I'm more or less putting this up not because I really have strong thoughts on The Big Bang Theory, but because I'm trying to make an effort to at least have a log of the seasons of shows I finish this year. For awhile now, this show hasn't shown much special; it's mostly empty calories that we'll put on during dinner when we don't need to worry about having a full attention span. The show takes a lot of crap because it's far more popular than its quality, but if it weren't for its Nielsen rating, it'd be just another big-network sitcom you don't know anything about and there'd be no reason for you to throw rocks at it. Also, it would have been cancelled a long time ago.
This deep into its run, the story for all of these people is largely played out and they're more or less pushing these characters' lives forward because CBS is paying top dollar for it. 11 years in, four of the five original main characters are married (two of them to each other), and the remaining one, Raj, has been a relatively consistent weak spot throughout the show's run. The humanizing of Sheldon and Howard has given the show good material in the past, but by this point, they've become self-aware enough that it doesn't register as a "big" moment when they do something selfless. Leonard is a nothingburger who's basically been unchanged over the course of the show, is often annoying, and these days takes a back seat to the stronger characters.
Penny, who has somehow gone 11 seasons without being assigned a last name, has become a bright spot for the series, particularly because she's come so far from being treated as the naive "dumb one" by the show. Amy has also changed quite a bit between the robotesque character that met Sheldon in the coffee shop at the end of Season Three, so much so that it's hard to believe the current iteration is even the same person, but Mayim Bialik has been a consistently great presence on the show. Bernadette has been thoroughly unlikable for a long time.
While the show usually gets in some good jokes in an episode, the real reason this show became interesting in the first place was because it had strong characters like Sheldon (most obviously), Howard, Penny, and Amy. By now, everyone's become pretty stagnant and the show spent Season 11 churning out mostly forgettable plot lines. The exception was Sheldon and Amy's wedding, but they goofed that up by turning it onto an excuse to have Mark Hamill on the show for some reason, which distracted from what could have been a good tribute to the former pair's lengthy relationship.
We'll probably keep watching this show until the end, if for no other reason that it's light, digestible, and somehow has avoided completely jumping the shark (if the history of sitcoms has taught us anything, it's that shows containing uber-brilliant scientists have a tough time keeping things grounded in reality). There's just no reason to expect much from it.
Season Grade: C+
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