Earlier this week, CBS’ The Big Bang Theory was commended on the success that it has grown to achieve over the six years it has run so far.
A friend once described it as a show for mothers who know their sons like Nintendos. I think it’s like a minstrel show.
“Yessuh. I sho do love those astrophysics,” Sheldon said. (Laugh track)
I’m just being sensitive, like the angry mobs that formed around the announcement of TBS’ show King Of The Nerds, a reality show about humiliating nerds, until only the most humiliated wins.
I just prefer when a show about nerds is made by nerds, who use the experience of years worth of marginalization to talk to us and not about us.
Here are some classics that I think have done this better than any:
5) The Simpsons
I’ll start with a stretch. This might not count as a nerd show, but after being on the air for 24 years, there’s not much this show isn’t about. But for nerd credentials, you don’t have to look far. Whether it’s Milhouse’s optimistic frustrations or Comic Book Guy’s unjustified dismissal of everything, this show has not only drawn on but contributed to modern nerd culture like almost no other. Just try and tell a group of nerds that you liked any episodes aired after season 12 and you’ll see how much it means to us.
4) IT Crowd
This British import has given off nerd waves strong enough to be picked up across the pond. A Netflix classic in the US, this tale of basement-dwelling computer repairmen manages to succeed through talent in two areas Big Bang fails. First, the show can be mean or dismissive of its characters, like Big Bang, but it also gives them power and perspective that we don’t see much here. Second, both shows have laugh tracks. Only one can I enjoy despite that fact.
3) Community
What started as a way to get the strangely hunky snark of Joel McHale into college setting with two pretty ladies, and an attempt to give Chevy Chase his fifth undeserved wind, shifted in focus after a while to the shows most compelling relationship, Troy and Abed. Abed began as a theoretically autistic classmate who could spell things out through his simple understanding of the world for the audience to catch on to, like a Forrest Gump kind of thing. But the show became a new lens through which universal themes and struggles could be drawn on top of the usually dull world of modern community colleges. It works well for similar reasons as my number 1 pick. I’ll explain there.
2) Freaks And Geeks
Being a teenager sucks. Being a nerdy teenager sucks even more. Being a nerdy teenager before elements of nerdiness had crept into our common cultural mind, making interests in sci-fi and video games acceptable, sucked most. That suck is on display in this masterpiece of American television. Though TV executives failed to see the genius of this proto-Apatow work, audiences didn’t, as the careers of several stars –– Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel –– took off shortly after. It has empathy. It makes you feel their struggles and laugh along, in painful recognition.
1) Spaced
The greatest show by/about nerds ever made. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright took the most ‘sitcom 101’ concept –– people living in an apartment in the city, struggling with friends, work and relationships –– and showed the inextricable cultural metaphors that define a nerd’s perspective. A gallery opening becomes a zombie apocalypse. A kidnapped dog becomes saving the galaxy. A resume mishap become Mission Impossible. It is the best for nerds, because we are not invited to, nor can we deftly handle, the events and interactions that define a normal life, so many of us end up living vicariously through media. Spaced shows how the worlds we choose relate to the one's we escape In Spaced, the media talks back, in a language we understand.
