He makes it easy to forget how good television can be
By Angela Espinoza, Arts Editor
When sitting down to write this piece, I intended to focus on my hatred for the television works by one Chuck Lorre, most famous for his co-creations Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. Eventually I decided to get down from my high horse and actually do some research, and while Iâve learned that not all his shows offend as much as the aforementioned, there are some things Iâm having trouble understanding with the latter world of Lorre.
One of the more obvious questions is how his two major projects in question remain so enormously popular. Lorreâs past works include hits that could best be described as âmehâ: Grace Under Fire (1993â1998) and Cybill (1995â1998). They came and went after a couple years, and were followed up by the infamously dull Dharma & Greg (1997â2002). For what itâs worth, Dharma & Greg is the only title out of the three that I recognized going inâand thatâs what it was for a while. People were aware of his works, but it wasnât like Lorre was the big name he is today (he couldnât fill an entire room with several hundred people at a Comic Con, to paint a clearer picture). None of the three had the insane fan bases that his later works did, and even though they are different from his previous shows, it still doesnât make any sense to me.
Lorreâs first two shows focused on single mothers, with Grace, divorced from an abusive husband and working a lower-class job to make ends meet, and Cybill, twice-divorced and finally taking fate into her own hands by attempting to find stardom. I donât know about Cybill, but based on the premise alone Grace Under Fire actually sounds like itâs worth a watch (I never saw it, so I canât actually make an opinion on the show itself). Dharma & Greg meanwhile was your typical rom-com, no more harmless than a Jennifer Aniston movie (regardless of quality, although assumedly low).
Then we have Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, neither of which I think anyone can actually give a synopsis to without having to look up their Wiki pages. Itâs not like a synopsis matters anyway, I doubt anyone who watched Two and a Half Men before 2011 gave a ratâs ass about Uncle Charlieâs jingle career, and the same goes for whatever the main four of The Big Bang Theory supposedly do week after week (hereâs what I compiled from Wikipedia: theyâre geeks, laugh track, end).
Two and a Half Men has been, apparently, 213 episodes of innuendo and sex jokes, with women being the most evil force in the series (because chicks canât bro out like bros can, bro). That is what I have gathered from having seen between five and 10 episodes at complete random over the past decade. I feel like the same group that watches this show is part of the Movie movie crowd: your Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, and such. But that seems harshâperhaps more realistically, theyâre the crowd that keeps seeing Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler movies. So I suppose Iâve answered my own question: Two and a Half Men still exists because thereâs just a very large group of people with a very poor sense of humour.
So then whatâs the deal with The Big Bang Theory? I actually wanted to like this show, although granted this was before I knew Lorre created it. It took one episode for me to realize this was not the show I was hoping it could be, but Iâve still seen a number of episodes sinceâall of which infuriate me. Part of the showâs humour is just replacing Men words like âsausageâ and âwetâ with words like âGoogleâ and âAndroidâ (I dare to be proven wrong). Then when there are actual references to things I enjoy, do you want to know what the butt of the joke is? Itâs that these things exist. âActually, Batman wasnât introduced in Batman #1, he was introduced in Detective Comics #27,â is an actual freaking joke in that series. How is that anything? Who laughs at that besides the guy who Googled it one time, or the Men watcher who doesnât know otherwise?
But I digress. While I can understand Menâs popularity at this point, I still donât get how The Big Bang Theory can be as popular as it is. At the end of everything, I donât think my hatred towards Chuck Lorre was a fair judgment call; itâs not like he writes every episode of both seriesâŚ
Two minutes later, I looked into it out of curiosity: Lorre has co-written almost every single episode of both shows⌠never mind, I still hate him, I hate his shows, and stay tuned for when I hate his next horrible hit, Mom, starring Anna Farris as a single mom.
