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"The Big Bang Theory" ranks highly as one of Chuck Lorre's greatest achievements. It's proven fertile ground for spin-offs, between "Young Sheldon," a coming of age affair, and "George & Mandy's First Marriage," a sequel to that prequel. But his latest attempt to milk that particular cow feels more ambitious given that track record.
"Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" is not titled hyperbolically. It is, for better and for worse, exactly what it says on the tin — a kaleidoscopic, sci-fi action comedy about "TBBT" comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) being tasked with preventing the end of all reality and not quite measuring up in that noble pursuit. Lorre, alongside co-creators Bill Prady and "The Last Action Hero" scribe Zak Penn, attempts to thread the needle between the multiversal genre-hopping that has become so central to the zeitgeist in the years since "Everything Everywhere All at Once" and the kind of "nerds from the mother ship" show who love to debate the intricacies of that type of world.
The result is a streaming experiment that tries to have it all, mashing up the shorter runtime and breezy structure of situational comedy with the spectacle and knotty mythology of bigger genres. It's an entertaining experiment to be sure — but it's not without its strengths and weaknesses.
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The Big Bang Theory, but bigger, badder, and they get to CUSS
In the opening moments of the pilot, we're introduced to a variant of the supporting players we know from "The Big Bang Theory." In this world, Stuart is still the owner of the Comic Center of Pasadena, and geologist Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn) is still a loyal customer, but everything surrounding the familiar set is in disarray. When Bert tries to haggle with Stuart for a copy of Batman #608, the first issue of Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's iconic "Hush" storyline, he does so with some lima beans instead of legal tender. There are zombies, giant killer moths, and a small wormhole in the store, the other end of which remains a mystery even to the customers who interact with it. This world is a haunting and fantastical mess until another Stuart from a neighboring timeline arrives, telling this Stuart that he's the only one who can set things right.
Along the way, the duo is joined by Denise (Lauren Lapkus) — in this timeline a former flame Stuart laments growing apart from — and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie), here an unlikely warlord who has found a way to use the current predicament to amass a modicum of power. Armed only with a device created by Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) they do not understand how to operate, Stuart and his rag tag crew end up hopping across the multiverse, trying to fulfill this alleged new destiny.
The show plays fast and loose with the rules and intricacies of this complicated new status quo, engaging in meta-textual banter about the predicaments the characters find themselves in, hand waving away logistical hurdles with jokes and references when necessary, or alternately making an earnest attempt at actual genre storytelling when it fits. It means the show can, in theory, go anywhere and do anything, but that even with that freedom, it's largely content to be a straightforward sitcom. The otherworldly environs and the crazy obstacles exist largely as fodder to liven up the same tried and true narrative structures the three-camera sitcom has relied upon for decades.
When it works, it livens up an otherwise staid approach to comedy and feels like a somewhat logical extension of the theoretical conversations about science that audiences are used to from "TBBT." However, this experimental approach has one clear drawback, one the creators are clearly aware of.
The second episode's title sequence has a joke embedded thanking the viewer for sticking around another week, but openly warning them that this new episode may be nothing like the one that made them tune back in. The overall quality careens wildly across the 10-episode season, with the heights and all their related surprises and excursions more than making up for some of the more inert adventures in between. But it's fascinating how much stylistic and thematic overlap this show has with a pair from another prolific showrunner.
Does Chuck Lorre want what Dan Harmon has?
In Season 6 of "The Big Bang Theory," Sheldon learns about processing loss when he finds out the SyFy Channel has canceled "Alphas," a real series that ended prematurely before the creators could bring it to a meaningful conclusion. Chuck Lorre was a big fan of the show in real life, which is how he and the show's creator Zak Penn began the collaboration that led to "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe." But that curious origin story calls to mind another meta-minded television comedy: NBC's "Community," which famously had a storyline in its second season about Abed (Danny Pudi) becoming obsessed with ABC's "Cougar Town," an ongoing bit that led to the actor making a cameo on the neighboring show.
In its best moments, the "Stuart Fails" approach feels a lot like the dedication "Community" would bring to its wildest genre outings, but Lorre and company do not plumb the depths of meta-commentary as deeply or as omnivorously as Dan Harmon and his creative team once did. That comparison might seem a little thin if it weren't for the fact that the later half of the season begins to develop more thematic and tonal overlap with another Harmon joint, the wildly popular animated series "Rick and Morty."
While Harmon has intricate and layered methodology for engaging with the emotional underpinnings beneath the characters' reality-hopping, "Stuart Fails" glosses over some of the absurdity and complications around a small group of people meeting doppelgängers and having relationships that cross between multiple versions of themselves. Obviously "Rick and Morty" had far more seasons to bear narrative fruit from these ideas than "Stuart Fails" does so far, but even on the micro, this show's episodes aren't constructed as densely as Harmon's shows.
"Stuart Fails" does go to some exciting and interesting places across its first season, but it's hard not to wonder what more could have been done with a longer season and less passive episodes. It's a fun show, to be sure, and its target audience will probably eat it up. I just hope it gets a longer shelf life where it can grow into the kind of ambitious effort it feels like it's close to becoming.
"Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" premieres on HBO Max on July 23.
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Read the original article on Looper.
