{"id":6987,"date":"2013-01-09T16:06:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.com\/blog\/?p=6987"},"modified":"2013-01-09T16:06:47","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:06:47","slug":"tbbt-its-not-laughing-with-the-nerds-its-laughing-at-the-nerds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/01\/tbbt-its-not-laughing-with-the-nerds-its-laughing-at-the-nerds\/","title":{"rendered":"TBBT: It&#8217;s not laughing with the nerds, it&#8217;s laughing at the nerds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com\/post\/31079561065\/the-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory\">Shouting into the Void<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you watch, really watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory and pay attention to when the audience laughs it soon becomes clear that what they\u2019re laughing at. What Chuck Lorre wants us to find funny is not the jokes which the characters are making, it\u2019s the characters themselves. At one point Howard mentions playing Dungeons and Dragons. There is no joke attached to this, it\u2019s not the punchline to any set up, however it is treated as one. Howard says the words \u201cDungeons and Dragons\u201d and the audience laughs.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re not laughing at a joke, they\u2019re laughing at the fact that Howard plays D&amp;D.<\/p>\n<p>And this kind of thing happens all the time throughout the show. How many times has a joke been made out of Leonard owning action figures or Sheldon collecting comics? When, in season one, Penny invites the guys to her Halloween party and they are excited about making costumes, we\u2019re supposed to laugh at them, to think they are silly for dressing as a Hobbit or Thor when everyone else is trying to look sexy. The reason I feel uncomfortable watching The Big Bang Theory is because it\u2019s laughing at me, at people like me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shouting into the Void: If you watch, really watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory and pay attention to when the audience laughs it soon becomes clear that what they\u2019re laughing at. What Chuck Lorre wants us to find funny is not the jokes which the characters are making, it\u2019s the characters themselves. At one point Howard mentions playing Dungeons and Dragons. There is no joke attached to this, it\u2019s not the punchline to any set up, however it is treated as one. Howard says the words \u201cDungeons and Dragons\u201d and the audience laughs. They\u2019re not laughing at a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[25,576],"tags":[3970,135,3969],"class_list":["post-6987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link-log","category-mainstream-media","tag-chuck-lorre","tag-humour","tag-tbbt","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-1OH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}