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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $44.98
RATED: Unrated
RUNNING TIME: 529 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Actor on Actor: The Big Bang’s Theory of Relativity Featurette
- The Barenaked Ladies on Big Bang Theory Featurette
- The History of Everything Music Video
- Gag Reel
The Pitch
It’s the 4th season of the show about geeky physicists (and one engineer) who eat Thai food, talk about comic books, and lust after Kara Thrace.
Juice? No thanks, I'm not thirsty.
The Humans
Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Kunal Nayyar, Simon Helberg
The Nutshell
The traditional premise of the show in which 4 nerdy friends, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) sit around and wax about Superman, Indiana Jones, and how many doctorates they have. The show is turned on its head by the expanding presence of its female cast (which includes Kaley Cuoco as Penny, Melissa Rauch as Bernadette, and Mayim Bialik as Amy Farrah Fowler) and what that entails for the guys. Which is a lot of awkwardness.
Behind them: angry Community fans.
The Lowdown
I have some strong feelings about this show, so I really hope this comes off more as DVD review and not slightly antagonistic editorial. But that might prove to be as shitty a pipe dream as Herman Cain’s planned ascent to the Presidency.
The Big Bang Theory is a funny show. It isn’t fall out of your seat or side-splitting funny, but it’s funny. But if you haven’t actively watched it, you might hate it.
Hot nerd-on-nerd action, just like you want it.
Why? Well, people tend to hate popular things just because they’re popular. We’re all guilty of it. It’s easy to hate The Kardashians (and Jonah Hill apparently really does) because it gets double or triple or probably quadruple the ratings that something like Breaking Bad does on a Sunday night. But all I can base that hate on is the fact that the Kardashians are talentless hacks and Breaking Bad is better than anything might ever be. I haven’t actually watched the show, but it stands to reason it’s absolutely horrible compared to Breaking Bad. And shouldn’t be compared ever, by anyone. But that’s not the point.
The point is, a lot of that hate for certain things comes from a realization that the thing that you love isn’t getting shown the proper attention by common people that it deserves. What do you have on a Thursday night? You have the ratings giant The Big Bang Theory on one channel, and the ratings-famished Community on the other. The common sentiment is that Community deserves the ratings that The Big Bang Theory gets because it’s smarter or edgier. But that’s really not true. Both are good shows. Both are worth your time. The Big Bang Theory and Community are not very different. They both involve a circle of friends (the term used very loosely in both shows) and there are a lot of geek culture references and cameos (LeVar Burton appears in both shows, for the love of God) and honestly, the difference between the two isn’t that big. But The Big Bang Theory is more accessible to the average television watcher, or as some might choose to say, it’s dumbed-down. Community has smarter references, I guess. Which makes the people who watch it, or any single-camera show like it, possess some sort of inflated sense of superiority. This is something I hate about the internet. Again, for the record, I haven’t seen a single episode of the new season of Big Bang but I’ve watched every episode of Community. I enjoy them both. Why can’t you? There’s room in my head for both.
I guess my extremely convoluted point (in what I thought was supposed to be a DVD review) is this: it’s called a DVR. Invest in one. You can watch both, and you don’t have to bash the show that gets great ratings in favor of the little guy who deserves better than what it gets. It’s just how you perceive it to be. We all have opinions, but calling The Big Bang Theory a piece of shit is pretty counter-productive in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t like it, that’s it. You don’t like it. But when you act like you’re above it because of what you watch, you just sound silly. It’s smartly-written and MIGHT rely on Sheldon and his eccentricities a little bit too much, but it’s a fine traditional sitcom. Along with all the convenient setups that plague pretty much every sitcom ever, there’s still many aspects to enjoy.
Face it: you've had sexual dreams like this.
This was a really good season. My favorite moment was probably when the guys arrived late to a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. After Will Wheaton (Sheldon’s arch-nemesis) and his friends are let in instead of Sheldon and the gang, Sheldon decides to steal the prints for the film from the projection room. A chase through the streets set to the Indiana Jones theme ensues. Also of note is the gang dressing up as the Justice League and winning the costume contest. Sheldon then daydreams that he’s The Flash and runs to the Grand Canyon to let out his anger at Leonard wanting to turn the thermostat in their apartment down, which of course goes against Sheldon’s heavily-detailed roommate agreement. The little quirks in Sheldon’s character are what makes Parsons’ performance so full of depth and he’s the best reason to watch this show.
Even after all that, I don’t really understand why certain people hate this show so much. It’s kind of baffling to me, actually. If only on the merits of Jim Parsons’ consistently hilarious and Emmy-deserving performance this show is worth your time. I’ve always enjoyed sitcoms, and in this relative golden era of single-camera sitcoms, the traditional studio or laugh-track sitcom may seem a bit dated. But jump off the bandwagon of hate and give the show a chance. I guarantee you watch and enjoy and offer a pass to a lot of unworthy stuff. I enjoy a wide variety of shows, moreso than most, and there’s always gonna be room for this show.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
The internet's collective head just exploded.
The Package
Not great. The gag reel is what you’d expect. There’s a Barenaked Ladies video for the theme song, and there’s an ongoing Q&A series where the actors ask each other questions about the show. The DVD should have at least had some commentaries on it, and with such a successful show it’s fairly inexcusable to not pack the DVD with extras.