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The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom serve as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro. All three also serve as head writers.
The show premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007. The twelfth and final season which will run through 2018–19 premiered on September 24, 2018, consisting of 24 episodes.
The show originally centered on five characters living in Pasadena, California: Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, both physicists at Caltech, who share an apartment; Penny, a waitress
and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon's similarly geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali. Over time,
supporting characters have been promoted to starring roles including: physicist Leslie Winkle, neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, microbiologist Bernadette Rostenkowski, and Stuart Bloom,
the cash-strapped owner of the comic book store the characters often visit. The show is filmed in front of a live audience and is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Chuck Lorre Productions.
The Big Bang Theory received mixed reviews from critics throughout its first season, but reception was more favorable in the second and third seasons. Later seasons saw a return to a lukewarm reception,
with the show being criticized for a decline in comedic quality. Despite the mixed reviews, seven seasons of the show have ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; ultimately reaching the no.
1 spot in its eleventh season. The show was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series from 2011 to 2014 and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series four times for Jim Parsons.
It has so far won 7 Emmy Awards from 46 nominations. Parsons also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Comedy Series in 2011. The series has so far won 56 awards from 216 nominations.
It has also spawned a prequel series in 2017 based on Parsons' character, Sheldon Cooper, named Young Sheldon, which originally aired on CBS.
Production
 [^]  The show's pilot episode premiered on September 24, 2007. This was the second pilot produced for the show. A different pilot was produced for the 2006–07 television season, but never aired.
The structure of the original unaired pilot was substantially different from the series' current form. The only characters retained in both pilots were Leonard and Sheldon, who are named after Sheldon Leonard,
a longtime figure in episodic television as producer, director and actor. Althea was a minor character that appeared in both pilots.
The first pilot included two female lead characters who were not used in the second pilot. The characters were Canadian actress Amanda Walsh as Katie, "a street-hardened, tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior,"
and Iris Bahr as Gilda, a scientist colleague and friend of the male characters. Sheldon and Leonard meet Katie after she breaks up with a boyfriend and they invite her to share their apartment.
Gilda is threatened by Katie's presence. Test audiences reacted negatively to Katie, but they liked Sheldon and Leonard. The original pilot used Thomas Dolby's hit "She Blinded Me with Science" as its theme song.
Although the original pilot was not picked up, its creators were given an opportunity to retool it and produce a second pilot. They brought in the remaining cast and retooled the show to its final format.
Katie was replaced by Penny. The original unaired pilot never has officially been released, but it has circulated on the Internet. On the evolution of the show, Chuck Lorre said, "We did the 'Big Bang Pilot' about two
and a half years ago, and it sucked. but there were two remarkable things that worked perfectly, and that was Johnny and Jim. We rewrote the thing entirely and then we were blessed with Kaley and Simon and Kunal."
As to whether the world will ever see the original pilot on a future DVD release, Lorre said, "Wow, that would be something. We will see. Show your failures." The first
and second pilots of The Big Bang Theory were directed by James Burrows, who did not continue with the show. The reworked second pilot led to a 13-episode order by CBS on May 14, 2007. Prior to its airing on CBS,
the pilot episode was distributed on iTunes free of charge. The show premiered on September 24, 2007, and was picked up for a full 22-episode season on October 19, 2007. The show is filmed in front of a live audience,
and is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Chuck Lorre Productions. Production was halted on November 6, 2007, due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Nearly three months later, on February 4, 2008,
the series was temporarily replaced by a short-lived sitcom, Welcome to The Captain. The series returned on March 17, 2008, in an earlier time slot and ultimately only 17 episodes were produced for the first season.
After the strike ended, the show was picked up for a second season, airing in the 2008–2009 season, premiering in the same time slot on September 22, 2008. With increasing ratings,
the show received a two-year renewal through the 2010–11 season in 2009. In 2011, the show was picked up for three more seasons. In March 2014, the show was renewed again for three more years through the 2016–17 season.
This marks the second time the series has gained a three-year renewal. In March 2017, the series was renewed for two additional seasons, bringing its total to 12, and running through the 2018–19 television season.
David Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, checks scripts and provides dialogue, mathematics equations, and diagrams used as props.
According to executive producer/co-creator Bill Prady, "We're working on giving Sheldon an actual problem that he's going to be working on throughout the [first] season so there's actual progress to the boards..
We worked hard to get all the science right." Several of the actors in The Big Bang Theory previously worked together on the sitcom Roseanne, including Johnny Galecki, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, and Meagen Fay.
Additionally, Lorre was a writer on the series for several seasons.
Theme song
 [^]  The Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies wrote and recorded the show's theme song, which describes the history and formation of the universe and the Earth. Co-lead singer Ed Robertson was asked by Lorre
and Prady to write a theme song for the show after the producers attended one of the band's concerts in Los Angeles. By coincidence, Robertson had recently read Simon Singh's book Big Bang,
and at the concert improvised a freestyle rap about the origins of the universe. Lorre and Prady phoned him shortly thereafter and asked him to write the theme song. Having been asked to write songs for other films
and shows, but ending up being rejected, because producers favored songs by other artists, Robertson agreed to write the theme only after learning that Lorre and Prady had not asked anyone else. On October 9, 2007,
a full-length version of the song was released commercially. Although some unofficial pages identify the song title as "History of Everything,"
the cover art for the single identifies the title as "Big Bang Theory Theme." A music video also was released via special features on The Complete Fourth Season DVD and Blu-ray set.
The theme was included on the band's greatest hits album, Hits from Yesterday & the Day Before, released on September 27, 2011. In September 2015,
TMZ uncovered court documents showing that Steven Page sued former bandmate Robertson over the song, alleging that he was promised 20% of the proceeds, but that Robertson has kept that money entirely for himself.
Actors' salaries
For the first three seasons, Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco, the three main stars of the show, received at most $60,000 per episode. The salary for the three went up to $200,000 per episode for the fourth season.
Their per-episode pay went up an additional $50,000 in each of the following three seasons, culminating in $350,000 per episode in the seventh season. In September 2013, Bialik
and Rauch renegotiated the contracts they held since they were introduced to the series in 2010. On their old contracts, each was making $20,000–$30,000 per episode, while the new contracts doubled that,
beginning at $60,000 per episode, increasing steadily to $100,000 per episode by the end of the contract, as well as adding another year for both. By season seven, Galecki, Parsons,
and Cuoco were also receiving 0.25% of the series' back-end money. Before production began on the eighth season, the three plus Helberg and Nayyar, looked to renegotiate new contracts, with Galecki, Parsons,
and Cuoco seeking around $1 million per episode, as well as more back-end money. Contracts were signed in the beginning of August 2014, giving the three principal actors an estimated $1 million per episode for three years,
with the possibility to extend for a fourth year. The deals also include larger pieces of the show, signing bonuses, production deals, and advances towards the back-end. Helberg
and Nayyar were also able to renegotiate their contracts, giving them a per-episode pay in the "mid-six-figure range", up from around $100,000 per episode they each received in years prior. The duo,
who were looking to have salary parity with Parsons, Galecki, and Cuoco, signed their contracts after the studio
and producers threatened to write the characters out of the series if a deal could not be reached before the start of production on season eight. By season 10, Helberg
and Nayyar reached the $1 million per episode parity with Parsons, Galecki, and Cuoco, due to a clause in their deals signed in 2014. In March 2017, the main cast members took a 10% pay cut to allow Bialik
and Rauch an increase in their earnings. This put Galecki, Parsons, Cuoco, Helberg and Nayyar at $900,000 per episode, with Parsons, Galecki, and Helberg also receiving overall deals with Warner Bros. Television.
By the end of April, Bialik and Rauch had signed deals to earn $500,000 per episode, each, with the deals also including a separate development component for both actors.
The deal was an increase from the $175,000 – $200,000 the duo had been making per episode.
Scientist cameos
As the theme of the show revolves around science, many distinguished and high-profile scientists have appeared as guest stars on the show. Famous astrophysicist
and Nobel laureate George Smoot had a cameo appearance in the second season. Theoretical physicist Brian Greene appeared in the fourth season, as well as astrophysicist, science populizer,
and physics outreach specialist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking made a short guest appearance in the fifth-season episode; in the eighth season, Hawking video conferences with Sheldon and Leonard,
and makes another appearance in the 200th episode. In the fifth and sixth seasons, NASA astronaut Michael J. Massimino played himself multiple times in the role of Howard's fellow astronaut. Bill Nye appeared in the seventh
and twelfth seasons.
Science
Much of the series focuses on science, particularly physics. The four main male characters are employed at Caltech and have science-related occupations, as do Bernadette and Amy.
The characters frequently banter about scientific theories or news, and make science-related jokes. Science has also interfered with the characters' romantic lives.
Leslie breaks up with Leonard when he sides with Sheldon in his support for string theory rather than loop quantum gravity. When Leonard joins Sheldon, Raj, and Howard on a three-month Arctic research trip,
it separates Leonard and Penny at a time when their relationship is budding. When Bernadette takes an interest in Leonard's work, it makes both Penny and Howard envious and results in Howard confronting Leonard,
and Penny asking Sheldon to teach her physics. Sheldon and Amy also briefly end their relationship after an argument over which of their fields is superior. David Saltzberg, who has a Ph.D. in physics,
has served as the science consultant for the show for six seasons and attends every taping. While Saltzberg knows physics, he sometimes needs assistance from Mayim Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
Saltzberg sees early versions of scripts which need scientific information added to them, and he also points out where the writers, despite their knowledge of science, have made a mistake.
He is usually not needed during a taping unless a lot of science, and especially the whiteboard, is involved.
Science fiction media
 [^]  The four main male characters are all avid science fiction, fantasy, and comic book fans and memorabilia collectors. Star Trek in particular is frequently referenced
and Sheldon identifies strongly with the character of Spock, so much so that when he is given a used napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy as a Christmas gift from Penny he is overwhelmed with excitement and gratitude.
Star Trek: The Original Series cast member George Takei has made a cameo, and Leonard Nimoy made a cameo as the voice of Sheldon's vintage Mr. Spock action figure. Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members Brent Spiner
and LeVar Burton have had cameos as themselves, while Wil Wheaton has a recurring role as a fictionalized version of himself. They are also fans of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who.
In the episode "The Ornithophobia Diffusion", when there is a delay in watching Star Wars on Blu-ray, Howard complains, "If we don't start soon, George Lucas is going to change it again" and in "The Hot Troll Deviation",
Katee Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica appeared as Howard's fantasy dream girl. The characters have different tastes in franchises with Sheldon praising Firefly, but disapproving of Leonard's enjoyment of Babylon 5.
With regard to fantasy, the four make frequent references to The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels and movies. Additionally, Howard can speak Sindarin, one of the two Elvish languages from The Lord of the Rings.
Wednesday night is the group's designated "comic book night", because that is the day of the week when new comic books are released. The comic book store is run by fellow geek and recurring character Stuart.
On a number of occasions, the group members have dressed up as pop culture characters, including The Flash, Aquaman, Frodo Baggins, Superman, Batman, Spock, The Doctor, Green Lantern, and Thor.
As a consequence of losing a bet to Stuart and Wil Wheaton, the group members are forced to visit the comic book store dressed as Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Supergirl. DC Comics announced that,
to promote its comics, the company will sponsor Sheldon wearing Green Lantern T-shirts. Various games have been featured, as well as referenced, on the series, including fictional games like Mystic Warlords of Ka'a
and Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.
Leonard and Penny's relationship
One of the recurring plot lines is the relationship between Leonard and Penny. Leonard becomes attracted to Penny in the pilot episode and his need to do favors for her is a frequent point of humor in the first season.
Meanwhile, Penny dates a series of muscular, attractive, unintelligent, and insensitive jocks.
Their first long-term relationship begins when Leonard returns from a three-month expedition to the North Pole in the season 3 premiere. However, when Leonard tells Penny that he loves her,
she realizes she cannot say it back. Both Leonard and Penny go on to date other people; most notably with Leonard dating Raj's sister Priya for much of season 4.
This relationship is jeopardized when Leonard comes to falsely believe that Raj has slept with Penny, and ultimately ends when Priya sleeps with a former boyfriend in "The Good Guy Fluctuation". Penny,
who admits to missing Leonard in "The Roommate Transmogrification", accepts his request to renew their relationship in "The Beta Test Initiation". After Penny suggests having sex in "The Launch Acceleration",
Leonard breaks the mood by proposing to her. Penny says "no", but does not break up with him. She stops a proposal a second time in "The Tangible Affection Proof". In the sixth-season episode, "The 43 Peculiarity",
Penny finally tells Leonard that she loves him. Although they both feel jealousy when the other receives significant attention from the opposite sex,
Penny is secure enough in their relationship to send him off on an exciting four-month expedition without worrying in "The Bon Voyage Reaction". After Leonard returns, their relationship blossoms over the seventh season.
In the penultimate episode "The Gorilla Dissolution", Penny admits that they should marry and when Leonard realizes that she is serious, he proposes with a ring that he had been saving for years. Leonard
and Penny decide to elope to Las Vegas in the season 8 finale, but beforehand, wanting no secrets, Leonard admits to kissing another woman, Mandy Chow while on an expedition on the North Sea. Despite this, Leonard
and Penny finally elope in the season 9 premiere.
Sheldon and Amy's relationship
In the third-season finale, Raj and Howard search for a woman compatible with Sheldon and discover neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler. Like him, she has a history of social ineptitude
and participates in online dating only to fulfill an agreement with her mother. This spawns a storyline in which Sheldon and Amy communicate daily while insisting to Leonard
and Penny that they are not romantically involved. In "The Agreement Dissection", Sheldon and Amy talk in her apartment after a night of dancing and she kisses him on the lips. Instead of getting annoyed,
Sheldon says "fascinating" and later asks Amy to be his girlfriend in "The Flaming Spittoon Acquisition". The same night he draws up "The Relationship Agreement" to verify the ground rules of him as her boyfriend
and vice versa. Amy agrees, but later regrets not having had a lawyer read through it. In the episode "The Launch Acceleration", Amy tries to use her "neurobiology bag of tricks"
to increase the attraction between herself and Sheldon. In the final fifth-season episode "The Countdown Reflection", Sheldon takes Amy's hand as Howard is launched into space.
In the sixth season first episode "The Date Night Variable", after a dinner in which Sheldon fails to live up to this expectation,
Amy gives Sheldon an ultimatum that their relationship is over unless he tells her something from his heart. Amy accepts Sheldon's romantic speech even after learning that it is a line from the first Spider-Man movie.
In "The Cooper/Kripke Inversion" Sheldon states that he has been working on his discomfort about physical contact and admits that "it's a possibility" that he could one day have sex with Amy.
Amy is revealed to have similar feelings in "The Love Spell Potential". Sheldon explains that he never thought about intimacy with anyone before Amy. "The Locomotive Manipulation"
is the first episode in which Sheldon initiates a kiss with Amy. Although initially done in a fit of sarcasm, he discovers that he enjoys the feeling. Consequently,
Sheldon slowly starts to open up over the rest of the season, and starts a more intimate relationship with Amy. However, in the season finale, Sheldon leaves temporarily to cope with several changes
and Amy becomes distraught. However, in "The Prom Equivalency", he hides in his room to avoid going to a mock prom reenactment with her. In the resulting stand-off, Amy is about to confess that she loves Sheldon,
but he surprises her by saying that he loves her too. This prompts Amy to have a panic attack. In the season eight finale, Sheldon and Amy get into a fight about commitment on their fifth anniversary.
Amy tells Sheldon that she needs to think about the future of their relationship, unaware that Sheldon was about to propose to her.
Season nine sees Sheldon harassing Amy about making up her mind until she breaks up with him. Both struggle with singlehood and trying to be friends for the next few weeks until they reunite in episode ten
and have sex for the first time on Amy's birthday. In the season eleven premiere, Sheldon proposes to Amy and she accepts. The two get married in the eleventh season finale.
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