I was recently given a copy of The Big Bang season 1.
My parents have been gushing about the show for a year now, but I pretty much never watch sitcoms...so this was my first encounter with the program.
Isabel and I watched the pilot last night and were a little confused. Are the main characters PhD's or grad students? They talked like they had already earned their degrees, but we couldn't understand why two scientists would be sharing an apartment in a nigh-condemned apartment building. Are they teaching at a community college and making peanuts or are they supposed to be someplace where rent is so steep that even science professors can't afford a house? Also, I don't understand why they are so poor that the show opens with them attempting to donate sperm so that they can afford better Internet connections. Actually, the bigger question is why...if their connections are so slow...they aren't either sitting in a coffeeshop using WiFi or IN THEIR LABS!!!! What young, single scientist is wasting time goofing off with his roommate and neighbors when he should be in his multi-million dollar government subsidized lab trying to get tenured or promoted???
If they were graduate students, I would almost sort of get it...although then I'd be alarmed by the amount of work they seem to actually get done in their apartment.
Also, the pilot seemed to fall flat with its gross gender stereotypes. Four scientists, and they are all men? The only girl in the pilot is a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory?
Worse yet, the only "chemistry" between the guys and the girl is that she is a girl. It's just sex...although I suppose that's only appropriate since the show is entitled The Big Bang.
Of course, this was just the pilot...and pilots are often shaky starts. That being said, Isabel and I have a theory that The Big Bang started as an American attempt to import Spaced the same way the Office was imported. In my imaginary realm, the shirts at the production company just didn't get Spaced and reduced it to geeky pop cultural references. (This theory was reinforced somewhat when we find out that the neighbor was recently dumped and has aspirations to be a writer.)
Thoughts?
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