The Big Bang Theory’s background players get their own multiverse, and the idea is better than the jokes. Kevin Sussman and Brian Posehn are good company for ten short episodes; the writing keeps reaching for a reference when it needs a laugh.
Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady spent twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory on four physicists and the women who put up with them. With Zak Penn they have now gone back for the people at the edge of the frame: Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman), who runs the comic-book shop; Denise (Lauren Lapkus), who works in it; Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn), the geologist; and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie), the colleague nobody wanted at lunch. The plan is to knock them out of their own universe and through several others, and to make them meet the versions of themselves who made better choices. It is a good idea. Across ten episodes of 24 minutes it is a good idea about a third of the time.
The third that works belongs to the cast. Sussman has always played Stuart as a man apologising for the space he takes up, and the series finally gives that a use, because the alternate Stuart he keeps running into has the same face and none of the apology. Watching Sussman play both, and watching the first flinch at the second, is the show’s one real joke about character rather than about comics. Posehn is the other reason to stay. He plays Bert as a large, gentle man who is pleased by almost everything, including the end of reality, and he gets the biggest laughs by doing the least.
It looks better than a sitcom spin-off needs to. Valda Witt’s production design gives each universe its own furniture and its own palette, so we always know within a shot that we have moved, and the cinematographers Grant Smith and Anthony Hardwick light the shop in the flat, friendly daylight of the old show and everywhere else with a little more shadow. Joseph LoDuca’s score does the heavy orchestral thing the material is sending up, and it knows when to stop. Two of the three directors, Jonathan Frakes and Robert Duncan McNeill, spent years on Star Trek bridges, and it shows in the way the bigger set pieces are blocked: people know where the door is and the camera knows where they are going.
The trouble is the writing, which is odd, given who wrote it. Lorre’s sitcom rhythm, setup and beat and punchline, was built for people sitting on a sofa, and it does not travel well to people fleeing across dimensions. Too many scenes stop for a reference, hold for the recognition, and move on without having said anything funny. Denise is the clearest casualty. Lapkus is a quick, likeable performer, and she spends most of the run reacting to other people’s lines. Bowie’s Kripke, meanwhile, is a running gag from another show, and ten episodes is a long time for a running gag.
Here is where we landed. We laughed properly perhaps five times in ten episodes, and four of those were Posehn. Around the middle of the run we noticed we had stopped caring which universe we were in and were waiting for the next familiar face to appear, and the series obliged: Kunal Nayyar’s Rajesh arrives from the old life, Penn Jillette and Teller arrive as themselves, and each time the screen brightens and the plot pauses. It is a strange thing to feel pleased to see someone and slightly cross about why they are there.
Most critics have been kinder than this, and we understand the goodwill. A spin-off that hands the leads to the supporting cast and then tries something structurally ambitious deserves credit for the attempt. But The Big Bang Theory at its best was funny about people who happened to love comics; this is funny about comics, and the people are along for the ride. The gap matters over ten weeks.
A second season is listed and has not yet aired. If it comes, it will need to find out what Denise wants and to let Stuart fail at something smaller than the universe. For now this is one for people who already know the shop, watched in twos, with a bowl of something, and with the expectation of smiling more than laughing.
