Chapter 255: Chapter 254: The Big Bang Theory

Now, in the 2003-2004 fall prime-time schedule, the six major public channels each have different sitcoms.

At the eight o’clock and nine o’clock slots, on Monday CBS had “Yes, Dear” Season 4 (last week’s ratings rank 41), “Still Standing” Season 2 (29), “Everybody Loves Raymond” Season 8 (13), and “Two and a Half Men” Season 1 (16). These four series all share a common theme and content related to families, with child characters, and conflicts in education and values creating humor and meaning. This is now CBS’s steadfast style. On another “Sitcom Broadcast Day,” Wednesday, they also had “The King of Queens” Season 6 (34), telling the story of a blue-collar couple of delivery workers; “Becker” Season 6 (47), depicting the pessimistic doctor John Becker in his small clinic and the interesting world of his patients and colleagues.

Several series only occupy mid-tier positions, while the ace “Raymond” encountered a flood of negative reviews, with adult viewers rapidly leaving, indicating the next season would have to wrap things up; and the highly anticipated “Two and a Half Men” was still too immature, facing a strong enemy in “Prison Break”… CBS wanted to get Wang Yang’s new show! To replace the ace position of “Raymond” and uphold the demand for laughter on the channel.

“Everybody knows that Wang Yang is going to produce a sitcom.” In the CBS Entertainment meeting room, Nancy Tellem’s face was as serious as water, looking at the quietly nodding subordinates on both sides, she said, “The end of ‘Friends’ is a great opportunity for every sitcom on television. Who will become the new king? NBC? CBS? Without Wang Yang, I believe ‘Two and a Half Men’ would become NO.1, but now he’s joined the game!”

She paused and spread her hands, a hint of helplessness flashing in her eyes as she spoke sternly, “We have reason to look down on his drama series, but not his sitcoms, but now! There’s no reason at all. This young man has the ability to make people laugh till their stomachs hurt, this young man knows best what young people want, and this young man has two Oscars for the youngest winners, perhaps soon an Emmy too. I’m saying this because everyone must take it seriously!”

Watching her tap on the conference table, program manager Caleb Dier and others nodded, “Yes!” Nancy Tellem also nodded, her voice calm yet forceful, “Exaggeratingly speaking, whichever network gets him would increase their chances of becoming NO.1 by 50%, who knows if he might suddenly decide to join a variety show? This time we must take it seriously, we absolutely cannot let him slip away.”

On Tuesday, ABC had “8 Simple Rules” Season 2 (42), “I and Her” Season 1 (67), “According to Jim” Season 3 (48), and “Not Perfect” Season 2 (60); on Wednesday they had “My Wife and Kids” Season 4 (60) and “It’s All Relative” Season 1 (69); on Friday they had “George Lopez” Season 3 (75), “Married-to-the-Kellys” Season 1 (89), “Hope & Faith” Season 1 (63), and “Living with Bonnie” Season 2 (77).

Among these ten series, the themes include family, work, love, kinship, friendship… The problem is, even though there are many, none of them really stand out. Just look at the number of series that are in their first or second seasons to see that they just keep trying and trying, praying for a big hit. But the harsh reality is that almost all are flops, and then they ruthlessly cancel the worst ones and try again next season.

So now, among the three major channels, no one is more eager than ABC to get that new show, in order to revitalize their slump in sitcoms.

“Guys, if you still don’t get it, let me put it this way.” In the ABC Entertainment meeting room, filled with executives on both sides of the conference table, CEO Robert Iger, dressed in a black suit, wore a troubled look. With both dramas and sitcoms almost at the bottom, the parent company Disney was already dissatisfied with ABC’s performance, with rumors of a high-level reorganization on the horizon.

Anne Sweeney might be assuming the role of president of the television group. What about his position as president of entertainment? Would that woman replace him or keep him? He needed a tangible success.

Thinking about this, Robert Iger spoke deliberately, “We must get Wang Yang, we must get that sitcom! This is our last chance. If anyone wishes to be fired, just keep not caring!” He looked at his grave-looking subordinates and said, “Wang Yang’s attitude is ambiguous; he wants others to join the competition. Maybe in the end, we still might lose to NBC, but do we not go for it? Do we?!”

What is Wang Yang? Ratings.

Apart from the quality of the show itself, as a producer, he also has ample ability to invite many A-list stars for guest appearances, especially those extremely popular young stars that the youth adore! This is indeed a great method for a sitcom to spike its ratings. Someone like Wang Yang, writing his own scripts and producing, with excellent connections and popularity, could easily feature a big star in every episode if he wished.

Robert Iger casually thought of a few names, like his fiancée Jessica Alba or Rachel McAdams, Anne Hathaway, “Gilmore Girls” Alexis Braidel, “Juno” Natalie Portman, Tom Welling, young Robert Downey Jr., “The Hangover’s” Zach Galifianakis, and more… And don’t forget about Wang Yang himself. Who wouldn’t agree to spend a day filming an episode of a sitcom directed by a super famous director?

Worried about guest-starring in a flop? Worried about no room to perform? What a funny joke!

“We join in, and we still have a chance to win.” Feeling the pressure weighing him down, Robert Iger said somberly, “Remember, this is our last chance!”

The comedy leader of today’s NBC has on Tuesday the first season of “Whoopi” (72), the first season of “Happy Family” (74), the final season of “Happy Family Fun” (27), the second season of “Good Morning, Miami” (65); on Thursday the tenth season of “Friends” (3), the third season of “Scrubs” (31), the sixth season of “Will & Grace” (15), and the first season of the US version of “Coupling” (26).

Next season, having lost “Friends” and “Happy Family Fun,” their gap with CBS may suddenly become negligible, even weaker than their rival. And this season’s new shows are all underperforming, with the two on Tuesday almost certain to be axed.

How do they deal with Wang Yang’s new show? Kevin Reilly told everyone in the NBC Entertainment division that they were determined to have it! If you want to be promoted, if you want a higher bonus, you have to hold on tight to that young man!

Armed with the classic long-running animated sitcom “The Simpsons” (32), but with almost all live-action comedies ranked beyond 100 in viewership and doing terribly, FOX; and even more confused UPN and WB, ranked outside 150, also drooled over Wang Yang and wished they could snatch him away. Yet on the other hand, they knew they didn’t have much to attract him and that it seemed unrealistic to compete with the three major networks. Just try their luck!

With just a single blog post stating “will produce after 20 million viewers,” an unnamed, content-less, unplanned sitcom has sparked a storm at the entertainment department meetings of the major TV networks on Monday, with everyone preparing for battle, an unprecedented sense of urgency in the air. After all, even Steven Spielberg had experienced commercial failures, while Wang Yang had not.

“YES!! Great news, Yang is really going to produce a sitcom!!”

In the women’s dormitory of the University of San Francisco, Evelyn, staring at the computer screen displaying a new blog post from Wang Yang that had just been updated, excitedly reads out, “See you on TV next September! Promised!” Her shouts immediately drew in her roommates, Sophia and Lillian, who had not gone out, and their faces lit up with surprise, “A sitcom!” “I’ve been looking forward to this day since ‘Juno’!”

“Another must-watch show next season, how busy!” Evelyn says while leaving a comment on the blog post, typing on the keyboard with a joyful smile, “What do you think the show will be about?” Sophia, walking away with a magazine, answers, “I don’t know, isn’t Yang about to marry Jessica? Could it be about newlyweds, families, neighbors?” Evelyn shakes her head slightly, “That’d be too cliché, are you sure you’re talking about Yang? I’m sure it’s not that.”

Lillian, contemplating the screen, speculates, “Uh, could it be an adaptation of ‘Juno’? Or the life of MIT students, maybe USC, USF…” She shrugs, “But no matter what, it’s bound to be funny! I don’t care much about the genre, I’m already looking forward to it, who will act in it? And who will make guest appearances? I want to see Yang at 8 PM…”

Evelyn, looking at her dreamy face, suddenly feels she has a point, “Could it be smart like ‘BlackJack,’ ‘Prison Break’? But how can a sitcom be smart?”

“Evelyn, you might as well stop watching,” Sophia, sitting down on the sofa, teases, “I’ve never seen someone laugh at TV like that! That was ‘The Eight Simple Rules,’ so crappy! I don’t know what you’d be like watching Wang Yang’s show.” Evelyn hits ENTER and says with a laugh, “I might get asthma.” Lillian asks in confusion, “You have asthma?” Evelyn replies, “I’ll have it when I laugh.”

In the nightfall of Los Angeles, inside the bright study, after updating his blog with an announcement post, Wang Yang starts to ponder the details of the sitcom, the immense expectations of the fans in his blog for next September… He supports his chin with his right hand and picks up a soldier model from the desk with his left, recently missing his collected soldiers from home in San Francisco due to ‘Firefly,’ so he had some shipped over.

Once married next year, all those models and everything else will have to be moved into the new home.

Spinning the WWII soldier in his hand, Wang Yang gradually becomes engrossed in thinking about that idea, and the future sitcom. This idea, or rather inspiration, interest, was sparked while filming “MIT-21-TEAM.” University of Southern California wouldn’t replace its school’s name with numbers, but MIT would substitute anything with numbers if possible, which was indeed intriguing.

They could also make balloon bombs to prank Harvard, or build remote control cars, or count cards…

The reason why others find these things interesting, cool, is because they yearn for them; these are abilities uncommon to ordinary people, the abilities of the intelligent, the genius, and humanity always respects and aspires to the powerful.

In fact, other schools also have their unique school spirits, their uncommon abilities, and perceptions. For example, the film school is all about movies and TV, medical school is about medicine, law school is about law, but these professions of doctors and lawyers are too common, too ordinary. ‘My son is a doctor, her daughter is a teacher, his son is an athlete’ … no novelty, no mystery!

Thus, for these themed sitcoms to offer fresh surprises and find unused material in the nearly exhausted pile of jokes isn’t impossible, but it’s certainly more difficult.

However, those quirky science students at MIT and CIT, that group known as “smart people,” “high IQs,” “scientists,” “geniuses,” had yet to be touched by a sitcom! From “Threesome,” “Friends,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and so on, past and present sitcoms on the screen have mainly focused on the lives of ordinary people, common professions; in contrast, “geniuses” are shrouded in mystery, novelty, fun, and coolness.

“MIT-21-TEAM” showcased the math geniuses on the big screen once; so how to make these science students land on the small screen in a sitcom focused on daily life?

This isn’t a youth campus drama—it’s a comedy meant to make audiences burst into laughter. “21” tried every trick in the book to be cool because it had to be; the same goes for the thrilling “Prison Break.” But to make others laugh, you need to provoke the audience’s unconscious sense of superiority. In other words, characters in the show need to act foolish and embarrass themselves. How could a group of highly intelligent geniuses continuously do that? In a sitcom, they just would.

Actually, the path forward from here is quite straightforward—just follow the usual sitcom character-setting methods, which is to make them “mad.” They act nothing like normal people, with a lot of exaggerated personality traits, just like the six quirky characters in “Friends.”

Without a doubt, “idiots with brains” is a novel theme. There’s nothing rotten in its pile of jokes, and it should be the trend of the times. A few years later, the comedy market on screens finally remembered this group, giving birth to the British show “The IT Crowd” (2006) about “IT geniuses,” and the “science geniuses” of “The Big Bang Theory” (2007), which handled the scientists’ “stupidity” by turning them all into geeks, or rather, nerds.

Comic book fans, sci-fi enthusiasts, not good at socializing…

“Ha!” Wang Yang couldn’t help but chuckle as he played with the toy soldier in his hands, making “whoosh whoosh whoosh” sounds. There it was! He was reminded of the Comic Con scene in San Diego in July, where those fans dressed in superhero costumes, like on Halloween, yet those people were very chatty.

One could say he himself was quite a geek, having collected various models, comic books, movie props, and other items from a young age that were not much fewer than “Sheldon’s.” At the same time, he was “half a game fan.” Why only half? Because he wouldn’t let himself become too obsessed with gaming; he enjoyed playing video games but could easily neglect sleep and meals if he immersed himself too deeply. However, he had long since strictly controlled his gaming time, enjoying it healthily.

For the past couple of years, “Spark” Game Company had been making some casual small games, the profits of which maintained the company’s expenses without much notable success.

In any case, this group of geniuses needed to be eccentric weirdoes, and “Jin” from “The IT Crowd” and “Penny” from “The Big Bang Theory” were the normals, thereby highlighting their weirdness and contrasting it with the lives and wisdom of ordinary people; and Penny also highlighted the high IQ of the smart people, creating a hilarious chemical reaction.

Of course, British and American dramas differ greatly in their storytelling forms and styles. “The IT Crowd” was all madcap, whether it was the plot or the shooting techniques, which were pure nonsense. For example, in the first season’s sixth episode, Jen got her “monthly visitor,” and she was transformed into a red-haired demon in the office, a type of special effect. This technique was also used in the fourth season’s eleventh episode of “The Big Bang Theory”: Sheldon imagined himself as the Flash, racing through his mind.

Now he wanted to tackle this “idiot with brains” theme, with the idea to collaborate with the original writer and director of “The IT Crowd,” Graham Linehan, as well as the original creative team of “The Big Bang Theory,” plus recruit some top talents to form a “new” “The Big Bang Theory” crew to create a seasonal sitcom debut that was absolutely mature, absolutely hilarious from the outset!

Given the market’s and audience’s keen attention to him and the big-money promotions, “The Big Bang Theory” following in the footsteps of “Friends” should be no problem.

All the problems lay in how to create this first season? The viewership of the original “The Big Bang Theory” first season wasn’t high, airing on CBS Monday at 8:30 PM, averaging only 8.31 million viewers, ranking 68th for the year. There might have been many external factors, but undoubtedly the series itself had many flaws. It wasn’t until the third season that its pace, story, and dialogue truly matured, and viewership soared to 14th for the year.

One of the biggest problems of the first season was imbalance—in character dialogue, character screen time, the proportion of scenes between life and CIT. Consequently, Penny’s character lacked explosive energy; at the same time, the details of the story lacked dramatic interest. Often, an entire episode would consist of Sheldon and Leonard talking to each other, repeating the same joke. What joke? Translating everyday conversation into scientific terms, which seemed like common sense to them but were mysterious and fascinating to the audience.

It’s a “circle culture”, unique to every society, with their own newly created language and humor. For instance, those in filmmaking talk about montages, saying things like “you’re so topsy-turvy montage”; basketball players can say “you’re like an air ball, nothing at all.” And “The Big Bang Theory” is about different academic knowledge and jargon—string theory, dark matter, free-electron lasers…

From the first season to the fifth, this joke kept repeating, repeating, repeating in the script, yet it still held a lot of fun. After reaching maturity, there were even more laughs to be had, perhaps that’s the charm of science.

With this theme, it was inevitable that those who liked it would be die-hard fans, while those who hated it would strongly dislike such a sitcom too.

But without a doubt, the newly created first season would immediately achieve the balance of “liked by the majority.” He planned to absorb the funniest episodes close to the 2003 environment from the five seasons; there were also some new event ideas, such as Sheldon and the others watching “MIT-21-TEAM” afterward, believing themselves to be smarter than anyone else, they took on the challenge of card counting. Once they practiced and perfected it, they went together to try it out at the casino, which led to all sorts of hilarious situations.

These bridge episodes, after being refined and arranged by the new writing team and infused with some British drama story details and parody thinking, are bound to kill the fans with laughter!

However, Wang Yang furrowed his brows in doubt, what kind of Chinese genius scientist character could be added? He wanted a Chinese face to appear in the popular sitcoms on the screen, which was an important step in changing the market and the viewers; but he didn’t simply want to change the skin color of a character, turning a Jewish person into a Chinese person, or an Indian into a Chinese person, and then “translate” the dialogue all over again.

That would be pure foolishness. After scanning the five seasons in his mind, Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj were all very mature characters to him; there was no need for further groping and experimenting. If it were a main character, the group of four could simply become a group of five. For a supporting role, a colleague from CIT would do, both options offered more room for plots and combinations of humor.

“Let’s play a game for a bit, it’s been days since the last time.” After thinking for a long time and coming up with various jumbled ideas, Wang Yang suddenly rubbed his hands together and chuckled, grasping the mouse and clicking on an icon on the desktop, opening “Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne”. The latest expansion pack of The Frozen Throne had been on the market for over two months, yet he hadn’t played it much and wasn’t fully clear on what was new.

Dada dada dada…

In the spacious and bright bedroom, a laptop was placed on the desk, and a network cable extended into the wall, connecting steadily and speedily to the online world. Wearing checkered pajamas, Wang Yang sat cross-legged at the head of the bed, staring attentively at the screen and swiftly moving his hands on the mouse and keyboard; Jessica, wearing a blue pajama with a big-mouthed monkey pattern, sat next to him. Following the sound effects of the game, she ordered, “Next, summon the Tauren Chieftain.”

“Roger-that, summoned,” Wang Yang clicked several times on the town center, and heard the hero’s spawning sound “I need a sharp axe to grind!” coming from the laptop, then diverted back to clearing the monsters with his troops. Under his influence, Jessica was also a loyal gamer, and whenever they played “Warcraft III” together, unless it was for combat, it was usually him, with his faster hands, who controlled the keyboard and mouse, while she played the role of the strategist.

“Oh my God! This jerk, daring to raid us.” Seeing an enemy undead player’s force coming to fight for the monsters, Jessica suddenly shouted, eyes slightly widened, pointing at the screen and said, “Attack them, attack them! Kill them all!”

Wang Yang gritted his teeth and uttered an “OK,” then frantically clicked away, controlling the Prophet’s two wolves and several orc footmen; Jessica, nervously rubbing his head, imitated the hero’s attack sound effects and shouted, “Spirits of the earth and storm, attack! Charge! Charge!”

“Yes!” Having successfully wiped out the undead force that came to raid, the two high-fived and shared a quick kiss. Before they had even settled down for two seconds, Jessica screamed again, “Someone’s harassing us, teleport back to town!” Wang Yang nodded, “Right, Tauren Chieftain!”

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