TV schedule: every Thursday 8:30 PM et/pt
TV Channel: CBS
Genre: Comedy
The Big Bang Theory Story Summary:
Set in Pasadena, Calif., the Big Bang Theory starts out following the lives of four geeky friends and a girl named Penny. The friends are Leonard, Sheldon, Rajesh and Howard.
The boys work at the Caltech, the California Institute of Technology and Penny is an aspiring actress who works at a Cheesecake Factory.
Leonard and Sheldon are both physicists, the former an experimental physicist and the latter a theoretical physicist. Howard is an aerospace engineer and Rajesh, who is usually called Raj, is a astrophysicist.
Raj lives on his own, Howard lives with his mom, and Leonard and Sheldon live across the hall from the street smart Penny.
The four friends start off with varying degrees of social ineptitude, but as the seasons have gone by, they've come out of their shells somewhat. Leonard's had several relationships, the most noteworthy so far with Penny (twice) and with Raj's sister coming in a close second.
Howard, who seems to think that being sexually inappropriate and overtly cliched is the way to be, has managed to become engaged to a microbiologist, Bernadette. They met through Penny when Bernadette was a part-time waitress at the Cheesecake Factory.
Even the O.C.D. Sheldon Cooper has found a meaningful relationship with a woman. While it's not terribly romantic to most of the world, he and the equally ultra-smart and socially awkward Amy Farrah Fowler have been linked for a couple of seasons now.
The last hold-out of the group, when it comes to love, is Rajesh. Raj has a small problem when it comes to women. He can't talk to them without imbibing alcohol, and as an astrophysicist, he can't exactly keep a flask on hand at all times to take a nip when he meets someone he likes. His escapades with women make for some of the most amusing parts of the show.
Sheldon's lack of social abilities, though, take the cake. Not only is he absurdly O.C.D., but he's an atheist who gets along better with Leonard's extremely clinical, psychologist mother than he does his own. Sheldon often refers to his fundamentalist Christian childhood as "hell," and he and his mother clash often over evolution and creationism.
His mom isn't the only person he clashes with. It's Sheldon versus the "stupid" world most of the time. The Big Bang Theory is certainly a "smart" sitcom. Where it differs from other TV shows that have attempted to go the same route is that it doesn't dumb down the science references to suit the "average" television viewer.
With exceptions like Sheldon attempting to explain scientific principles to Penny, the jokes range from scientific, such as when Sheldon attempted to "train" Penny using the Pavlov's Dog method, to popular (and not only geek) culture, such as Star Wars, Star Trek and video game references. There have even been a few hilarious geek icon appearances, like Stephen Hawking and Wil Wheaton. Overall, the show is an entertaining half hour romp into the realm of geeks versus the "real" world.
