What's more surprising in the era of #MeToo, however, is how The Big Bang Theory hasn't updated the genre considering what we know to be unilaterally unacceptable in 2018. It's surely the only show in popular culture today where a man can get away with sexually assaulting a woman, and it is considered comedic. The Big Bang Theory really adds nothing new to the mix, indeed the episodes through all eleven series could be mixed up in a random order and you wouldn't be able to tell – the same stock situations and jokes are churned out as if by an online nerd gag generator. It's perhaps surprising that in 2018 the genre still exists in exactly the same form. The nerd/jock dichotomy has been a fixture of the 'nerd' genre right back to 1984's original nerd flick Revenge of the Nerds. Outdated and offensive 'beta-male' tropes They're all into role playing and Star Trek and, of course, there's a predictable 'opposites attract' on-off romance that develops over the seasons between nerdy Leonard and the cute blonde waitress across the hall, who usually dates muscular jocks, of course. The guys obsess over comics, are socially awkward and get excited by mathematical theories. The cast of The Big Bang Theory poses in the press Room at the People's Choice Awards 2016.Īll the classic Hollywood geek tropes can be found within The Big Bang Theory.

In later seasons, Sheldon's girlfriend and eventual wife Amy (Mayim Bialik), a microbiologist, also becomes a central character.

Meanwhile, Penny, a waitress and aspiring actress lives across the hall with her fellow Cheesecake Factory waitress Bernadette (Kaley Cuoco and Melissa Rauch). The sitcom, essentially a geek-friendly version of Friends, follows the lives of Leonard and Sheldon (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons), two nerdy theoretical physicists who share an apartment in Pasadena, California, and their equally geeky scientist friends Howard and Raj. It came as some surprise, then, to hear that the show will go out, presumably with a bang, following season 12 – yes, you read that right, season 12 – which will begin broadcasting in the US in September.

Did you know that The Big Bang Theory was still a thing? I certainly didn't, and a quick straw poll of The National's arts and culture desk suggests that I wasn't alone.

The big bang theory s12 e17 cast