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What do you get when you put four geniuses and a hot blond together?  A side-splitting comedy on awkward attempts of socially inept guys at social interactions, some hilarious friendship-etiquette faux pas (like cleaning their place in the middle of the night while they’re asleep in the other room) and lots of geekiness (Klingon Boggle, rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, Halo Wednesdays and Planet of the Apes marathon).

The Big Bang Theory

Brilliant, MENSA-fied best friends Leonard and Sheldon may be able to tell you more than you want to know about quantum physics, but getting through most basic social situations totally baffles them.   CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, with a premise of four nerdy guys meets beautiful woman, is a must-watch comedy sitcom.

The Characters

The show is centered on five characters.  Blonde bombshell, Penny, is an aspiring actress born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska who waitresses and occasionally bartenders at the Cheesecake Factory.  She lives across the hall from Sheldon and Leonard who work at the California Institute of Technology.

Sheldon Cooper, a theoretical physicist, has the highest IQ of the guys but unfortunately has the lowest EQ.  He was a child prodigy who’s not very good with reading emotions and has trouble understanding irony and sarcasm.

His roommate, experimental physicist Leonard Hofstadter, fares better in social situations.  In the group, he has had the most girlfriends.  He comes from a family of accomplished scientists.

Their equally geeky co-workers and friends are Howard and Raj who are best friends (earlier in the series, they had this weird bromance going on).  Howard Wolowitz is an aerospace engineer who fancies himself as a lady’s man (when, in reality, he’s just very creepy) and still lives with his overbearing mother.  He is the only one without a PhD (a source of exasperation for him) but defends this by pointing out that he has a master’s degree in Engineering from MIT and that the apparatus he designs are launched into space, unlike the purely abstract work of his friends.

And Rajesh “Raj” Koothrappali is an astrophysicist, originally from India, whose family is very well off.  He has selective mutism, making him unable to talk to women unless he drinks alcohol.  But drinking too much of it makes him loud and obnoxious.

The cast now includes the girlfriends of Sheldon, Howard and Leonard.  Bernadette Rostenkowski is a microbiology graduate who has worked with Penny part-time as a waitress while earning her PhD.  She dated and recently become engaged to Howard.  Sheldon hooked up with Amy Farrah Fowler thru an online dating service (courtesy of Howard and Raj).  She is a neurobiologist and a female version of Sheldon.  Leonard is dating Priya Koothrappali, Raj’s lawyer sister.

Season 4 Recap

Season 4 ended with Howard and Bernadette engaged but had a fight over Bernadette’s expensive gift (Rolex watch) she gave Howard after she got a high paying job.  Priya is moving back to India without telling Leonard.  Angry, when he found out about it, Leonard then tells her parents (who disapprove of her dating an American) that they were dating.  The biggest shocker was Penny and Raj, who were both depressed (because she still has feelings for Leonard and he has feelings for Bernadette, respectively), ended up drunk and sleeping together.  They gang found out about it the next morning when they find them exiting in Leonard’s bedroom.

Season 5

Season 5 will definitely start with the consequences of Raj and Penny’s night together.  Executive Producer Bill Prady has vaguely said in an interview that there will be a resolution and whichever way you came down on how it happened, you will be happy with how it works out.  Could this be a hint that nothing really happened?  Well, if something did, then we’ll definitely see some awkward moments of Penny and Raj with the group.

Priya will move back to India, so Leonard is back to sharing the apartment with Sheldon.  But they haven’t broken up; they’re trying to have a long distance relationship.  Howard and Bernadette are also still a couple.  Bernadette’s earning more than Howard could still be a source of tension (and storylines) for the couple.

Raj will have a potential love interest, a girl he can communicate with.  It’s high time that Raj will have some luck in the romance department, with Howard, Leonard and Sheldon paring up with Bernadette Amy and Priya, will Raj finally have his own girlfriend?

We’ll probably see more romantic tension between Leonard and Penny as they obviously still have feelings for each other.  With the whole sleeping with Raj, it makes the whole thing even more complicated.  They have a whole Rachel and Ross “will they or won’t they?” situation going on, which I hope they won’t drag on forever.

Prady did not reveal much on what’s going to be happening on the whole of Season 5 and has said the show is written with no overall arc, meaning, they will pen it episode-to-episode.  This is fine by me.  I don’t watch this show for the “shocking twists and turns”.  It’s the sharp, witty and hilarious dialogue, funny characters and wonderful actors (Jim Parsons is just brilliant) with great chemistry that keeps me tuning in.  And if you missed a couple of episodes, you won’t feel too lost.

there doesn't seem to be any awkardness here...

Season Premiere

September 22, 2011 (THURSDAY), 8/7c on CBS

Season 5 Promo Video

Spoilers

• Raj’s potential love interest is a deaf character named Emily, making him able to communicate with her even with his selective mutism (I wonder how this will work?) They will reportedly be brought together by Penny who sets them up on a date.  Although, Raj has already claimed before to have a deaf girlfriend in the early part of season 4 (but she was never seen, so he could’ve have just made her up).  Katie Leclerc (Switched at Birth) will play Emily.  Leclerc is also hard-of-hearing in real life.

Trivia

• The show has an actual professor of physics and astronomy from UCLA, David Saltzberg, to check scripts and provide dialogue, math equations and diagrams used as props.
• Those numbers and symbols on Sheldon’s board is an actual problem that has actual progress.
• Barenaked Ladies wrote and recorded the show’s theme song.
• Like her character Amy Farrah Fowler, actress Mayim Bialik also holds a PhD in Neuroscience (and, she was accepted to Harvard and Yale but decided to go to UCLA… wow!).  She (Bialik) was even mentioned in Season 1 when Raj suggested her as the 4^th member of their team for the Physic Bowl they were competing in, citing her PhD.
• Bialik is not the only smart child actor they’ve had on the show.  Other possible 4th teammate Raj suggested was Danica McKellar (Wonder Years) who eventually guest starred later on.  McKellar studied mathematics in UCLA and graduated summa cum laude and coauthored the Chayes–McKellar–Winn theorem.
• To this date, Penny’s last name has not yet been revealed.
• Sheldon’s IQ is 187 while Leonard’s is 173.
• A running gag in the show is that Howard’s mom is never seen on cam and only her nasal yells are heard.

Starring

• Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper
• Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter
• Kunal Nayyar as Rajesh “Raj” Koothrappali
• Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz
• Kaley Cuoco as Penny

Official Site

http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/