Big Bang Theory Season 2 Review
Russell Burlingame Reporting
There's something vaguely insulting about CBS's The Big Bang Theory.
I
think it comes primarily from the fact that, these days, it's accepted lore that
The Big Bang Theory is actually "on our side," as it were. The
conventional wisdom, as espoused by show writer and former computer programmer
Bill Prady, is that the comic book- and science-fiction-loving main characters
aren't actually being lampooned but lionized. The notion that-even though the
characters are stereotypical, one-dimensional and not at all human-we're
supposed to be happy with their portrayal because, after all, it's a modicum
better than The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, seems a little absurd.
Set against the backdrop of a university where most of the central characters work, season one's premise was that four geeks had their world upset when a gorgeous girl moved in across the hall from them and distracted one from his studies and his comics. Leonard (Johnny Galecki) fell in love with Penny (Kaley Cuoco) almost immediately and hilarity ensued. Or at least some minor chuckles.
Of course, it's clear that some very smart people, who also happen to be interested in (or at least kept abreast of) comics, sci-fi and other geek culture, are on the show's writing staff-and some of the conversations they have in season two are the same as you might hear your friends having at the comic shop or around a role-playing game board. But really, that's not enough for me.
The second season saw Wolowitz finally get laid after spending the entire first season chasing tail, and finally saw Penny and Leonard making out. You also got the vibe, toward the end of the season, that Penny was really into him and maybe if he weren't going away for roughly the same amount of time that the viewers were, he could score. My favorite character, Leslie Winkle (played by Sara Gilbert in what's surely the show's most inspired performance), gets a lot of mileage this season, too-she's the most well-adjusted of the geeks, and the most well-rounded, too. In her first appearance (back in season one) she had sex with Leonard (the central character and the one usually referred to as the most well-adjusted), and then walked outside and fixed a calculation error on the whiteboard of Sheldon (ostensibly the most brilliant person on the show). While they never again depict her as showing up any of the men in her circle with brains, she's easily able to do so with attitude and sex-something that drives a few of the stories in the second season as she takes Wolowitz down the rabbit hole for a while.
So the romantic B-plots were much-improved. And with the increase in popularity the show enjoyed its second season, they managed to swing some impressive cameos (by actors, and by ACTUAL noted scientists instead of actors playing fictional ones)...so I guess it's fair to say that the recently-released-to-DVD Big Bang Theory Season 2 is a substantial improvement over the show's first season (something ratings will attest to).
But still-it stings to watch. Even when the show is funny, I find myself laughing at it with half of my brain, while the other half is trying to figure out if I've just been insulted. And frankly, up against competition (on its own night and network) like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men, it's just not funny enough for me to feel like it's worth thinking that hard.
Russell Burlingame is a journalist and columnist living and working in New York City. In high school, Russell interviewed Elliot S. Maggin for a review of the Kingdom Come novelization, and since then has worked consistently in and around the comics industry. He interned for Wizard magazine, and has freelanced for Wizard and Newsarama, in addition to a number of non-comics publications, Russell is currently working on a graphic novel based on Cap'n Internet, the comic strip that ran in his college newspaper; and a graphic biography of folk singer Phil Ochs with artist Marion Vitus.
Currently, in addition to his freelance work and his comics projects, Russell writes a number of columns for ComicRelated, including Conscientious Sequentials, The Gold Exchange, What's Perhappenin', Closing Statements, Reflecting 'Pool and To See or Not To See.
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