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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $44.98
RATED: Unrated
RUNNING TIME: 529 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Actor on Actor: The Big Bang’s Theory of Relativity Featurette
- The Barenaked Ladies on Big Bang Theory Featurette
- The History of Everything Music Video
- Gag Reel
The Pitch
It’s the 4th season of the show about geeky physicists (and one engineer) who eat Thai food, talk about comic books, and lust after Kara Thrace.
Juice? No thanks, I'm not thirsty.
The Humans
Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Kunal Nayyar, Simon Helberg
The Nutshell
The traditional premise of the show in which 4 nerdy friends, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) sit around and wax about Superman, Indiana Jones, and how many doctorates they have. The show is turned on its head by the expanding presence of its female cast (which includes Kaley Cuoco as Penny, Melissa Rauch as Bernadette, and Mayim Bialik as Amy Farrah Fowler) and what that entails for the guys. Which is a lot of awkwardness.
Behind them: angry Community fans.
The Lowdown
I have some strong feelings about this show, so I really hope this comes off more as DVD review and not slightly antagonistic editorial. But that might prove to be as shitty a pipe dream as Herman Cain’s planned ascent to the Presidency.
The Big Bang Theory is a funny show. It isn’t fall out of your seat or side-splitting funny, but it’s funny. But if you haven’t actively watched it, you might hate it.
Hot nerd-on-nerd action, just like you want it.
Why? Well, people tend to hate popular things just because they’re popular. We’re all guilty of it. It’s easy to hate The Kardashians (and Jonah Hill apparently really does) because it gets double or triple or probably quadruple the ratings that something like Breaking Bad does on a Sunday night. But all I can base that hate on is the fact that the Kardashians are talentless hacks and Breaking Bad is better than anything might ever be. I haven’t actually watched the show, but it stands to reason it’s absolutely horrible compared to Breaking Bad. And shouldn’t be compared ever, by anyone. But that’s not the point.
The point is, a lot of that hate for certain things comes from a realization that the thing that you love isn’t getting shown the proper attention by common people that it deserves. What do you have on a Thursday night? You have the ratings giant The Big Bang Theory on one channel, and the ratings-famished Community on the other. The common sentiment is that Community deserves the ratings that The Big Bang Theory gets because it’s smarter or edgier. But that’s really not true. Both are good shows. Both are worth your time. The Big Bang Theory and Community are not very different. They both involve a circle of friends (the term used very loosely in both shows) and there are a lot of geek culture references and cameos (LeVar Burton appears in both shows, for the love of God) and honestly, the difference between the two isn’t that big. But The Big Bang Theory is more accessible to the average television watcher, or as some might choose to say, it’s dumbed-down. Community has smarter references, I guess. Which makes the people who watch it, or any single-camera show like it, possess some sort of inflated sense of superiority. This is something I hate about the internet. Again, for the record, I haven’t seen a single episode of the new season of Big Bang but I’ve watched every episode of Community. I enjoy them both. Why can’t you? There’s room in my head for both.
I guess my extremely convoluted point (in what I thought was supposed to be a DVD review) is this: it’s called a DVR. Invest in one. You can watch both, and you don’t have to bash the show that gets great ratings in favor of the little guy who deserves better than what it gets. It’s just how you perceive it to be. We all have opinions, but calling The Big Bang Theory a piece of shit is pretty counter-productive in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t like it, that’s it. You don’t like it. But when you act like you’re above it because of what you watch, you just sound silly. It’s smartly-written and MIGHT rely on Sheldon and his eccentricities a little bit too much, but it’s a fine traditional sitcom. Along with all the convenient setups that plague pretty much every sitcom ever, there’s still many aspects to enjoy.
Face it: you've had sexual dreams like this.
This was a really good season. My favorite moment was probably when the guys arrived late to a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After Will Wheaton (Sheldon’s arch-nemesis) and his friends are let in instead of Sheldon and the gang, Sheldon decides to steal the prints for the film from the projection room. A chase through the streets set to the Indiana Jones theme ensues. Also of note is the gang dressing up as the Justice League and winning the costume contest. Sheldon then daydreams that he’s The Flash and runs to the Grand Canyon to let out his anger at Leonard wanting to turn the thermostat in their apartment down, which of course goes against Sheldon’s heavily-detailed roommate agreement. The little quirks in Sheldon’s character are what makes Parsons’ performance so full of depth and he’s the best reason to watch this show.
Even after all that, I don’t really understand why certain people hate this show so much. It’s kind of baffling to me, actually. If only on the merits of Jim Parsons’ consistently hilarious and Emmy-deserving performance this show is worth your time. I’ve always enjoyed sitcoms, and in this relative golden era of single-camera sitcoms, the traditional studio or laugh-track sitcom may seem a bit dated. But jump off the bandwagon of hate and give the show a chance. I guarantee you watch and enjoy and offer a pass to a lot of unworthy stuff. I enjoy a wide variety of shows, moreso than most, and there’s always gonna be room for this show.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
The internet's collective head just exploded.
The Package
Not great. The gag reel is what you’d expect. There’s a Barenaked Ladies video for the theme song, and there’s an ongoing Q&A series where the actors ask each other questions about the show. The DVD should have at least had some commentaries on it, and with such a successful show it’s fairly inexcusable to not pack the DVD with extras.
21 comments
I tried to watch the Big Bang Theory, I really did. I sat down, cleared my mind of the negative mentions it receives and locked in. I was delighted to learn that the episode I was watching was about one of the characters receiving an invitation to visit the large hadron collider. I thought to myself “Hey, that’s a snazzy refrence for a show I assumed to be mainstream crap!”
What followed was a plot wherein two characters were locked in heated competition as to who would accompany Johnny Galecki as his plus one. On one side was his friend and roommate who thought this was a dream come true once in a life time opportunity to see work that is literally changing the way human beings view the universe. On the other side was the girlfriend who wanted to go….so she could go skiing. Somehow the girl disregarding the hadron supercollider and wanting to frolic in the snow was who we were supposed to be rooting for?
What followed was a brainmeltingly insane story about a guy getting screwed over by his friend because his girlfriend, who mocks and belittles his interest at every turn, wants winter sports in her life. Sheldon, being incapable of understanding how absolutely dismissed he’s being by his friend & roommate, resorts to increasing extremes to demonstrate how important this tour would be to him. Ultimately he was scolded for being childish by someone who’s only discernable reason for being with his girlfriend is her relative hotness. Everyone came out in the end looking petty and unlikable.
It’s also pretty clear that the writers idea of making Sheldon a comic character hinges upon his having asbergers and nobody ever mentioning it. Which could be interesting if the characters awknowedged this in anyway but instead he’s just treated like he’s an asshole.
Maybe the reason people don’t like the show has less to do with being elitest and more to do with the show being terrible. Of course I may have just managed to watch the only insultingly bad on every level episode of this series. That’s also possible,
I started two paragraphs with the same phrase…..I fail out the gate.
I love both shows immensely and have the DVDs. I don’t get the hate either, but then again, I really don’t get hate for pop culture stuff, period. A case of too much time and not enough perspective on their hands, if you ask me. But anyway, I don’t bother with cable, so I Hulu both shows every week. I do hope Community pulls through the hiatus and gets another season or three because it is smart and wonderful. It is scads smarter than Big Bang (not that that’s a terribly high bar to hurtle), but I think there’s more than enough room for both. Particularly when there are hundreds of channels out there. I say four more seasons of each!
I do like the addition of the extra ladies on Big Bang. They’re not simply quirky girlfriends. I like that Bernadette and Amy each have their own niche in the show, rather than being there to provide cheap conflict for the plot. They are wonderful presences, and they play well with Penny, so much so that I would enjoy episodes with the guys totally absent.
One thing I don’t really like on Community, though, is what they’ve done with Chang. Thankfully, there has been less of him this season, but last season I found their attempts at making him more and more outrageous annoying. First season, he was great. He was intense, but he still had something going for him, being a teacher at Greendale. Second season, he was just this pathetic psychopath. I’m glad they’re throttling him back a little.
I own season 1 on DVD, and it’s a good, funny little show. I stopped watching sometime in season 2 just because I felt like it was kind of samey, just replaying stuff it had already done.
I’ve seen a bunch of this season because my roommate this year likes to watch it, and it’s better than I expected. The addition of Bernadette and Amy really helps the show a lot. They give Penny more to do (and Kaley Cuoco is the second best thing about the show, besides Sheldon) and they give more supporting characters to play off of, which is great because Howard and Raj have long been the worst thing about BBT.
It’s not on the level of Community or P&R, but I agree that it doesn’t deserve the hate. It’s no 2.5 Men
While BBT does get additional hate from the Community crowd since it got moved to be in direct competition with Community (and thus Community’s ratings plummeted)–it would still be just as awful of a show in any time slot. It is as “sitcom” of a show as possible–and that’s not a good thing. Jokes that are slightly chuckle-worthy at best get the studio audience just roaring (and the actors have to wait for them to finish laughing to continue their lines. With shows like How I Met Your Mother, yes, they have a laugh track, but they don’t film in front of the audience, so their performance isn’t based on waiting for the audience to shut up. The audience watches the footage afterwards and reacts to it).
I have only sat through 2 episodes of BBT, but they seemed to be full of the lamest nerd cliches, and completely devoid of humor. Ooooh, they are uber smart nerds, so they are unable to function in regular situations, and especially can’t talk to girls (amping these stereotypes up about a thousand percent compared to how awkward any actual person would act in the real world). Sheldon thinks someone is breaking into the house, so he heads out in star wars underwear with a light saber toy as his weapon. Because you see, he’s a nerd, and nerds like starwars–get it? I seriously can’t recall seeing worse sitcom jokes since Anthony Clark busting out “to the untrained eye, they would just see a blank sheet of paper. But I can see that you’ve drawn a polar bear in a snowstorm” on Boston Common in the mid 90’s. I remember being excited for Clark’s show, as he was one of my favorite standup comedians at the time. And then I watched 1 episode of his starring role on BC, and my tolerance for mind numbing, lowest common denominator humor was spent. Boston Common ruined Anthony Clark, and I haven’t been able to stomach “sitcom humor” ever since. BBT seems to be the current worst offender.
I love this show. LOVE. I’m the same way about Community. As you said, room for both of them in my head!
I honestly think this show is worse than Two and a Half Men. At least that show has some dedicated professionals like Jon Cryer, Holland Taylor, or even Charlie Sheen, who have a combined century’s worth of experience turning shit lines to gold in front of a grateful audience. This show has actors who were cast for their head shots. Even still, it’s like comparing road apples and shit oranges. Just watch something else.
I hate Big Bang for one reason, and one reason alone. It’s a show full of pop-culture and geek-culture references written by people who clearly don’t understand or appreciate either. It’s pandering and it’s insulting. Also, it spawned a goddamn catchphrase, and that alone should be more than enough reason to hate it.
*Side note, what the fuck happened to this place? A couple years ago, no one in their right mind would have defended fucking big bang theory on CHUD. I know shit’s been tough around here lately, but Christ, this place has been a real drag the last few months and “articles” like this are doing nothing but taking up space.
I can’t get past the laugh track that plays after every spoken line of dialogue. Every. Damn. Line.
I don’t think it’s written by people who don’t understand the references at all. How would you know? Is their geek cred on display in some museum for you to observe and judge? And besides…it’s primetime television on CBS, what do you want? A half-hour of nothing but an uninterrupted D&D session or a visual Ain’t It Cool talkback? It is what it is, and the references that it makes range from spot-on with how genuine they sound to…yeah, a little too much “we are name-dropping ‘frakking’ because we know it’s popular with nerds”.
And me “defending” the show is just that…me, but thanks for jumping on the “OH MY GOD WHAT HAS CHUD BECOME OH NO!” bandwagon. It’s a DVD review that unfortunately devolved into a little bit of something else because I feel strongly about the criticism the show gets and felt this was the appropriate way to vent my frustration. It’s not my favorite comedy…probably isn’t even in the top 3…but I enjoy it immensely. Some of the people in this talkback do, some clearly don’t. Big deal.
I’m sure they edit the laughter in some capacity, but it’s always filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Right? It’s an enjoyable show!
“The Big Bang Theory is more accessible to the average television watcher”. That, ladies and gents is what is known as being damned by faint priase. While Community is head and shoulders the better show, it’s not quite the laugh riot the internet would have you believe. It’s a fine show, but not quite up there with the best comedies of all time.
I like both The Big Bang Theory and Two & A Half Men (with Sheen). Sue me.
I won’t sue you, but I will tell you that you have terrible taste in television shows.
I also like both. But my favorite show on television is Breaking Bad…followed closely by Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, etc. So clearly, my taste in television is horrible.
For the record, Community actually DID do a half-hour of nothing but an uninterrupted D&D session and it was awesome!
My head is big enough for just about anything. I can watch SpongeBob one half hour and right after that watch Breaking Bad On Demand. I hate things on a case by case basis. Big Bang can be funny but not all of the time. Breaking Bad can be good but is more often great. Case by case wins the race.
No, your taste is just confusing.
And here I was finding it hard to convince my non-nerd friends to watch a nerd friendly show. I didn’t even realise it was all the nerds who were hating it. Go figure.
It’s funny how many people hate the laugh track that isn’t a laugh track.
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