A multiverse apocalypse is complicated enough on its own. The good news for new fans is simple. You do not need to remember twelve seasons of The Big Bang Theory to follow Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.
The new HBO Max comedy stars Stuart Bloom, the perpetually put-upon owner of the Pasadena comic book store. This time he gets an adventure several sizes larger than anything the original sitcom threw at him.
The setup is simple enough. Stuart accidentally spawns a new multiverse. Now he has to track down a quantum-interference device and put reality back the way he found it. Big ask for a man who could barely keep his store open. He was also, at one point, mistaken for dead while sunbathing.
And longtime viewers are not the only ones getting an invitation.
New fans are welcome in Stuart’s multiverse
Speaking to television critics at a press conference, Bill Prady got the obvious question. Do you need to know The Big Bang Theory going in?
Prady, who co-created the original with Chuck Lorre, said the team clocked early that the answer was no. The characters, in his words, introduce themselves.
The series establishes who everyone is and what they are doing almost immediately. It also lays out why they have been sent off on this mission. There is no tangle of old sitcom continuity to unravel first. As Prady put it, “The show starts with a mission,” with a character arriving to send Stuart off.
That lets the show run on two tracks at once. Newcomers meet Stuart and get his flavor of anxious energy within a scene or two. Fans get the added layer of recognizing the guy once mistaken for dead while sunbathing, now somehow responsible for the multiverse.
Everyone else figures out the truth quickly. Stuart is not the obvious first pick to save reality. The title, to be fair, warns you.
No Big Bang Theory knowledge required for new fans
Knowing the original may deepen certain jokes, cameos and relationships. It is pointedly not a prerequisite for laughing.
That distinction matters, because this is not another cozy workplace comedy set behind the register. The show fires Stuart into a much weirder universe of alternate realities, end-of-everything stakes and off-model versions of familiar faces.
Viewers who recognize those faces will bring years of history along with them. Everyone else can simply enjoy watching a spectacularly unqualified comic shop owner try to reverse a multiversal catastrophe.
Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre offer a simple test
Lorre found an even cleaner way to explain why none of this requires homework, and it doubles as a pitch to new fans.
The veteran producer, also behind Two and a Half Men and Mom, pointed to one gloriously stupid image from the series. His argument was that a functioning comic bookstore inside a post-apocalyptic nightmare is funny whether or not you watched the original.
He is not wrong. A comic book store outlasting the collapse of civilization lands regardless of how much Stuart trivia you carry.
If anything, viewers who remember his years of business misery might be more shocked that the store survived than that a multiverse exists at all.
That puts the exact phrase in the one major section that was running without it, which should even out the distribution meter.
Stuart finally gets his mission
For years, Stuart hovered close enough to the main group to tag along on their adventures and far enough outside it to keep getting reminded he was not really one of them.
Now the entire universe is his problem.
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe gives longtime viewers their familiar faces and inside jokes without shutting the door on anyone new. Knowing his backstory may make the disaster funnier, but the only briefing you actually need is printed on the title card.
Stuart has to save the universe. It probably will not go well.
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is now streaming on HBO Max.
You May Also Like:
