Pros: Still some great laughs and fun storylines
Cons: Laughs aren’t as strong as they used to be
The Bottom Line:
Gang still entertains
But antics are wearing thin
Fans will still enjoy
“You Can’t Criticize Something You Haven’t Seen.” “I’m Sorry, Are You Familiar with the Internet?”
For years, I’ve felt like one of the few people who was
still fully enjoying The Big Bang Theory. I found that I was laughing just as much as
ever at the antics of my favorite brainy geeks while many others were
complaining that the show had passed its prime.
For the first time in season 11, I began to see what everyone else has
been saying.
Naturally, season 11 opens exactly where it left off. Sheldon (Jim Parsons) has just flown across
the country to Amy’s (Mayim Bialik) summer housing at Princeton to
propose. But they aren’t the only couple
with big news coming out of the season premier.
Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) makes a shocking discovery – she and Howard
(Simon Helberg) are expecting again.
The season really has two major storylines, Bernadette’s
pregnancy, which leads to her being on bed rest for several months, and the
plans for the wedding. Naturally, with
Sheldon as the groom, planning a wedding doesn’t go easily, and the results are
hilarious for us.
And the rest of the gang?
Raj (Kunal Nayyar) takes on a job narrating a show at the planetarium,
Penny (Kaley Cuoco) makes a surprising new friend, and Leonard (Johnny
Galecki) sets out to write a murder mystery.
Oh, and one of the couples on the show breaks up – at least for two
episodes.
I’ve notice that with this show, I often laugh harder at the
reruns than I do the first time I watch an episode. I’m not sure why that is, but I do. However, I’ve found this season to be the
exception. Yes, I still watch the reruns
faithfully (the only show I even have my DVR set to record reruns for), but I’m
not finding them as funny as I did before.
I think much of that is because the jokes have been done to
death by this point. Yes, there are a
few storylines that are fresh, but for the most part, we know what the
punchlines will be. And they were funny
– for the last 10 years. I get it. It is hard to keep the comedy coming as
quickly as it does on this show consistently for so many years. And don’t get me wrong, I certainly did
laugh. But it wasn’t as consistent as it
has been in the past.
Melissa Rauch was pregnant in real life this season, and the
writers did a great job of incorporating it into the show with Bernadette’s
second pregnancy and bed rest. She only
missed a few episodes as a result, although she wasn’t as big a part of the
season either.
And they did give Sheldon some real growth this season. Okay, so it doesn’t necessarily hold over
from one week to the next, but he had some breakthroughs, especially in his
relationship with Amy. I enjoyed
watching his transformation.
Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the season overall. I just found the antics were beginning to
wear thin. It’s hard to complain
entering the eleventh season of a comedy.
And I’m certainly not blaming the actors. They are all in top form still. They clearly know their characters and enjoy
playing off each other, and it shows.
They could have brought some new characters on. That revitalized the show with the addition of Bernadette and Amy. But they got too comfortable with the cast they had and didn't do what they needed to do. I still watch it, but you can shuffle the deck and find any show fitting into any year, so similar are they. Also they are wildly too old to play their characters who still act like people in their twenties and not their forties. And hiding two children is just ridiculous. Maybe caring for children would have helped the story lines.
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