Yeah but there's more to attractiveness than appearance. Also confidence, and proven ability to provide and dominate. Although I suppose you could say that applies to his character, except that he's not exactly a social leader.
It's not the job of comedies to present "appealing" males. If you want that, go watch The Bachelor or something.
It's not a problem with comedies or men in general. I adore It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the characters are monsters, but that's the premise. They're awful, constantly fail due to their flaws, ignore anything they learned and just double-down. BBT has creeps presented as the heroes and sympathetic. But it's a garbage show, so I saw a handful and completely abandoned it.
My husband likes this show and he doesn't get any of the science fiction/fantasy, video game, or comic jokes unless I explain them. He likes it anyway. It isn't perfect, the jokes don't always hit, but when they reference Firefly, Dr. Who, Babylon 5, etc, it's nice to have something on tv that speaks my language. Where else on tv depicting life NOT in a comicbook-type world, will you hear discussions on Thor, his hammer, etc?
Venture Bros does. But it exists in a world where superheroes, supervillains and super-science are valid career paths, but people still talk about Batman as a fictional character. Hank Venture in particular has an obsession with Batman. There is both a fictional Spider-Man and a guy who has spider powers, voiced by Nathan FIllion. The Fantastic Four proxies dressed as the Fantastic Four for Halloween. It's great and far less creepy.
Sort of. The comic book references are always funnier than what I've seen of BBT. It's not just referencing something for the sake of referencing it. It gets weirdly deep into prog rock, an argument over whether Smurfs were mammalian or reptilian or when a Henchman bought a real lightsaber that couldn't cut through anything. The characters also less creepy and aren't awful to each other. They're all fairly supportive of each other, even the villains and their henchman.
I heart Leonard Hofstadter's mom, Beverly. Leonard Hofstadter is ....fine, he's supposed to be the straight man in the mix. He sets up all of Sheldon's jokes and translates 'Sheldonese' into English for the rest of them. The everyman, the most normal (comparatively). Every episode unfolds more or less the same way for him. His insecurities, usually involving Penny, propel the A plots forward and turns him into Crazy Jealous Dude. Completely understand why anyone would find him irritating (the voice alone, sorry Johnny Galecki) but without him the show wouldn't work. I think they should write out Raj and Bernadette, though. The show would be much better without them. Too late for that.
Culture has changed, but people's base instincts of physical attraction hasn't really changed much. At least for the average person. Gender roles for what jobs people have, what social roles people take, everything else about gender roles has changed significantly. But not what primally gets your body chemistry moving. As the great philosopher Quark said at the end of DS9, "The more things change, the more they say the same".
Can I vote too if I include the whole cast? After the first season I stopped watching Now you made me interested in this show. I'm gonna have to hunt this one down. What annoys me about BBT is the laugh track tries to get you to laugh at certain things like the jokes but often I find the jokes fall flat and the characters just I don't find them funny at all.
I usually glom onto an American comedy even in re-runs. Seinfeld, Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond. Big Bang Theory was just the natural progression - but I lost interest. Hate to say it but they've got too old to be playing the type of characters.
Raymond is also one of those shows I watch if I'm in the mood for it, but if I had a choice I'll avoid it.
Be sure to watch from the beginning. It's a show that focuses on developing the characters and slowing unweaving storylines that pay off in big ways. You slowly grow to care for all of them because they feel like well rounded people.
Sometimes characters devolve to stereotypes for the sake of comedy, a trend that I don't really enjoy. A couple of examples: Kirstey Alley's Rebecca Howe on Cheers was a cold, professional, matter of fact woman in her first few episodes, but they later devolved her to an indecisive overly emotional cliché; Britta on Community in the first few episodes was a confident, generally competent activist who was just too much always in activist mode, but they devolved her to an idiot to the point where they started using the word Britta to mean incompetent. The same thing has happened on Big Bang, I mean hell, in the first or second episode Sheldon was going to a sperm bank. He wasn't the borderline ASD near sociopath that he later became.