"The Intellectual Shaming Hypothesis" or "My Issue With 'The Big Bang Theory' in 1200 Words"

For the last decade or so, a fever has been spreading across the country and the world in general, reaching borderline pandemic proportions. Whether you know it or not, you've probably been affected by it at some point in your life. Some of the symptoms include a new-found mainstream acceptance for what was once considered a detrimental lifestyle, a slight decline in the dominance of the myo-centric male in society, and the record-breaking profits of a multi-billion dollar industry of fandom. I'm talking, obviously, about the nerd acceptance movement of the new millennium.

Now, I'm not here to criticize society's overuse of the term "nerd." Nor am I here to debate whether every girl who wears a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that they paid $400 for or every guy who's bought a "Green Lantern" dvd and a Walking Dead shirt on sale at Walmart is a self-proclaimed "nerd" or not. I'm not even here to discuss whether a panty raid is a particularly effective way for a "nerd" to take revenge or not. I'm simply here to cite an opinion on one particular issue:

CBS's "The Big Bang Theory."

Now, hear me out before you immediately write me off as a pretentious comedy snob on the everything-that-is-popular-is-made-by-and-for-hacks bandwagon. That is an accurate description of me, but at least wait until the end of this post to decide so for yourself. I will not stoop to saying that the show isn't funny just to prove a point. To be honest, the show does make me laugh, and they definitely have some smart writers (or at least smart consultants). I love a good reference to Occam's Razor or Schrodinger's Cat or the Large Hadron Collider as much as the next one-time-or-another science major. There's some funny jokes and interesting story arcs. Let the record show that I do enjoy it, to some extent. I just have one very specific problem though, and that is the way that the show itself treats the character of Sheldon Cooper.

Sheldon is almost inhumanely intelligent. The man is a doctoral degree holder who studies and researches theoretical physics for a living. He is also more than adequately knowledgeable on any objective subject from mathematics to biology to chemistry to astronomy. He has put so much time and effort in his life to conquering scientific knowledge that he has sacrificed his development of any form of social skills. He has developed many ticks and obsessive compulsions, and also borders on Asperger's territory. Sheldon is the poster boy for what every person who's ever dreamed of being a scientist aspires to be. He is the embodiment of academia. He is strong-willed and doesn't back down against other people's opinions because he knows the facts to back his own ideas up. His brain functions with 100% of its capacity for logic at all times. He's a modern day Spock, if Vulcans had less emotion. He is an intellectual Superman.

And herein lies my problem: why does a show with a lead character that embodies all these traits resonate with the average TV watching American? He's not relatable to the blue collar red state family, so how is he the focal point of one of the most popular shows in the last few decades of network television. He's an elitist intellectual with a passion for knowledge and a great disdain for those who refuse to learn or accept facts. And in the eyes of the show, none of that matters. He is a weirdo. He's out of step with society. He does things strangely. What kind of asshole can only sit on one side of a couch? Even within his own group of close friends, he is constantly the butt of the joke. Essentially, he's almost the antagonist of the show, which brings me to my hypothesis: the "Big Bang Theory" is so goddamn popular because, even as accepting as we like to pretend we are these days, America still loves to point their fingers and laugh at nerds. A lot.

Which brings me to Penny. In my eyes, Penny is the antagonist of the show. She is dumb. She's proud of being dumb. God forbid she accidentally learned something while talking to Sheldon. Can you imagine? The nerve of that man when he thoroughly explains something to her that she asked him about it the first place! Who does he think he his, bogging her down with all boring and cumbersome information? And yet, she's not the villain. She is the hero. She is the relatable character. She is the lens through which the average American views the world of the show, annoyed by Sheldon, laughing at his eccentric idiosyncrasies. She embodies the thought in the back of your head that harasses Sheldon for only allowing himself to only sit at one end of the couch. It's not an unfortunate set of neuroses he's developed, he's just a weird pompous dick who dislikes change.

The thing that really lead me to identify my problem with the show, however, comes from a different show entirely. On the NBC-turned-Yahoo series "Community," we find a character with very similar attributes. Abed Nadir is a film student/graduate at Greendale Community College, who also happens to have obsessive compulsions, a complete lack of understanding of commonplace social interactions, and is, how would you say it in a politely correct way?... a bit spectrum-y. Two very similar characters on paper, but two very different characters in the way they are treated by their respective shows. Whereas Sheldon is the punchline, Abed is the sympathic character. When Sheldon is put down, an overused laugh track tells you that he his in the wrong, and that you are obviously better than him. When someone ridicules Abed, you feel for him, and whomever wronged him spends the rest of the episode trying to right their wrong, and if they don't, you, the viewer, feel even worse about it.

For me, that's the correct way to present these characters. Dan Harmon, creator of "Community," has the right perspective. Jeff Winger, the cool handsome guy every man wants to be, comes off as the fool. He is hindered by his bravado, not lauded for it. Jeff is the problem, but finds ways to rectify and improve himself based on his experiences with Abed. Penny is the problem, but Sheldon's attempts to captivate her with knowledge are blown off, as if they were burdens on her. Jeff and Penny are the problems. The key difference? Harmon lets Jeff solve his problematic self, whereas Chuck Lorre encourages Penny to continue in her ways and torment any geek in her path. And that is my hypothesis as to why "Community" faced a potential firing squad of network executives and the end of each season, and "The Big Bang Theory" continues to churn out record breaking numbers. Because in the end, the Jock vs Nerd wars of the past may not be quite as reconciled as we like to think they are.

So remember kids, if you grow up resenting those who possess the ability to think instead of working towards such a mindset yourself, one day you can be a huge success, too!

Letters To The Editor: "Media Profiling Against Ghosts?"

Dear Editor,

Whenever you hear about a haunted house or a cursed hotel or a possessed antique knick-knack, there's a pretty slim chance that it's going to be good news. And that's exactly my point: If it's on the news, it's not good news. And I'd like to set the record straight.

I've been dead for over 400 years, and every single time I hear a report about a haunting, it's always a smear campaign against the Non-Living. I can't even walk down a busy street anymore without getting all kinds of dirty looks and horrified screams. You only read about the times people woke up covered in scratch marks or when blood started dripping down their walls. What about that time my Living people woke up and found a nice batch of fresh cookies in the oven? Or when my neighbors waxed their car and Gregory stayed out there all day scaring away pigeons from landing on their car? I'll bet I'd be correct in assuming you never heard about those.

You know how there's all kinds of good, honest people out there, who just go on living their lives day by day, never harming a fly and keeping to themselves? You never hear about those people on the news. Ever. But then you never stop hearing about the people that make a night out of robbing liquor stores, beating up old people, and jacking cars. They're the one's breaking out of the mold of society's standards, so they're the ones who get all the attention and recognition. Same goes for us living-impaired folks.

Not all of us are out to make you leave your house or murder your loved ones. When you die, and you draw the short straw of spending eternity in the void of Purgatory, your personality doesn't die along with you. You're still you, just not in a corporeal sense. If you were a shy introverted person in the before-life, then you'll have no problem quietly sharing a house with the Living. You just have to find the right place. Find a host family who likes to watch the same TV shows as you, goes to bed at the same time as you, and doesn't have parental blocks on their internet access. (Trust me, when you have an infinite number of hours to kill until the end of time and you think you've seen it all, you'll need all the deepest, darkest recesses of the internet to keep you entertained before you kill yourself from boredom. You know, if you could.)

Now if you preferred to spend your before-life putting people's heads in toilets, starting bar fights, and throwing kittens, then the tight grip of death isn't going to let you stop trying to make up for your own inadequacies just because you stopped having a body. Just because you no longer have a penis doesn't mean you can just let yourself and everyone in your 10th grade gym class forget how small and inefficient it was. Remember that girl who wouldn't go to Prom with you and caused you to start drinking uncontrollably and drive a gratuitously huge truck and workout to the point that you don't even remember what a neck looks like, so now every person you come in contact with is forced to notice you? People like you are the people who become the ghosts you see on the news and reality television. The ones who can't just relax and be happy. You can't just hang out it the attic peacefully. You have to make your presence known and kick shit around and make noise. You're the reason the rest of us are getting such a bad rap.

So what does all this have to do with you, the dear Living readers of this publication? What am I trying to accomplish? I'm just trying to shed some light on what the large majority of us ghosts go through. For the most part, we're polite, and we try our best to stay out of your way. Most of you already live with one or more of our kind, and you've never noticed us and you never will. We're not all evil, revenge-driven spirits. So if we accidentally brush against you and you feel a chill, or we try to help save you some money on your electric bill by shutting doors for you that you left open, PLEASE don't feel the need to call every news station, housecall-making clergyman, or group of frat boy rejects with a night-vision camera crew and a permit from the Travel Channel. Nobody's going to believe you on the evening news, your reenactment on "Ghost Adventures" is going to have terrible dialogue and subpar acting and be damn near unwatchable, and considering we all missed the Heaven and Hell exits on the highway of the after-life, most of us have let our religious beliefs fall by the wayside, so all an exorcism is going to do for you is get holy water all over your bedroom. And nobody wants a wet bed.

Sincerly,
Thaddeus Billingsly,
Professor of Necromanthropology
and
Press Secretary for the NAASP (National Association for the Advancement of Spectral People)

P.S. You know when you're watching a TV show, and all of a sudden the commercials come on and they're ear-shatteringly loud? That's just one of us hanging out with you. Ghosts are really into advertising for some reason, and we love to hear them. Every day is like the Super Bowl to us, and we don't want to miss a single one. Plus, we figure you're probably not paying attention to them anyway. Our bad.

"A Big Twinkie" or "Why Harold Ramis Is More Important To Me Than You Are"

I know this is a bit late to the game, but lately I've been an overwhelming combination of busy and lazy and sick, so late is better than never.

One of my biggest pet peeves in life, other than the phrase "pet peeve," is the adverse reactions some people have to other people's reactions to the death of a celebrity. Whether it's Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Walker, Jeff Hanneman, George Jones, Sid Caesar,  Lou Reed, Andy Pafko, or hundreds of other legends that we lost in the last year in TV, film, music, sports, or anything we consume, the impact that they've had on countless people's lives can not be underestimated.

"Everyone's so sad that Philip Seymour Hoffman killed himself, but somewhere a cop was killed and nobody cares. Get your priorities straight, America."
-Paraphrase of an actual Facebook status somebody posted.

First of all, you are an idiot. You'd have to be to think that not a single person cared about that hypothetical police officer's untimely death. I'll bet every single person that knew that man was heartbroken, or at the very least, extremely upset. And it's no different for his more famous counterparts who left this life before their time. That officer and Paul Walker are missed by everyone who loved them and what they did. The only difference being more people knew who Paul Walker was because it's impossible not to know him. He's in our movies, on our TVs, in our magazines, on our computers, everywhere. Just because less people knew that police officer doesn't mean he was less important. Though the actual numbers of people who cared about them are very different, I guarantee you that the percentages of people who cared about them and were upset by their deaths were pretty damn close.

That being said, the hardest loss of one of our Tinsel Town heroes in recent memory for me was Harold Ramis.

The man's name may be lost on much of my generation, but his work definitely was not. Without him or his groundwork he laid in the comedy world, we may not even have many of our present day comedy classics we take for granted. His peak in movies may have been slightly before my time, but thanks to my first introductions to comedy movies coming from my Dad, I didn't miss a thing. Some of the earliest ideas that shaped my sense of humor, which is probably what I consider to be my defining characteristic, came from Mr. Ramis, even without me knowing it. "Animal House," "Caddyshack," "Stripes," "Meatballs," "Vacation," "Analyze This," "Groundhog Day," and a movie I worship to this very day as one of the greatest to ever be put on film, "Ghostbusters." These are some of the keystones of my tastes and personality that had been instilled in me since the beginning. These are some of the earliest examples in my life that pointed me in the direction of what I wanted my true career path to be: a comedy writer. I may not have realized it until 10 or 15 years later, but I'll bet I can trace the very first planting of that invasive "comedy writer" seed in my brain to the first time my Dad ever sat me down and watched "Ghostbusters" with me.

Harold Ramis never took a bullet for me or my freedom as an American. He never caught someone trying to murder me. He never saved me from a burning building. But he constantly brought me laughter and joy. And coming from someone who hopes to spend the rest of his life doing the same for some other dumb kid one day, he did something on an extremely personal level for me: He gave me happiness, and he inspired me.

And your brave, self-righteous, non-conformist stance you took on a Facebook status or tweet will never take away what he meant to me.

Rest In Peace, Harold Ramis, and any other person who we've lost that has brought you joy in your own life through their creativity.