WOW, you are really exaggerated about the last seasons.
I do accept that the first four seasons are much different than the last ones but
I see it in a completely different way.
Since the arriving of bernedette and aimy, The story was starting to get a serious and a little bit
realistic turn (as the wedding of bernedette\haward, leonard\penny, and fulfillment of their life desires and wishes).
But with the changes in their life the humor and jokes stays as expected from sitcom show, whether one finds out
that the jokes are funny or not it depend on his taste.
On the contrary of what you said, I don't think that the show had last a chance if it didn't had this turn
because you can not hold this meaningless story of a bunch of nerds and a chick living a life together.
@mrvazil disagreed to full degree. Big Bang theory in my opinion is THE MAJOR example for vivid character development and growing out of yourself. Let alone the fact that the amount of product placements rose is by far not a fair reason to judge it this hard, especially with TBBT, since the placements are always woven into the story, rarely being an annoyance. Glad you enjoyed the first seasons, though. But, I recommend rewatching it with this in mind.
Review by mrVazilBlockedParentSpoilers2014-09-27T22:55:09Z
I have been watching the big bang Theory ever since it first aired. Being an IT student at the time, the uncomfortable social situations and nerdy jokes spoke to me. However, much has changed throughout the seasons, more about that later.
We start out with our four nerdy main characters. There is the recognizable fact of the three people with higher degrees (PHD holding Sheldon, Leonard and Raj) who make fun and feel themselves better than "simple" engineer Howard. There is the desperate search for love coming from both Howard and Raj, and the differentiation between the confident yet single Howard and the timid, uncertain just-as-single Raj. Sheldon is the one who has no sense of what's going on around him, and is only interested in his own world. Leonard is the humble cute guy who manages to get a date from time to time, an inspiration to Howard and Raj, although his on/off fling with Leslie gives us the impression that he isn't really that successful after all.
Then we have the obvious babe, Penny, the complete opposite of our four nerds. She makes something stir in all three of them, but follows the cliché of going out with the "wrong" men, being dumb, and ignoring their advances.
Even though these are all cliche’s, the inside jokes and the disarming clumsiness of the four guys made the first seasons well worth watching. Gradually however, as the show became more popular, the writers started to abandon what once made it so.
With the introduction of Bernadette and Amy the female characters are drastically expanded, but they don't add any real value to the show. Bernadette is the caricature of Howards mother, where as Amy is an attempt to make Sheldon look more human. At the same time, we go from a show with it's own flair to a one-in-a-dozen sitcom. The laughing tape went from being an accessory to being the main engine of the show. The characters became aware they were going to make a pun and started smiling like idiots before they said it, and laughing like people high on weed after someone made it. The longer this series continues, the more painful it becomes to watch. The lines that are supposed to be jokes are simply not funny. The acting and stereotyping are more bearable in a highschool play. And, as stated in another review made before this one, the show changes from laughing with the characters to laughing at the characters. From a nerdy show to a show about nerds.
Conclusion: if you're looking for some nerdy fun, watch the first three or four seasons. After that, it gets the same illness so many American shows suffer from, namely that it becomes a cash cow for the producers and starts a long, painfully slow, continuously prolonged process of dying a silent dead.They never seem to know when to end something great instead of going on to make it something mediocre.