It was sweet and small and kind of perfect.
#Big bang theory season 2 episode 23 series#
The thing that struck me most about these final episodes was how simple and humble it felt, and maybe that’s because I, like so many of us, have been trained to expect series finales to be some big, epic, sweeping summation of all that’s come before.
The Big Bang Theory is an old-fashioned show, and its commitment to that alienated a lot of its core fans over the years. In the end, the show’s failure and its triumph was refusing to change with the times and continuing to draw huge ratings long after we were all supposed to be engaging with ‘empty’ sitcoms and static narratives. Guff about the showrunners wanting to ‘honour’ this relationship by having them spawn is nonsense. Let’s say it loud for people in the back – accidental pregnancies don’t have to result in babies for women who truly don’t wish to be mothers. It wasn’t about what Leonard, or her father, wanted. It smacks of the writers not agreeing on the story they had told earlier this season, in which she decided for herself that she didn’t want kids. Penny being pregnant is a massive insult to her character, and doesn’t play at all well considering the current news cycle. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty to get annoyed about in this finale alone. The show was born in a landscape where the network was king and streaming not yet a serious competitor, and also at a time when female scientists, ‘quirky’ people like Sheldon and, hell, Indian people outside of The Simpson s‘ Apu, weren’t really on television. That may ensure a future omission from the cultural canon, but I’m not sure it should. The Big Bang Theory never really cared what nerds thought of it because they had a mainstream audience.
#Big bang theory season 2 episode 23 tv#
It may not be discussed on the internet in the same way, but 18 million people tuned into this single episode of TV on Thursday night. With all the talk of the monoculture disappearing in a post- Game Of Thrones, post- Avengers: Endgame world, we also have to acknowledge that The Big Bang Theory was part of that too. It’s not just the actors or even just the writers, but the hundreds of people that make a massive endeavour like this run week to week.
Taken as a whole, no matter its overall failings (a lot of which I’m sure will be discussed in the comments), it’s problematic elements and its ultimate failure to own up to any of it, the fact remains that a lot of people worked really hard on this thing for much longer than most of us stay in a single job. It zeroes in on the core four (with Howard, Bernadette and Raj as back-up) and gives them the episodic equivalent of a long, warm hug. It doesn’t create needless drama or focus on characters we don’t care about. It’s nice in a really unfussy way and does a few things we rarely get to see in the cut-throat era of peak TV. Aside from one obvious flip-flop I’ll get into in a moment, I can’t imagine any former or current Big Bang Theory fan being upset by this finale.
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