It all began with a Big Bang

So having complained about the utter mediocrity of Moonlight and Flash Gordon, I wanted to give a shout out to a new show that I really didn't expect to be any good at all, but that has really surprised me: The Big Bang Theory on CBS.

Based on the commercials CBS ran for it, there's no way I would ever have watched The Big Bang Theory. Like Cavemen, it's a gimmick comedy, the sort of thing I thought we'd left behind in the Eighties with Bosom Buddies, Perfect Strangers and ALF. The Big Bang Theory's particular gimmick is that it's about two socially inept, geeky Caltech physicists who live across the hall from a gorgeous, ditzy blonde.

But while the idea of a pair of sex-starved geeks drooling after a hot girl who spent her time dating beefcakes didn't really appeal to me, Lisa knew instantly that she wanted to see this show. (What got her was the scene where we see that the two geeks have a shower curtain depicting the periodic table of elements.) So we watched.

And we laughed. And laughed. I read a rather scathing review of The Big Bang Theory saying that there would be no one to watch it, since it's offensive to geeks and offensive to hot girls. Well, I can't speak for hot girls (since the only hot girl I watch it with is also a geek), but this show isn't offensive to geeks--it's a celebration of geekery. It's clearly written by people who are just as geeky as their main characters. Jokes about the Doppler Effect. Jokes about weapons-grade plutonium. Jokes about Doctor Who. Jokes about Superman fanon.

(For those of you to whom this means anything, Lisa says watching the character of Sheldon is like spending half an hour talking to Eric Daniels.)

And that's the secret to The Big Bang Theory's success. It's that it's the geek main characters, Leonard and Sheldon who are the show's only characters who are more or less happy with their lives, in contrast to their beautiful neighbour Penny, who's definitely not happy with her life. (To be fair, Leonard and Sheldon's geeky friends Howard and Rajesh are also pretty unhappy with their lives, but this really serves only to highlight how much better adjusted Leonard and Sheldon are by comparison.) It's the decision to treat the geeks as the show's centre of normality that keeps The Big Bang Theory from straying from loving satire into cruel mockery.

I

Technorati tags: The Big Bang Theory, geeks and nerds