Stuart Fails to Save the Universe - Big Bang Theory spinoff. Spoilers after first post

The spinoff premieres today (July 23) on HBO Max or whatever they’re calling it now. New episodes will be every Thursday.

The first episode is “Spoiler: Gary Dies.”

I had know idea what to expect from this. The article that I read emphasized that the name of the show is “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” so perhaps he’ll try over and over and keep failing.

Stuart and Bert are in a post apocalyptic Earth complete with zombies, giant people-eating moths and dimensional rifts that are handy for disposing bodies.

I won’t go into the details of the episode but I was surprised to see Raj. I hadn’t heard that he was involved. Kripke and Denise will obviously be central characters.

Overall, I was pleased with it. It is nothing like BBT. I’ll keep watching for now.

A little pre-release discussion of it starting here

That’s nothing.

When I was 11, I wrote a series of short stories (with, I’m sure lots of sentences beginning with “because”) about a family of five brothers and sisters struggling to stay together as a family unit after their parents were killed by a drunk driver. Two older brothers, a sister, almost a teen, a brother about 8, and a sister about 3. Even had the part about the youngest brother setting up a tent in order to have some space of his own.

I am not making any of this up.

I invented this all in 1978. I wrote about a dozen stories from 5 to 12 pages each. (I was kind of a precocious writer, and had been writing fiction since I was about 8-- just 2 or 3 pages at a time at first. I wrote poetry when I was 5. Had a whole notebook full of it by age 8.)

Anyway, after about a year of writing stuff about this family of five kids, I decided it was far-fetched, and kinda stupid, and put it away. I don’t know what eventually happened to it. I assume it got tossed along with a lot of other “junk” from my room after I moved out and my parents saw the opportunity for separate bedrooms.

When I saw the promos for “Party of Five” what must have been 30 years later, whatever I was eating turned to ash in my mouth.

I have no insider knowledge to back this up, but I suspect every one of the original cast will show up in at least one episode, even Kaley Cuoco. They’ll start with the obviously available and easy to court ones like Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch, but eventually go through them all. That’s my guess, anyway.

That seems likely. Perhaps the big stars like Jim Parsons appear in the holiday episodes?

And it’s a little weird that this is on HBO MAX while the two previous spin-offs are on the CBS broadcast network. According to Wikipedia this was developed at HBO Max, so perhaps it was never even offered to CBS?

And it does give the secondary characters and actors from The Big Bang Theory a chance to lead a show, and presumably get better money.

I can only imagine your reaction when you saw the promos for On Our Own.

The series centers on the Jerrico family, consisting of seven brothers and sisters in the O’Fallon Park neighborhood of St. Louis. Six months prior to the series, a car crash killed both their parents. Since then, they have been raised by the eldest brother, Josh (Harris).

I particularly like what they’re doing with Bert’s character, which is a giant leap from TBBT. I’ll say no more except that I am very satisfied with the first episode.

I found a sort-of answer elsewhere. Various actors in secondary roles from The Big Bang Theory will appear on the show although not necessarily as the same characters. I haven’t found any information on which of the remaining main cast will appear. Ideally, any such appearance would be kept secret so it’s a surprise.

I listen to Penn Jillette’s podcast, and a few months ago he talked about filming their guest spot for this first episode. Pretty funny, and the show looks like a good concept.

It would have been awesome if in the alternate universe that Teller talked and Penn didn’t.

I remember Penn telling about a time they did that, at a magic convention I think. They called themselves “Teller & Penn” and reversed roles. At one point supposedly, Teller stopped in the middle of imitating the fast talking Penn and gasped, “Wow, this is harder than it looks.”

They also guest-starred on a Simpsons episode where it was “revealed” that Teller speaks and Penn is silent whenever they’re not performing. (“That was the curse the witch put on us.”)

My understanding is that wasn’t an alternate universe but instead the same one but messed up

Kevin Sussman says parallel universe.

Please tell me they eventually meet up with some of the Sliders team.

Are they in it as Penn and Teller? Teller has already appeared in multiple episodes of Big Bang Theory as Amy Farrah Fowler’s father Larry, and definitely spoke.

Yes, and they even have a sign saying “Penn & Teller” will perform for food. :slight_smile:

Well, it didn’t take long to get an answer to the question of whether the original cast would appear.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Teller speak during a performance, on stage at the Rio in Vegas. He told me where to stand after Penn selected me from the audience to come up as a human prop for a trick.

The cool part (for me) was I picked out our seats on the seating chart specifically for the possibility of getting picked from the audience. I won that “bet.”

Anyway, the first episode was fun. Bert, Barry, and Stuart are 3 of my favorite 4 side characters. It’s fun to see them get to play around. (The 4th is Zack)