Don’t ask me what happened in any single episode of The Big Bang Theory, because I honestly can’t remember.
Across 12 seasons, a myriad of in-jokes, long-standing gags and endless scientific lore were created, and you can bet your bottom dollar that hardcore fans won’t have forgotten a single thing.
This level of detail initially made me nervous to try watching new HBO Max spinoff, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.
Our titular heroic lead, on-off girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus), as well as friends Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Bert (Brian Posehn), are brought back together when Stuart (Kevin Sussman) triggers a multiverse armageddon by accidentally breaking a device built by Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki).
Clearly, the spinoff is its own thing, but there’s enough of a TBBT connection to assume that you’ll need to know the ins and outs of the main season in order to enjoy it.
That’s not the case, though. Not only can you be a Big Bang dunce and still have a whale of a time watching — and perhaps more importantly, always understand what’s going on — Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is actually designed to contradict the existing IP lore, according to creators Zak Penn and Bill Prady.
‘You’re not obligated to be consistent’
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“One of the wonderful things about moving from universe to universe is you’re not obligated to be consistent,” Prady tells me.
“We’re in a different universe. When we were doing this, I was always reminded of an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor is confronted with the with the inconsistency in the episode that they’re in. He points out that time is more of a vague ‘timey-wimey’ kind of thing, and I think we had a lot of that going on to say, ‘This is a different universe, and that’s how it is in this universe.'”
Even from episode 1, which drops on HBO Max on July 23, you can see how it would break your brain to try and conform to the rules and regulations of TBBT.
Stuart and the gang are frequently confronted with alternative versions of themselves and others are each aware of completely different things… and that’s before we consider that there’s always an overarching physical difference to each universe visited.
“We kind of approached it like we’re not trying to construct this perfectly organized science fiction idea,” Penn adds. “In fact, we want to both violate the ideas that we set up and then have the characters acknowledge that that’s what we’ve done. We do that quite a bit.
“There’s characters all over the season mentioning that things don’t really make sense… nobody can follow it. That was a deliberate choice because. The show isn’t designed to be something that’s a puzzle to figure out perfectly.”
As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them… be bewildered by the choices being made around you. Trust me: part of the fun is trying to keep up with the multiverse madness and second-guessing what comes next — and you’ll never, ever be right.
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