Review: The Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) is a television sitcom about a group of friends centered around two young Caltech physicists, Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper. The two physicists share an apartment in Pasadena, California. Sheldon, portrayed by, Jim Parsons, is a theoretical physicist who seems to have Asperger's syndrome. Leonard Hofstadter is an experimental physicist portrayed by John Galecki.

In the beginning of the series, a pretty girl called Penny (Kaley Cuoco) moves to an apartment across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon's apartment. She has moved from Nebraska and works as a waitress at Cheesecake Factory and hopes to start her acting career. One of her co-workers at Cheesecake Factory is Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch) who studies microbiology and later becomes an integral part of the group. Bernadette later develops a relationship with the engineer and later payload specialist on the space shuttle Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) who lives with his mother. Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunar Nayyar) is an Indian astrophysicist and the best friend of Howard Wolowitz. Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) gets to acquainted with Sheldon through an online dating service that determines her to be the best possible match for Sheldon. Other important character include the comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) whose store is frequented by the men of the group.

A lot of the comedy in the show is based on the social awkwardness of the main characters. Sheldon has the highest level of intelligence of the group. He is nearly insufferable in his naive self-centeredness and seeming inability to lie and understand social cues. But the others forgive Sheldon a lot because he is unaware of much of the impact of his behavior. In addition, Sheldon occasionally shows remarkable generosity of spirit. Once, for instance, he paid off Penny's credit card debt because she was in dire straits because of a deceitful ex-boyfriend of hers without expecting anything in return. Sheldon and Penny develop an unlikely friendship despite the huge gap in IQ. Sheldon's intelligence is off the charts while Penny is average in that respect. Sheldon's Asperger's syndrome is believable. It manifests itself as strong OCD symptoms, fixations in niche topics, inability to pick up social cues and understand human motivations. In the beginning, he is much more eccentric than towards the end of the series when his relationship and eventual marriage to Amy gradually motivate to improve himself in those areas.

Leonard provides a counterpoint to Sheldon's eccentricity. Leonard is not as brilliant as Sheldon and he has some issues of his own, including low self-esteem, stemming from his mother who considered Leonard an experiment and withheld affection from him when he was growing up. Leonard's canonical IQ is very high, 173, while Sheldon's is above 190.

The friendship of Rajesh and Howard have certain homoerotic undertones, which is a source of comedy in the depiction of the relationship between the two. Rajesh is quite a bit of a metrosexual. He only ever has relationships with women, which he has after he gets over his inability to talk to women. Rajesh is a collection of Indian cliches. He comes from an upper class family. His parents hate each other and eventually divorce.

Howard is another character based on ethnic cliches. Howard is Jewish and lives with his overbearing mother until she dies. At that point, he's already with Bernadette, a very assertive policeman's daughter and a pharmaceutical sales manager after her graduation.

Amy is the female equivalent of Sheldon although she's is neuronormal. I don't know her canonical IQ but I would guess that it is quite high. Amy appears to be socially very awkward but that is likely to be the case mainly because of her loneliness in high school and even at Caltech. Amy is not a physicist but a neuroscientist but she's at the top of her profession, which indicates together with some of her other characteristics, that her intelligence is most likely among the closest to Sheldon's in the group.

The Big Bang Theory is hilarious and very well written for the most part. But among its main weaknesses is the fact that while the scriptwriters are smart people, which is obviously a requirement for writing dialogue for very smart people, it seems that the interests of the characters, apart from their professions, do not fully align with those typical for highly intelligent people with the exception of Sheldon. But then again, he's the official eccentric in the show. I have some experience hanging out with people who are not even of the same caliber as the main characters in the show, from a canonical perspective, and who are much smarter than myself. These people are typically not as crazy about anything as mainstream as comics, television or other aspects of mainstream culture. For example, a lot of very intelligent people whom this show is about often have philosophical or otherwise intellectually stimulating conversations not suitable for a show aiming for as much mass appeal as The Big Bang Theory. They tend to have serious extracurricular pursuits, none of which of the characters in the show have. People like that wouldn't be spending nearly as much time watching television, for instance. They'd be spending their free time broadening their horizons at some secondary pursuit that allowed them more freedom than their professional roles. But this is a television show and obviously its characters will not be eschewing television.

Here are some funny moments: