Back in July, I wrote about the Golden Age of Sitcoms and how Seinfeld and Friends were the last sitcoms I enjoyed. Even though Friends lasted until 2004, it had lost its lustre or "Jumped the Shark", as they say in the business, in the early 2000s. So for a long time I had nothing to watch on TV. Then one day in 2007, I was channel hopping and I saw Kaley Cuoco, whom I liked from 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter. So I decided to watch for a bit. I was delighted to see that it was a show about a bunch of geeks. They would sit around and debate silly concepts from the world of sci-fi. This was like Seinfeld but with a geeky twist. Finally, some main characters that I could identify with. And that’s how I became a fan of The Big Bang Theory.
The show has many references to Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, physics, and other geeky/science stuff. Somehow the writers were able to make the jokes funny even though the audience probably didn’t have enough “inside information” to fully get them.
I must admit I don’t know all the references they make to sci-fi shows all the time but when you do fully understand what they are talking about it just makes it that much funnier. And when you can personally identify with what they are doing, it’s even better. So when Sheldon was trying to come up with his friendship algorithm and got stuck in an infinite loop, I laughed so hard I cried. If you ever took a computer programming course you probably got stuck in an infinite loop once in a while.
My favourite episode is when Sheldon uses Schroedinger’s cat to explain to Leonard whether or not he should go on a date with Penny. I love this because I had the exact same conversation in high school with my good friend JW. I wonder if he sold this idea to the writers of The Big Bang Theory.
Big Oh
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