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" The Big Bang Theoryis a ratings juggernaut, as you may know. Each week the show easily pulls in upward of 15 million viewers, and often as high as 20 million depending on what other special events are being broadcast. For instance, the ratings took a dip last week due to the NFL draft. This level of ratings consistency has led to the show, wrapping up its seventh season tonight, being renewed for three more seasons, all in one fell swoop. The show&amp;#039;s success is certainly, in part, a product of the broad strokes with which creator Chuck Lorre paints. It&amp;#039;s a show that&amp;#039;s immensely watchable because it often avoids a lot of narrative complexity and slides in easy one-liners with a laugh track. But perhaps the show&amp;#039;s success isn&amp;#039;t strictly limited to its traditional sitcom structure. Instead, the show has morphed into something different in recent years. While there are still complacent &amp;quot;nerd&amp;quot; jokes and characters tics, the show has also matured and slyly become a guide to being a man for Millennials, that group so often talked about in the abstract rather than as humans. It may even be one of the best representations of what it means to be a man for a particular generation that grew up neck-deep in television and popular culture. In its early seasons, Big Bang Theory was a rote sitcom whose stale comedy was generated by the heavily mined tension between a group of nerds and a pretty girl. With its newer seasons, though, it has subtly found ways to comment on and dig into real issues unique to young men. Take how the core male characters must learn to deal with emotions. Sheldon&amp;#039;s highly specific interest in pop culture may often be played for laughs, but it&amp;#039;s also presented as stunted maturity. The show, not unlike Community did with Abed, suggests that Millenials often filter their feelings through the lens of pop culture and that such activity is harmful to growing as a man. In a recent episode, Sheldon confronted the passing of his childhood television hero. It&amp;#039;s a storyline that could be played for laughs but instead was written as a coming-of-age tale, in which he must accept that, no matter how much we surround ourselves with imaginary fare, it&amp;#039;s real relationships, our friends and family, that provide us with emotional stability.      More remarkably, the show has slowly adopted a view of women, and the way men treat them, that&amp;#039;s often progressive. When Big Bang Theory first aired, there was a bevy of jokes about Penny&amp;#039;s sexual history and choice of dim-witted men. The series deserves credit for turning things around, moving away from that simplistic dynamic and calling out its characters, mainly Penny&amp;#039;s love interest Leonard, on their regressive ideas about sexuality. Leonard has had to own up to his slut-shaming ways and realize that such thoughts are rooted in larger cultural misogyny. The show understands that being a man in 2014 means recognizing the double standard of sexual purity and doing what we can to erase it \u2014 men should be allies who listen and empathize, not criticize and get defensive. It&amp;#039;s a show that recognizes that the dweebs can be as harmful as the &amp;quot;bros.&amp;quot; Penny is no longer a punchline based on her sexuality and acting career. In many ways, the show is about outsiders seeking refuge in others and finding common ground. And underneath that, it&amp;#039;s about how people take responsibility for their actions, become emotionally aware and responsive, and stop acting like a douchebag who uses the term &amp;quot;friend zone&amp;quot; to mask his own self-hatred. That seems valuable to a whole lot of men among those 20 million. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a28637/the-big-bang-theory-men/>