Amy


I don't follow this board very regularly, so I don't know if or how extensively this was already discussed.

Some of the times in the past I read through the posts here, I noticed some posts complaining how Sheldon changed so much that he's not even the original Sheldon anymore.
I disagree, because I think all the ways Sheldon changed were a process, and we watched those changes happening during the span of the seasons, as episodes rolled by. Thus, IMO, he was well written.

Amy, on the other hand, is the only character whose personality changed completely overnight, without a gradual transition.
I haven't re-watched the seasons since her first appearance, so I can't pinpoint the exact moment when she first displayed a completely out of character demeanor, but when she first appeared she was completely robotic, emotionless, logical and inconvenient in her remarks (such as intimate details of her life or menstrual cycle if I remember correctly). She was worse than Sheldon (in the sense of being "different"), and when she first appeared I had no sympathy for her, because she didn't even act like a human being. She had no sexual desires, or feel the need for too much affection from Sheldon.

There was that episode when she for some reason was left alone in the boys' apartment with Leonard and she just stood there for hours, on the couch, while Leonard was working on his computer.

Now, she is completely different. SHE, indeed, has no resemblance to how her character used to be. I still don't exactly like her character, but that's because to me she doesn't really bring anything for the show, but at least I can feel sympathy for her sometimes, because now her character feels like a human being.

Like I said, it seems to me, from what I remember, that the writers for her case decided to completely change her character overnight, thus, she was badly written. It don't remember, at all, feeling there was a transition in process on her character traits.

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I can pinpoint it. Amy's hormones kicked in when she met Zack, though she didn't immediately recognize what her feelings were. She found Zack so manly that a handshake from him was enough to sexually satisfy her for a while. Once that wore off, she became horny toward Sheldon and Penny.

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but before that, she did not seem like someone who cared for mindless chit chat or forced socializing. Remember in the restaurant when she said she did not like being called "Shamy"?
Then all of a sudden she wanted to hang out with Penny and Bernadette and do small talk and such.

"Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong." J.J. Rousseau

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otter68 wrote:

but before that, she did not seem like someone who cared for mindless chit chat or forced socializing.
That is correct. She did not seem that way, but we quickly learn that there is a completely different Amy desperate to come out, and she does as soon as she is not around Sheldon.She is trying to be what Sheldon wants around Sheldon, but that is not what she wants to be.

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seldon913 wrote:

I can pinpoint it.
The second time that we see her we learn that she has had 128 orgasms.
Amy: Does volunteering for a scientific experiment in which orgasm was achieved by electronically stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain count?Sheldon: I should think so.Amy: Then 128.
We later learn that she has been masturbating regularly all along. You can understand why she did not mention it.Amy has fully understood about sex and orgasms all along, she just did not get up the nerve to do something about it before Sheldon.

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pereira-filipesantos wrote:

Amy, on the other hand, is the only character whose personality changed completely overnight, without a gradual transition.
No, she didn't. You, and some other people, made the incorrect assumption based on a very short scene that she is a female Sheldon.She was never that, and that becomes clear very quickly.Don't blame the writers because you made an incorrect assumption.

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You are right, she is not a female Sheldon. In the beginning she was 100 times worse than Sheldon.

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pereira-filipesantos wrote:

In the beginning she was 100 times worse than Sheldon.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. My opinion is that what you wrote is just nonsense.

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Still related to Amy, but not about her lack of personality transitioning...

I'm just remembering moments when Amy felt insufferable to me.

I don't remember which season or episode this was, but when Will Wheaton made his guest appearance in "Fun with Flags" and Amy was directing it, she kept complaining about Will's performance he eventually couldn't take it anymore and was somehow unpleasant to her (again, I don't remember details, I'm just pulling stuff from my memory) and then she turned to Sheldon asking if he wasn't going to stand up for her. She was being a "d*ck" to Will, and then I think the episode turned into the mood of a lesson given to Sheldon that he should be more caring and affectionate to Amy. And I was like: come on, this is fcking stupid. She was actually being a d*ck to Will Wheaton... and this kind of stuff made me dislike her character in many moments, and wanna slap her face.

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pereira-filipesantos wrote:

And I was like: come on, this is fcking stupid. She was actually being a d*ck to Will Wheaton... and this kind of stuff made me dislike her character in many moments, and wanna slap her face.
I agree that Amy was being a jerk, but they are all jerks at one point or another.I suspect that Amy is jealous of how much Sheldon likes Will, and she is trying to get him to take her side even though she is wrong. Sheldon always wants Amy to take his side even when he is wrong. If she doesn't, what is the point of having a girlfriend as Sheldon says?

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Maybe, but everyone tends to forget there was once an "EVIL" W.W. that delighted in shaming Sheldon and broke up Penny and Leonard for a time.

He got what he deserved late IMO.
Points for Amy.

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Amy, whatcha gonna do?

"Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong." J.J. Rousseau

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It's easy to believe that Sheldon has seriously and noticeably changed, if that's what you want to believe, but there is plenty of evidence that he's just as self-centered and clueless and all the rest at the start of season 10, as he was at the start of season 1. The Writers That Be have always felt free to make him somewhat "normal" just long enough for one scene or even just one joke, but then he's back to the Same Old Sheldon again: doesn't understand sarcasm, thinks his mother and Leonard's father are spoiling their dinner by eating bread...

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Her orginal personality was boring, they changed her to give her more depth and appeal and from what I understand the fan reaction to her change in personality was favorable.



"Once men have tasted caviar, it baffles me how they settle for catfish."
-Blair Waldorf

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This is how Amy wanted to be, but she had no friends and had been picked on her whole childhood. She was able to evolve because she finally had people to do things with and care about who cared about her, too. She didn't evolve overnight. She came into her own gradually. She didn't know about socializing because she had never done much of it. She can be nasty at times, like she was to Will Wheaton, but she was trying her best to do something Sheldon wanted her to do that she had no experience at doing. And when Sheldon gave it more thought he understood that.

If she had no sexual desires it's either because of her fear of getting hurt or because she didn't know how to deal with those kinds of feelings. On her first date with Sheldon she certainly knew what an orgasm was.

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jaynekranc wrote:

On her first date with Sheldon she certainly knew what an orgasm was.
Unfortunately, Amy did not ask Sheldon what he had asked her. I wonder if Sheldon knew what an orgasm is from his own experience or only from reading.

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Amy is what happens, when people see a popular character, and bring someone to make a 'duplicate' of that character, without even understanding at all what makes that character what it is.

Think of how 'amy' supposedly mimics Sheldon, or is 'identical' to Sheldon'.

Her bad imitation is NOTHING like Sheldon. Look at Sheldon throughout the first season, then look at Amy's "imitation" of Sheldon. Absolutely awful performance.

This happens a lot for some reason; but the original character is always more alive and free, because it's usually played by someone with actual talent and skill, and who can make the character his own.

Look at the original Spock in the original series - very fun, very alive, and very sarcastic and intelligent, but very -actually- logical, as in calmly solves the problem with a logical way while being helpful and understanding that a feeling Scotty has is signifigant, although he (Spock) himself can't understand the feeling itself.

Now look at any Spock 'copies', or even just 'typical vulcans', who act SO robotically and in such an inhuman, dry way, compared to how Leonard Nimoy masterfully portrayed Spock. You can realize it's exactly the same phenomenon - you have someone very quirky and lively, and then someone tries to mimic them by being very robotic and dead.

Amy is awful, and I can't watch any scene she is in. On the other hand, the actor playing Amy is at least.. oh, wait, she's a fema-fascist ignoramus as well.

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