From the Salt Mines: A new occasional series in which I will talk about the things that stick under my craw for various reasons. Future plans include other TV series, several books, and at least one video game. I have a lot of feelings, and not all of them are pleasant ones.

You may have noticed, if you’re the kind to read contributor bios, that I list The Big Bang Theory as one of my dislikes. I’d put it on par with the ending of Mass Effect 3, but if I’m honest, the show is even worse than whatever mess Shepard dealt with at the end of that trilogy, mainly because it’s still happening.

There’s a blanket spoiler warning for this post, especially for the first four seasons.

So why does The Big Bang Theory make me salty? I watched the show. For at least four seasons, I sat with my parents on their couch and watched every single episode. Did I laugh? Sure. Every now and then they hit on a genuinely funny moment. For example, season 2 episode 11, “I can grow my own Leonard Nimoy.” 

Even after I stopped watching, I’ve properly researched at least the first half of the mind-boggling ten seasons that show has been on air. (And I’m seeing on IMDB that it’s already been contracted for an 11th and 12th season, so clearly God has abandoned me.)

I’ve watched enough to know that when one of my family members says he’s a Sheldon, I recognize he hasn’t done any of the soul-searching necessary to reconcile how that character is treated by every single other person on the show. And he definitely hasn’t realized what a terrible person Sheldon has become as the series goes on.

I have self-identified as a nerd my entire life. I’ve always been more interested in reading than talking to other people. I’ve watched every single episode of the The X-Files several times. I saw all of the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies in theaters. I’m a Browncoat, a member of the Rebellion, a Whovian, Savior of the Citadel and Pathfinder to the Andromeda Galaxy, and a newly minted level 13 Elven/Daywalker ranger in my biweekly D&D game.

So what, exactly, bothers me about about this show full of nerds? It isn’t written for me. It isn’t written for nerds at all.

The audience isn’t laughing with Sheldon and his friends, they’re laughing at Sheldon and his friends, most often through the lens of the show’s lazily characterized audience foil, Penny. You can tell because none of the jokes are inside jokes, there’s no nuance to the nerdiness, and most of the laughs are Penny’s.

It falls back (or at least, it did in the early days) on out-dated (and in Raj’s case, frankly racist) stereotypes for laughs. Raj’s Indian heritage is the butt of many, many jokes. Need an example? How about the time we met Sheldon’s Texan mother, who said a healer at her church might be willing to take a shot at whatever Third World demon is rolling around inside of Raj that leaves him unable to talk to women?

See guys, it’s funny because all Texans are Christians and all Christians are racist.

Need a laugh? Throw in Howard’s shrieky Jewish mother who always wants to feed him and is creepily, unnecessarily involved in his personal life. (And for bonus laughs, him shrieking right back at her.) 

Want a laugh that doesn’t have to do with the nerds? Penny is an out-of-work actress from a flyover state that’s also kind of dumb. Also she’s really poor but somehow affords a one bedroom apartment in the same building as Sheldon and Leonard, who apparently can’t afford to live on their own.

This is a very plausibly sized apartment in LA for someone who works at the Cheesecake Factory. It has ROOMS.

There’s also the casual way this show condones rape culture. Sure they’re all happily paired off now (although Sheldon and Amy could present their own case study of problematic roles), but please harken back to the early days of Howard and Raj, where Howard hit on anything with boobs that stood still long enough.

And remind yourself of the way he did it. Remind yourself that it in “The Killer Robot Instability” Howard’s creepy advances made Penny so uncomfortable she blew up about it, and then had to apologize to Howard after. Remind yourself that those creepy advances were literally his entire schtick in the early seasons, along with the aforementioned stereotypical, nosy, Jewish mother. 

Remember this episode? It’s season two, episode seven, “The Panty Piñata Polarization.” Raj and Howard used spy helicopters to get pictures of the America’s Next Top Model ladies sunbathing topless on what they believed was their private roof, and then later in the episode Howard and Raj pretended to be cable repairmen and actually entered the house. Somehow, all of this was punctuated with a laugh track because sexual predation is hilarious.

I can’t help but contrast Big Bang Theory with Community, a show that is actually about nerds and for nerds, where the joke isn’t how nerdy the nerds are. That show treated its socially awkward, probably-on-the-spectrum nerd with gentleness and respect, and he was on the inside of all of the jokes. You probably have your own shows for nerds by nerds, and I’d love to hear about them.

It’s that lack of self awareness and connection with the audience it pretends to be for that, bottom line, makes The Big Bang Theory so popular with the masses. It’s masterful at disguising what it really is: a show about a bunch of nerds for people to laugh at and feel better about themselves.

Screencaps in this post come from kissthemgoodbye.net