memes

apologies for the pixels, I stole it from reddit

bbt is blackface

Saw a critic call it, “Nerd blackface”

I saw some clips on YT where they removed the laugh track.

It's really hard to find the show funny when they take out the bit where it tells you when to laugh.

Misogynistic pure shit.

It had a good few first episodes with fun geeky jokes, but it quickly turned to bad jokes and lazy stereotypes and relied loosely on stereotypes to contain the geekyness.

Because, similar to blackface in its time, people love to point and laugh at exaggerated caricatures of something different from themselves.

And CBS airs lowest common denominator garbage that the masses devour.

The laugh track alone is enough evidence

I watched a scene where someone posted it without the laugh track and it was super cringey. Semi-related note.. Taking the laugh track out of BBT ruins it, but taking Garfield out of Garfield comics takes it to a new level, see here -> https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

EDIT: since I don't want the top reply not to mention this, fuck IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan for the incalculable damage he's done to innocent trans people. He's a worthless, disgusting bigot.

Honestly, I always found that episode... Weirdly progressive? Even maybe by accident? Consider the following:

• The trans woman April is legitimately physically attractive and with a distinctly feminine voice to match.
• She's a legitimately very sweet, intelligent, and earnest person.
• She tells Douglas upfront in no uncertain terms that she's trans (she phrases this as "I used to be a man", but honestly, considering both 2008 and the fact it was used to setup a joke, I think this isn't too transphobic? A trans person in 2008 might've even said this because there was less of a support network to understand that you always were a woman.)
• Douglas gets upset because he thinks he's been tricked, but 1) he absolutely was not, and the episode makes this crystal clear that it's because April made every effort and he's just an absolute dumbass, and 2) Douglas has been portrayed in the show to this point as nothing but a juvenile, overdramatic, chauvanistic sack of shit, and we're clearly not supposed to be rooting for him.
• She's a fantastic girlfriend and becomes the love of his life. A big part of this is because she has a duality between traditional femininity and an interest in traditionally masculine activities, but I also don't think this is terrible representation? I have a trans woman friend who carries herself in a traditionally feminine way but hasn't dropped more traditionally masculine activities that she grew up enjoying.
• She throws the first hit at the end, but this is after Douglas dumps her on the spot after they've hit it off, had sex, and confessed their love for each other because he was too stupid to listen, he tells her to get lost, he basically calls her gross to her face by talking in a disgusted tone about "that operation you had", and flat-out denies her existence as a woman.
• It's made very evident that if Douglas weren't transphobic, he could've lived the rest of his life with a woman who's established to be literally perfect for him.

Linehan has become much worse since that controversy, he's been on a proper trans hate crusade since like 2019. It wasn't about being insensitive, he's completely deranged and the episode was just an early slip.

IT Crowd was three British goofballs doing elaborate running gags over 24 episodes.

BBT was four creepy bigots and a nice blonde woman doing pop culture references and calling one another stupid for 279 episodes before spinning out an 80s nostalgia prequel series.

It was the difference between a few cherished cleverly crafted comedy routines and endless derivative slop.