So one day back in 2005, two comedy writers made the rounds of the studios, as writers do every day, and pitched an idea for a half-hour comedy series.
“What’s it about?”
SERIES INFO
“The Big Bang Theory”
Comedy, romance
A woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory.
Creators: Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady
Stars: Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco
“Well, these two physicists at Caltech, Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, who share an apartment in Pasadena.
Silence.
“They have these close buddies, an aerospace engineer and astrophysicist.”
Deeper silence. Not good. And then a question from the producers.
“No girls?”
“Oh sure, there’s Penny, an aspiring actress who waits tables and lives across the hall. Then we’re gonna bring in a girl neuroscientist and a microbiologist.”
It was a hard sell, but because Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady had serious resumes, the project got a green light. The rest is television history.
“The Big Bang Theory,” of course, created multiple careers, especially Jim Parsons’ (Sheldon) who bounced out of comedy with “The Boys in the Band,” Johnny Galecki, as Leonard, a lovable, shy nerd whose relationship with Parson’s “Sheldon” is a wonderful parallel universe “Odd Couple,” is well, rich and developing new projects.
Melissa Rauch (Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz) a former stand up comic, who was nominated for the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2013, continues to create.
Mayim Bialik (Amy) who was a child television star and is an actual award-winning author and neuroscientist, is basically a comic genius with hidden quirks that ground Parsons’ genius.
Mayim is debuting Fox’s “Call Me Kat,” a loose remake of a successful British sitcom “Miranda,” that counts former TV hubby Jim Parsons as co-producer.
And let’s not forget Kaley Cuoco, the sexy, intellectually challenged neighbor “Penny,” who stars in “The Flight Attendant” that just opened to great reviews on HBO/MAX.
Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg round out the cast.
But then, as I discovered, millions of you already know all about this.
So here it now, the entire library of the episodes (12 seasons) on HBO/MAX’s new lineup, with the most perfect cast rivaling 1994’s “Friends” (10 seasons).
And just like the iconic “Friends,” each member of the cast blends with one another like ingredients in a perfect soup that keeps entertaining a new generation of fans. May we enjoy these guys for years to come.
J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.
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