My favorite nerdy character is Walter "I'm in the http://www.classicempire.com business" White.

dkuntz22• 13 years ago

I watched most of Breaking Bad for the first time this summer (all but the final eight episodes), and while I really like Walt at the beginning, these last few episodes (really starting with Say My Name, the second to last episode in the first half of season five) my like started to wane. I still like the character, but not as much...

I think Abed Nadir from Community is more my type of nerd. Probably because I find the character similar to myself.

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

The Big Bang Theory is a horrible piece of television. It's so horribly cliched that I feel somewhat insulted that it perpetuates the overused stereotypes that nerds are socially awkward people who are afraid of girls, love Star Trek, wear thick-rimmed glasses, idolise Stephen Hawking and have bad people skills.

Good on them for having science consultants to get the science part of the show right, but the show is uncomfortable to watch. BBT is a dumb show about smart people. A show that repeats beaten to death stereotypes about nerds and jocks, a show that does nothing to break the status quo that smart people are the only hope this world has and that all smart people aren't comic book loving introverts who never go out and are 40 year old virgins.

Obviously I am not the target of this show nor are any of my educated friends with degrees. But I can tell you the stereotype of what smart people actually are is completely wrong because smart people can't be pigeon holed into a certain category. Everyone is different; you have your introverts and extroverts, your comic book readers and non-comic-book readers.

As usual I am overreacting. I have a passionate disdain for this show and know of many others who feel exactly the same way. I didn't intend for this to sound like a rant, it's somewhat out of place, but felt it had to be said.

Erwin• 13 years ago

Us people who are "stereotyped" by this show think it's very funny, and don't really need you to be the white knight that saves us from a terrible Hollywood sitcom. If there's anything offensive here, it's your condescending attitude.

Did you similarly rail on "Sex in the City" for not realistically portraying women and sexuality?

DigitalSea2• 13 years ago

What exactly is funny about Big Bang Theory? I'm not trying to be a "white knight" here. I was giving an opinion on a show that I know many people dislike due to its over-the-top and unfunny stereotype perpetuating...

I'm sorry if you think I am being condescending, but not once did I insult or single out any particular individual, I called out a show which is definitely not funny for being completely unoriginal. I didn't call out people that watch the show, if you watch it and like it, then good for you, I'm not saying you are a bad person or any less of a person for doing so.

Your comment is condescending if you want to get specific. You've singled me out for having an opinion on a show you share a different opinion on. Who's the bad guy here? Keep things civil buddy, stop trying to bait me, it won't work. Run along now.

shocks• 13 years ago

The show Numb3rs had a similar thing, mathematicians to check accuracy. :)

The Man Who Gets The Science Right On 'The Big Bang Theory'

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