JimK:  A long time ago, on a blog far, far away, I wrote the following words about the pilot episode of The Big Bang Theory:

Just frigging terrible.  Awful.  It was crushed under the weight of trying to be so geeky and so “clever.” Plus the lead nerd sucked (that guy who used to be on Roseanne) and the beta nerd was about the only thing worth filming.  The “hot girl” is cross-eyed and three feet tall, but man what an ass.  Not worth watching the show to see it though…

Harsh.  Here’s the thing: I was wrong.  And right.  Since writing that in September of 2007 I have watched ever episode of the show (Gooooooo team bittorrent) and have learned to love the show.

Johnny Galecki is still the weakest link, but he’s supposed to be.  One of the ways this standard sitcom plays with standard sitcom stereotypes is that Galecki’s character of Leonard Hofstadter is the acknowledged alpha male of his group, only he clearly isn’t.  He’s never going to be the alpha of any group.  He’s just the most stable and least neurotic one.  Jim Parsons’ Sheldon is the real alpha due to the intensity of his seemingly unending series of neuroses. It’s Seinfeld-ish in that Jerry was the “leader” but Kramer drove the episodes that featured him forward.  Well, Sheldon is the feature here 99% of the time, and rightly so. I was 100% right about Jim Parsons being the reason to watch this show.  He’s note-perfect in every scene.  Every line is written with optimum nerdiness in mind first, then joke punchline second.  That’s something thing I like: you are expected to either get his jokes or just look them up later, because he’s always right/accurate/at the pinnacle in internet geekdom.  If it’s not funny at the moment, it will be later when you find out what he’s talking about.

To be clear, the show follows a typical sitcom format, with all the comedy beats and timing one would expect.  One, two, laugh line.  Rinse and repeat.  The group is very Friends-like, only for the late 20s-to-30s internet geek set.  Kaley Cuoco’s Penny is still cross-eyed and three feet tall, but she has three solid assets and they show those three assets off constantly (link goes to Google image search of Penny, unfortunately there aren’t many shots of her third fantastic asset…).  She’s also got really good timing and plays really well on screen with Parsons.  Simon Helberg’s character of Howard Wolowitz is the nebbish-y Jewish-y nerd who fancies himself a ladies man, lives at home with his stereotypical Jewish mother and talks endlessly about brisket…the character is done with love though, not mean-spirited.  Kunal Nayyar’s Rajesh Koothrappali is a stereotypical Indian science nerd who cannot speak in the presence of pretty women, played to good if not predictable effect.  Everyone does a decent job, and the end result is a nice way to waste 22 minutes.

The geek/science/internet culture they have created on the show is fairly accurate.  Exaggerated, but accurate.  If you have even a smidgen of geek in you and have spent time on the webernets, you will smile at the constant flood of current and accurate pop culture references.  This means the show will not hold up over time, but I don’t think it’s supposed to.  Like the culture it presents, things are very now, moving forward and the past is useful only in how obsessively you can chronicle continuity , not how much you can relive and revel in the nostalgia.   It’s nice to see a mainstream show where the geeks are the draw, not the butt of endless jokes.  Geekiness is played for laughs of course, but it’s Penny, the total non-nerd, who ends up being everyone’s foil.  A standout episode of this season was the one where Penny gets addicted to World of Warcraft, a scenario I am currently living out what with DonnaK being all WoWed to the hilt now… *cough*

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out the show and you read this site, well then you should.  This show is for you.  I’m man enough to admit I was WAY too harsh on this show, and it’s good for some laughs and some “Hey, I too have that Star Wars poster” moments.  Last week’s episode featured Sheldon quoting Starfleet regulations at Leonard and I found myself thinking “Man, the number of times I wanted to quote the Rules of Acquisition at someone boggles the mind.”