For those that don’t watch with closed captioning on, the swirly thing at the end of the episode was labeled “The Adversary.”
Regarding the short episodes, Chuck Lorre said to Deadline
With the elaborate sets and special effects involved to create the different alternate realities in each episode, did the producers run out of money in the budget?
“No, no. We just felt that we’d successfully told the story, and to add would be padding, and padding, generally, is a hammock between important scenes, and why would we do that if there’s no real reason,” Lorre said.
IOW, the episodes are just as long as they need to be.
After last night’s episode, I’ve decided they need to give us a little more context about each universe before our heroes escape.
Sure it would be nice to know who the war was with in the last episode. Or how bipedal humans evolved from cows, or centaurs evolved from whatever. But that’s not the show they’re making.
Note that:
So if you are looking forward to a big resolution in the last episode vs another cliffhanger: maybe, maybe not.
That’s very mild compared to how Rick and Morty handles it. For instance, the universe
where phones are sentient beings who use pizzas as furniture, eat furniture for sustenance and use people as phones.
Nice cliffhanger.
Possible minor spoiler to the final episode of the season:
The final episode of the season is called “Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”. I guess that the laugh track that Kripke heard is a clue to the world that they ended up in at the end of episode 9.
Based on where this week’s episode ended, I think we may see a confrontation with The Adversary in the next one.
Based on where they ended up
the Adversary may be Chuck Lorre himself.
Just wanted to mention that while there haven’t been a huge number of laugh-out-loud moments in the series, the Mr Freeze gag (you know the one) really hit big in our house.
Season finale is only 18 minutes.
“The answer is out there…somewhere.”
“Glendale?”
“Or Studio City.”
At least Gary didn’t die in this episode.
Regarding the final scene:
I noticed that the large banner as they walked out of studio city said “Young Leonard.” I’m sure they’re just screwing with us. The other two were “Two and a Half Women” which I honestly thought might have been a real show and “SFTSTU.”
My wife thought that the ending was weak. I thought that it was fine. I’m looking forward to season 2.
I liked that they had to explain The Big Bang Theory, and also that they used the scene transition animations from the original too. Nice touches.
That was kind of a lame ending. If the show hadn’t been renewed it would have been a horrible finale.
It was okay. Meta all the way down. Adventures in the comic books. The experience as a show. The outside not being our real universe either. Of course implying that we could just be a level of the Matrix as well.
How you humorously deliver on that in the next season? I dunno.
The episode explained who the villain is but not who is sending clues to Stuart, though that might just be Stuart Prime. BTW, at the end as they entered the “real world” I wondered if they’d make their way to Pasadena to see if the comic book store existed in that universe.
I can’t help but think that the show is aimed at Boomers. When the episode aired where Stuart is using his ability – his encyclopedic knowledge of DC comics lore, I knew every response, including the proper locations of Metropolis and Gotham City. These were all Silver Age bits of data, which I wouldn’t expect Bronze Age or later readers to be familiar with. It’s the same way Alan Moore’s Watchmen was clearly aimed squarely at a Boomer audience, raised on Silver Age stories with “older” and “newer”: versions of characters (just as you had two Nite Owls and two Silk Spectres, and a Comedian appearing in both ages, like you had two Flashes and two Green Lanterns, but Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman were in both continuities.)
Now that season 1 is over, I wonder why Galecki or Helberg didn’t participate. I assume that each of them would have been welcomed with open arms if they had so desired. Jim Parsons has previously stated that he wouldn’t play Sheldon again for any amount of money.