The Big Bang Theory is one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, but the show isn't perfect.
Over the course of nearly 300 episodes, writers sometimes forgot plot points and actors
occasionally lost touch with their characters. Here are the goofs that are hardest to overlook.
Sheldon Cooper is a creature of habit. Perhaps because he is a
scientist striving to find meaning and order in a chaotic universe,
he exerts control over nearly every part of his life. This manifests in his strict dinner schedule
and his "spot." It's well understood among his social circle that no one is to sit on
the far right end of the brown couch in the apartment's living room, except Sheldon.
"Hello, Penny."
"Hello, Sheldon."
"You're in my spot."
He has called that comfortable and familiar spot a, quote, "single point of consistency"
in a world in flux, upon which he has placed "eternal dibs," in part because it has a good
angle of the TV and never gets too hot or too cold. On the prequel show Young Sheldon,
young Sheldon has a similar spot of preference in his school cafeteria.
Nevertheless, The Big Bang Theory's directors sometimes forget about this major element of
Sheldon's character, and allow other people to sit in the hallowed spot,
even while Sheldon is in the room. It's weird that someone so adamant about his seat on the
couch doesn't notice or mind when Howard or Leonard occupies it, but hey — that's TV for you.
Sheldon Cooper's strict approach to the calendar applies to everything from meal
planning to his leisure activities. Early in the show, it's established that Sheldon and
the guys have a weekly standing date to play the video game Halo every Wednesday night.
Penny hits Sheldon and Leonard's apartment during one session and mentions that Christy,
her friend from back home in Nebraska, showed up uninvited and is staying at
her apartment. Upon hearing that Christy is promiscuous, Howard flees the game and goes
across the hall to proposition her, and the two wind up using Penny's bedroom to hook up.
"Well, um, Howard and Christy are kind of hooking up in my bedroom."
Penny, with nowhere to sleep that night, crashes on the couch in Sheldon and Leonard's place.
That's all well and good until the next morning, when a robe-clad
Sheldon is mad that a sleeping Penny has interrupted his Saturday morning tradition
of watching Doctor Who. Either The Big Bang Theory writers goofed up and forgot that the
previous evening was Wednesday, or Penny slept continuously from Halo Night to Saturday morning.
Roommate disputes are voluminous and varied on The Big Bang Theory, especially between precise
Sheldon and exasperated Leonard. As a preemptive measure — and to make sure his home life strictly
adheres to his tastes in every way — Sheldon draws up a lengthy and elaborate "Roommate Agreement."
Its existence is referred to often, as are its comically numerous articles, riders, and clauses.
One aspect of the agreement, a "girlfriend clause" is especially ridiculous. Per Sheldon's legalese,
any relevant woman is considered to be cohabiting with Leonard and Sheldon and
is subject to all the rules and costs of such if she stays over for 10 straight nights,
more than nine total nights over three weeks, plus all the weekends of a month, plus three weekdays.
Even though this Roommate Agreement gets brought up throughout The Big Bang Theory,
Leonard violates the "girlfriend clause" with regularity and there's little to no
fallout. All of Leonard's female romantic partners stay over, and stay over often,
including Stephanie, Priya, and Penny, with little incident.
For the first few seasons of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper loves cats,
but in a strictly theoretical sense, as he's allergic. Several times, Sheldon insists that
Penny sing his favorite childhood song in order to soothe and relax him in times of physical or
emotional duress: "Soft Kitty," which is about how a kitty is soft, warm, covered in fur, happy,
sleepy, and likes to purr. In The Fuzzy Boots Corollary, the third episode of the entire show,
Leonard considers compensating for the lack of a romantic relationship in his life by getting
a cat, assuring an extremely worried Sheldon that the latter's medical sensitivities won't
come in to play, because he's going to buy a genetically-modified hypoallergenic cat.
"Oh, I hope that scratching post is for you."
But three years later, in the fourth season episode The Zazzy Substitution,
it's Sheldon who gets a cat to deal with the loneliness he's enduring after breaking off
his romance with Amy Farrah-Fowler. Worried that the first cat, named Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer,
after the famous scientist, is lonely, Sheldon adopts more cats, all of them named after great
men of science, all except for Zazzles, who is a decidedly "zazzy" little fellow. Bringing home so
many cats is a sign of an emotional breakdown for Sheldon, but it doesn't trigger a physical
one — he doesn't exhibit a single symptom of his previously explained cat allergy.
"Now if you'll excuse me, the father of the atomic bomb wants a saucer of milk."
While Howard Wolowitz is often mocked by Sheldon Cooper for not having a PhD — he
holds a mere master's degree in aerospace engineering from MIT — he achieves something
that no other character on the show does: He goes to space. In a plot arc spanning seasons
five and six of the show, Howard is selected to travel to the International Space Station
alongside two other astronauts. Heading to space has its ups and downs for the goofy
Howard, but it's ultimately a rewarding experience he appreciates — which is good,
because in real life, someone like him would likely never make it to the ISS.
In a real-life space training program, he would have been weeded out and disqualified in any
number of ways, such as when he has trouble navigating NASA 's flight-preparation system.
"They do it over and over again, no matter how many times you throw up."
Neither would he pass the physical, what with his genetic predisposition
to heart problems and severe asthma both putting him out of the running.
Sitcoms are decidedly unrealistic, and The Big Bang Theory is no exception. It seems
unlikely that a bunch of thoughtful, intelligent people with active social lives would hang around
someone as mean, controlling, and judgmental as Sheldon Cooper for more than a dozen years.
But it's downright illogical that someone like Penny would live next door to Sheldon
and Leonard in the first place. Seriously, the entire premise of the show – guy falls
in love with attractive neighbor — is built on an economic fallacy.
When the show begins in 2007, Sheldon and Leonard have been roommates for years,
both contributing to the rent on their spacious Pasadena apartment with the salaries they earn as
doctorate-holding, high-level scientific researchers at the prestigious California
Institute of Technology. According to Forbes, each character would be pulling in at least $100,000
a year, more than enough to afford half of an apartment in expensive Pasadena. And yet
Penny moves into the same building, right across the hall. Granted,
her digs feature just one bedroom, so it would cost a little less than the guys' pad,
but it doesn't seem possible that she'd be able to afford similar accommodations as two
well-compensated scientists on the stingy salary of a Cheesecake Factory waitress.
Sheldon Cooper isn't like most people. A super-genius who attended high school as
a little boy and graduated college by the time he was 14, he's always had a hard time relating
to people his own age. Moreover, he operates from such a staunchly logical and scientific
mindset that he fails to grasp emotionally-driven behaviors or subtle nuances in conversations,
particularly sarcasm. When he senses that someone is being sarcastic, he has to receive confirmation
of it – Leonard even resorts to holding up a sign that reads "sarcasm" when its use is appropriate.
"What's funny?"
"That wasn't sarcasm?"
Despite Sheldon's complex relationship with sarcasm, however, he's still a character in a
broad sitcom, and sitcom characters are the most naturally sarcastic people in all of fiction.
Within that segment, Sheldon Cooper is arguably one of the most acerbic, sneering, and, yes,
sarcastic individuals to ever grace a TV screen. He doesn't understand sarcasm,
apparently, but he employs it all the time.
This one is such a glaring discrepancy that it's really just better to let it go entirely.
"You know how you're always trying to learn about sarcasm?"
"No."
"No?"
"I was being sarcastic."
While all four male main characters and their partners on The Big Bang Theory gather most
nights for takeout dinner at the big apartment, the guys all work together at the California
Institute of Technology, and as such also get together seemingly every workday for
lunch in the school's cafeteria. This means there's a lot of eating on the
show – and pretending to consume food on stage or screen is an acting challenge unto itself.
The performers don't actually eat the various sandwiches and salads on offer in the CalTech
lunchroom. Instead, the actors just move their forks and knives around to mimic the
process of dining, without placing the prop food into their mouths. They're remarkably
bad at pulling this off convincingly, and once you see it, it's hard to miss.
There exists a small pantheon of heard-but-not-seen characters from
across TV history, and Howard's mother, Mrs. Wolowitz, is a prime example. In
what amounts to a running gag, the show strongly establishes that Mrs. Wolowitz is morbidly obese,
so large, in fact, that no actress could play her. But every so often,
an episode gives viewers more of Mrs. Wolowitz than just her screaming at her son
in an exaggerated New Jersey accent — and it always conflicts with her allegedly huge size.
At one point, she wraps her arms around Raj, and while they're the only part
of Mrs. Wolowitz on camera, they are the limbs of an average-sized woman.
"Where ya going?"
When Howard marries Bernadette in a rooftop ceremony before he goes into space,
the mother of the groom is seen in an overhead shot of the affair.
Standing off to the side in a pink dress, Mrs. Wolowitz doesn't seem to be all that heavyset.
Perhaps it's because an occasional but major role on the most popular sitcom on TV pays well.
Perhaps it's because celebrity stunt casting is fun for a show's cast, crew, and fans.
Whatever the reason, The Big Bang Theory had lots of fun casting well-known performers
to play the parents of its regular characters. The Good Wife and The Good Fight star Christine
Baranski appeared on The Big Bang Theory 16 times as Leonard's mother, Beverly Hofstadter,
a world-renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist. The first time she shows up, in the 2009 episode
The Maternal Capacitance, she analyzes Penny and helps her work through her parental issues.
At one point, Penny tells Beverly about her childhood, referring to her father as "Bob."
"I mean, my mom could have just said, 'Bob! Get over it. She's a girl. Move on."
A year and a half later, Oscar-winner Keith Carradine made his first of
five appearances on The Big Bang Theory as Penny's stern,
protective father. But he introduces himself not as Bob, but as Wyatt.
"Thanks for the steak, Wyatt."
Penny's father apparently has two first names? Regardless,
like Penny, his last name is never revealed.
The Big Bang Theory is a show about scientists, but not so much a show about
science. While it's understood that most of the main characters work to unlock the secrets of
the universe in some way or another, the show doesn't bog itself down with anything more than
the occasional mention of a famous scientist. As a result, The Big Bang Theory rarely shows
the guys doing any real science work. When they conduct experiments, they're fun things
that make for good television, despite being completely and woefully scientifically inaccurate.
In The Vengeance Formulation, co-worker Barry Kripke pranks Sheldon before an NPR
interview by pumping his office full of helium. The intended effect:
Sheldon's voice goes hilariously high-pitched.
"As I was saying, an ordinary magnet has two poles."
The real-life effect: Sheldon would have suffocated to death with so much helium
replacing life-giving oxygen. As for Leonard, one of his job perks is getting to use a giant laser
for science stuff. A real university's laser would have numerous safety protocols in place,
such as the device not functioning if the door to the laser room was open.
And yet when Leonard uses his laser, he carelessly leaves the door ajar, and he wears no safety
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