The Big Bang Theory is a sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. The plot follows a group of nerdy scientists as they have quirky adventures and misadventures and attempt to find love. The show ran for 12 series with the final series ending last year.
Carrying on from my post about Friends the other day I want to now look at some of that show’s successors one of which is The Big Bang Theory. Whether you love it or, you hate it this show has been around for a long time, longer even than Friends, and it has had an impact on pop culture, even inspiring a spin-off show in Young Sheldon.
I am of the mindset that this show never dipped in quality over it’s run, episodes from season 11 made me laugh just as much as episodes from season 1 or 2, but comedy is subjective. I think the ending of this show, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), winning the Nobel prize and thanking his friends and his wife is the perfect way to end it, the final scene of the show brought more than a few tears to my eyes.
Though some say that the comedy of the show shifted from laughing with the nerds to at them, I don’t agree. I think the characters were done justice to until the end, I think this show as well as some of it’s contemporaries helped in bringing nerd culture to the mainstream; it made being a nerd cool.
I liked how each character was developed over the course of the show and became more rounded, even background characters like Stuart (Kevin Sussman), had arcs and changed; we saw these characters grow as we ourselves did as well. The ending of the show gave all of these characters a sense of closure, except for Raj (Kunal Nayyar), who was left up in the air after his unsuccessful quest for love; I hope we don’t get a Joey esque spin-off for him, and this closure was just what we needed to move past this show.
Overall, I think The Big Bang Theory was less impactful than Friends, but that is not to say it wasn’t influential in its own way, it was. The Big Bang Theory reached out to all the geeks and nerds (myself included) out there who wanted to see a show they could relate to, where the characters aren’t going to parties every night and sleeping with different people near constantly and to them this show was a rallying cry, it made being a nerd cool; something that seemed like an impossibility.
Written by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 