The Big Bang Theory

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You're nervous around people if you care about what impression you make. Sheldon doesn't seem to care too much about what impression he makes, ergo he doesn't get nervous about those kind of things.



My social skills and sense of humor are far better than Shelton's, so I wouldn't say he interacts too well. A high enough IQ, an extraverted personality, the will to learn and enough balls to not care about making bad impressions are all you need to become as adept as social interaction as Sheldon or better. In my opinion, his social skills and understanding of humor are actually too weak for someone supposebly a genius.

I like watching the interaction of the characters on the show too. Sheldon seems to me to be almost of an exaggeration of traits, while Leonard, Howard, & Raj, have milder "symptoms." What's really odd about the show is Penny. Why would she even hang with these completely geeky awkward guys? My gut feeling is that she would mostly blow them off: find them pathetic, view them in disgust (way too weird/geeky), or just use them as the need arose (techie type stuff-fixing computers, etc). Is she maybe a little bit Aspie too? She is most often alone (a closet mild Aspie?), not with other girls her age, & she has a super smart geeky friend. Over the years, I have observed "normal" girls doing things together as groups (even going to the bathroom together) or out shopping. Never did things like that. So again, would Penny actually choose to hang with these guys if she were really NT? Don't get me wrong, her character adds a lot of fun & interest to the show. It's just that Penny's character leaves me perplexed sometimes. I have a difficult time seeing her as truly NT.

I seem to be a little bit of all the characters. I don't always catch sarcasm, tend to take things literally, don't notice facial expressions, am impaired in social situations, etc. I also tend to analyze human behavior a lot, whether it's about my interactions, or if they're fictitious. It's one of the few TV shows that I find myself laughing out loud. I just wonder how long it'll last.

This is one of my favorite shows, and I find Sheldon to be very relatable. My brother and fiancee both also watch it, and have said from time to time that things Sheldon does remind them of me.

As for Penny, she is clearly there just to be "eye candy," they knew with a show full of geeky guys they needed to put a "hot chick" on there as well to get more people to watch. So, while her friendship with the quartet is implausible, it exists for a purpose.

i knew right away that sheldon has AS (sorry, the word "aspie" drives me nuts)

fftopic: anyone else think penny is hot?

First of all, the topic of this thread is "The Big Bang Theory", so I wouldn't say your question is off-topic.

Further..... What a silly question ! ! It would be better to ask if anyone thinks Penny is NOT hot

How can not NOT think a woman who looks like this is hot?!?

Sorry for reviving such an old thread, but I just found/read it and had to comment.

First off, Penny's 'cute', not 'hot'. I think that when they cast her, they were going for attractive but a "girl next door" thing, rather than traditional 'hot'. I also think that she's there to address the flip side of the geek stereotype. She's the stereotypical blonde 'wannabe' actress cum waitress. She's feisty and smart, but a product of a basic education. While the guys are portrayed as socially incompetent, she's portrayed as the Pseudo-"dumb blonde" focused on astrology and popular culture. Both sides have been slowly eroding the stereotypes. Penny's common sense and ability to learn through exposure to the geeks is coming through and the guys are demonstrating an ability to develop compassion and social skills. The show probably wouldn't work without that "eye candy".

As for the implausibility, I'm average looking (though I am 6'3 which helps a little). I'm a social misfit, rational and somewhat tactless, etc. A very outgoing friend of mine (think Howard without quite as much of the cheesiness) would always hit on models, drag them into the social circle and then fail to get anywhere with them. However, as the only guy that wasn't staring at their boobs or trying to get into their pants, they'd end up hanging out with me whenever they could. I ended up dating two of them (one for 4 years) They both cheated on me like crazy (the "trusting thing" in the beginning was a good thing, but I think that they were trying for a jealousy reaction and then went off the deep end when they didn't get it). I also ended up being good friends with a very pretty "professional girl" that was looking for business in a donut shop one night and just ended up talking with me instead. I was clueless until she explained it to me after about 20 minutes. We ended up meeting for coffee fairly often for months afterwards. (no...I never used her services) She thought that I was way too shy, but sweet.

It takes more effort to get to know us, but it's surprising how many pretty girls have a similar problem. We get prejudged on behaviors and they get prejudged on the way they look or their breast size. People have to get past that before they can know who we really are. I'd like to think that the writers on TBBT have clued into this.

She could not be hotter unless she were literally on fire. The same was true of the character she played on 8 Simple Rules even though she was supposed to be a teenager, she did not look it at all, which made watching that show impossible for me much of the time.

Everyone seems to agree that Sheldon has many AS traits. But Leonard even appears to have many AS traits as well. Perhaps not so noticeable being in the presents of Sheldon. But pay attention to Leonard. I think he is a good candidate. I have friends diagnosed with AS that resemble Leonard with much less obvious traits in comparison to Sheldon. I am curious to see if anyone agrees?

Love love love BBT - I read that all the main male characters are a culmination of people that the creators had worked with in the past (in the IT industry) - I think they said something on the lines of not knowing if it was AS but this is what the people were like..

I've only seen one episode, but my wife has seen many. We both think Sheldon is absolutely with Asperger's or even well into the autism spectrum. I'd be curious to find out the roots of that program, and how it came to be.

I'd watch it more, but I'm not a TV watcher. Too impatient to sit for more than a few seconds.

Charles

As someone else said, the writers did not create Seldon to be AS, although the actor said "Sheldon couldn't have more AS traits". They said people ask that question a lot, and the reason he isn't written to be AS is that his friends and others poke fun at him and get annoyed with him, and if he were AS that would cease to be funny and it would show the others as being mean and just jerks. They did say they were considering an episode where Sheldon researches AS and is convinced he has it, only to go to a doctor and find out he doesn't.

Frances

Yikes! I hope that they never do that episode. They've been really good about treating it as kind of an open secret. It would be really messed up to have a character like that be classified as NT. It would be like suddenly declaring that Penny was a post-op transexual or that Raj was ethnic norwegian with a good tan. There would be no conceivable value to it and it would just create a whole chain of unanswered questions.

What would be more valuable would be to have someone comment on it and have Sheldon say something like "Of course I have Asperger's. Even someone with your limited perceptual abilities should have figured that out by now" and just treat it like any other attribute. That could easily lead into a whole "Sheldon" diatribe. (Leonard: "Oh no...not *this* again") He could take pride in it, position it along with his previous comments about him being the next stage of evolution, talk about his overdeveloped white-matter, increased neural connections, better utilization of visual processing, etc etc etc. It would send the "Autism Speaks" folks into a frenzy.

I'd love to hear Sheldon's disgusted/affronted "Normal?!?! You assumed that I was just a baseline neurotypical?!?!? How Dare You!"

I took Leonard's mom's comment that Sheldon had a "remarkable" brain as confirmation that he wasn't NT (after all, she wouldn't use the term "remarkable" if it was typical). Maybe Amy should have a look at the scans

That would be funny, but the problem would be that after it was admitted, and the others picked on his quirks, etc, they would be seen as being jerks because of it. It would not be politically correct, I suppose. Some people would be offended over it. I agree that they should keep it as it is.

Frances

It's really too bad. They can pick on Leonard for being short and lactose intolerant, Raj for his selective mutism and Howard for his mother issues, education and religion. While I agree that it would probably offend some people, it would certainly help the cause to have a strong and successful advocate that embraced being "different". I didn't hear much outcry over Abed on "Community" being outed as a Aspie in the first episode. But, then again, Sheldon is an established character that wasn't deliberately written that way.

It probably is better to just leave it alone, but some ambitious writer is going to raise the issue at some point. I just hope that when they do, they talk to some Aspies for input.

I totally get that she hangs out with them. I am NT and my favorite friends throughout my life have been seen by others as being on the fringes of social circles. Please don't assume just because someone is NT that they are superficial.

Leonard's mother was portrayed as being very much like Sheldon. It felt weird to me, given her education and career, that Asperger's was never mentioned. I understand why, though, given the comments I've read in this thread. What didn't surprise me was that Leonard's mother would seem Aspie, given that he does and that the traits can run in families. It also made it all the more understandable to me that Leonard moved in with Sheldon and befriended him, even if he seems annoyed by him sometimes. Doubly familiar territory, I guess.