NewsQueryFU (NQFU)

Writer-producer Chuck Lorre named the nerdy heroes of his new sitcom Sheldon and Leonard, apparently in homage to Sheldon Leonard, the versatile writer, director and actor who played gangsterly types in such films as “Guys and Dolls” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” (he was the bartender) and produced such classic TV shows as Andy Griffith’s and Dick Van Dyke’s. Leonard, who died in 1997 at the age of 89, would probably appreciate the tribute, because “Big Bang” is the funniest new sitcom of the season.

Laugh-packed though the series pilot (tonight on CBS) is, the show also suffers from a kind of conceptual claustrophobia that could limit its appeal and its life span. Although the funky-clunky pairing of the two characters and the actors who play them is deft, the universe they inhabit is awfully narrow. It would be gratifying and certainly entertaining to see Lorre prove that theory wrong in the weeks and maybe months ahead.

Jim Parsons plays Sheldon, the spindly one, and Johnny Galecki plays Leonard, the stubby one. They share an apartment as well as a fondness for “Star Trek” and quantum mechanics, and they don’t finish each other’s sentences so much as supply each other’s punch lines. They are proud to announce they have “a combined IQ of 360″ and though Sheldon can lay claim to 212 friends on MySpace, Leonard points out that he has never met any of them.

Sheldon: “That’s the beauty of it!”

Into their Laurel-and-Hardy lives comes a tattered princess, the equivalent perhaps of the nutty heiress in old ’30s comedies: Kaley Cuoco as Penny, a shapely flake who moves into Apartment 413, next to the nerds’, upon ending an affair with a big bruiser across town, an oaf who kept her TV set. That little detail is the catalyst for what passes for a plot on the premiere: Sheldon and Leonard, understandably smitten to the point of digressing from their daily routines, go to Penny’s former apartment to retrieve the TV.

Leonard actually thinks he stands a chance with the newly descended goddess, and that leads to an exchange that was quoted all summer in promos for the show. Defending the possibility of a relationship with Penny, Leonard says that, after all, “I’m a male and she’s a female,” and Sheldon responds, “Yes, but of what species?”

Parsons as Sheldon has the more distinctive delivery and seems to get better dialogue, much of it in the non sequitur class: “I do yearn for faster downloads” and “A clean colon is one less thing to worry about.” Neither of these boys is good enough for Penny, but that gives the antics a tinge of poignancy and helps keep the show from being just a series of put-down jokes and wry, dry rejoinders.

Sheldon and Leonard aren’t really a Laurel and Hardy, come to think of it, but more of a Laurel and Laurel, at least in terms of physiognomy and tendency toward deadpan delivery. Whatever they are, they’re good at being it, and “Big Bang” should be able to fulfill its assignment: help keep the CBS viewers laughing for the first two hours of prime time on Mondays.

Considering the times in which we live, it’s not as small an accomplishment as it sounds.

Creating quality laughs for television isn’t rocket science, though it may benefit from some quantum physics. In the new CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory (premiering tonight at 8:30 pm/ET), Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons play Leonard and Sheldon, super-brilliant roommates who realize they don’t necessarily have all the answers when a bubbly blonde beauty named Penny (8 Simple Rules’ Kaley Cuoco) moves in across the hall. Complicating matters further will be the arrival of Galecki’s “former wife,” fellow Roseanne alum Sara Gilbert, as a geeky love interest. TVGuide.com asked Galecki if this Big Bang will create Monday-night sitcom success.

TVGuide.com: I said this the other day to [Big Bang cocreator] Chuck Lorre, but I don’t think he believed me: I was watching the pilot during my commute, and I had to turn the DVD player off because I was laughing so much.
Johnny Galecki: Oh, very cool!

TVGuide.com: The dialogue is funny, the situation is funny, the character types are funny….
Galecki: Yeah, I’m feeling very fortunate. I love this group of people. We’re having a fantastic time over there. They’ve really made having fun a priority, and I think that’s coming across.

TVGuide.com: Did you have any hesitations about playing such an utter geek who at times may end up getting pantsed by a bully?
Galecki: [Laughs] No, not at all. These characters have a real passion for physics and science and numbers, so much so that they love immersing themselves in that world. When you are like that, you can miss out on a lot of life experience, and I like the idea of my character wanting to change a little bit. He has this nagging feeling that maybe the rest of the world is having a fuller life than he is. That’s the great thing about doing a series, if you’re lucky enough for it to last, that you get to explore this individual in so many different environments and situations. I love that [Leonard and Sheldon] have this passion. That’s why they’re likable characters.

TVGuide.com: Is any small part of Leonard coming from a real part of you?
Galecki: Definitely. I was a huge theater geek growing up, and that was not the easiest thing in the world, especially growing up in Chicago, where sports are really the norm. I was always off to the theater at night, from 7 years old on. Friends there in the Midwest who could talk to you about the idiosyncrasies of Pippin were few and far between. [Laughs] That’s what I love about the script; it’s about feeling like an outsider and getting frustrated by being misunderstood.

TVGuide.com: Is it a bit like being an ER cast member, having to spout all that technical jargon and mumbo jumbo?
Galecki: A little bit. I hate admitting it, but that stuff isn’t easy. People always ask about learning all of your lines as an actor, and it’s generally the easiest part of the job. But to have this science jargon come out of your mouth and say it in the natural, casual way these guys would is not easy.

TVGuide.com: Does a sitcom vet like you still break or go up on a line?
Galecki: I try not to break. Kunal [Nayyar, who plays fourth-banana Rajesh] was saying the other day that he knows at this point that he can look to me when he starts to break and I’ll steel him up. But I’ve had to think of some horrible, dark and fiercely nasty things in those moments. [Laughs] We’re having so much fun, it’s hard not to break sometimes.

TVGuide.com: In the pilot, the elevator in the guys’ apartment building is out of order, forcing them to plod up the stairs. Why do I have the feeling it will never be fixed?
Galecki: You are a smarter man than I. I did not foresee that, but yes, it is still broken.

TVGuide.com: It would seem to allow for some fun walk-and-talk moments.
Galecki: It does…. Any movement like that adds a natural feeling to a scene, as opposed to just sitting down at a table full of props.

TVGuide.com: For instance, they have a funny debate during that first time up the stairs….
Galecki: Yeah, about if a stair is as little as 2 millimeters off, you’ll trip on it.

TVGuide.com: Sara Gilbert guesting as another potential love interest for Leonard — how did that come about? Whose idea was it?
Galecki: That was Chuck Lorre, initially.

TVGuide.com: All three of you date back to the Roseanne days….
Galecki: Yeah. We had talked about another actress because Sara had just had a baby, but she decided she could do it. She jumped at it, and I’m actually on my way to rehearsal with her right now.

TVGuide.com: What’s her character like?
Galecki: She plays Leslie Winkle, a lab/work partner of Leonard’s, which I love because you can see another side of him. Versus dealing with Penny, where there’s so much fumbling, this is his work environment where the hallways are lined with accolades and he’s a bit of a rock star. Having Sara there, there’s an immediate comfort and confidence…. We had a blast.

TVGuide.com: What else can you tease about the first episodes?
Galecki: It’s great watching the different characters interact. It feels like the writers are moving our characters around like chess pieces: “Let’s put these two together, let’s put these together now…. ” I’ve never seen a group of five characters have such different results when you mix them up. My character and Sara’s character, the flirtation there, that sort of redefines how Penny sees Leonard. Like, “Hmmm, wait a minute now…. ”

TVGuide.com: What sort of prior dating history has Leonard enjoyed?
Galecki: I think there’s not much of one! He’s entirely thrown by Sara’s character. They come from the same world and speak the same language — science and physics — so there’s fun interplay. It drives us to get away from our Roseanne characters.

TVGuide.com: No Darlene-David in-jokes between you two?
Galecki: No. No, no, no. If it was just that, it’d be gimmicky. [Another Roseanne alum, Laurie Metcalf, guests on a later episode.] The truth is, [Sara and Laurie] are just so talented and life is too short to not work with people you can learn from and love spending time with.

TVGuide.com: So, how long until we get the “extreme makeover” episode where Penny gives the guys some fashion tips?
Galecki: [Laughs] That’s not a bad idea.

TVGuide.com: It could be like Homer Simpson, where as soon as he shaves, it grows right back. She could style them up and….
Galecki: [Laughs] They slowly unravel, yeah. Somehow that Prada suit just starts looking rough.

You have no doubt read about CBS’s desire to create “buzz” this fall. This week we get a few examples of what ol’ Tiffany’s definition of buzzworthy, cutting-edge programming happens to be. But Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre’s new comedy, “The Big Bang Theory,” does not belong in that number.

“Big Bang Theory” airs Mondays at 8:30 on CBS (KIRO/7), and it’s exactly what you’d expect from the network’s Monday night comedy block. That is to say, it does the job it’s supposed to do, which is to make you laugh without using any tricks or flashy premises.

If you’re in the habit of spending your Monday nights with CBS’s efficient comedies, the brainy banter in “Big Bang Theory,” delivered with the speed and precision of a coked-up kingpin firing his favorite automatic weapon, will suit you just fine.

But this sitcom probably won’t make other people go looking for it except in times of need, which is fine. In the same way “Two and a Half Men” is easy to drop in on every so often because it can always be relied upon for a laugh, “Big Bang Theory” looks like it’ll grow into a solid occasional diversion for the rest of us.

Truly Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) are a comedy duo for the Microsoft age, physicists and geniuses in a world that seems to be getting dumber and more difficult to navigate with each passing day. The appearance of a new neighbor named Penny (Kaley Cuoco), who happens to be hot, friendly and considerably dimmer than Leonard and Sheldon, upsets the delicate biosphere they’ve created in their apartment.

Sheldon attempts to keep Leonard tethered to reality, reminding his pal at every opportunity the producers can shove in there that Penny is and never will be a realistic romantic option. But their wingmen, Howard (Simon Helberg) and Rajesh (Kunal Nayyar), give him hope. Howard awkwardly hits on Penny at every turn, making Leonard look like a veritable Romeo, while Rajesh can’t even bring himself to look at her.

Within minutes of meeting the guys, this waitress at the Cheesecake Factory (writing a screenplay about … take a wild guess!) is asking them if she can shower in their apartment, giving them an opportunity to see her in nothing but a towel. This is after an awkward trip to a sperm bank for geniuses that, glory be, sets up this fantabulous exchange.

Penny: “So, what do you guys do for fun around here?”

Sheldon: “Well, today we tried masturbating for money.”

Wow! Not only are the characters geniuses, so is the level of creativity that goes into the script!

Granted, don’t expect things from “Big Bang Theory” and you’ll enjoy it. This is a comedy that does what it’s supposed to do, which is to make you smile and giggle at the appropriate points. Be that as it may, the pilot never ascends beyond the level of being cute and nice.

Maybe that’s enough for you. There’s something to be said for easy laughter on a Monday night. Still, you also may wish the writers spread the jokes around more evenly, perhaps giving Cuoco a little more to do than smile sweetly and look confused when the guys start talking about alternate universes and using strange terms such as “parallax distortion.”

The setup is so simple that The WB has already done it’s take on it — geeks meet beauty, touching off inadvertently comical situations (except, of course, that in this case they’re meticulously planned and intentional) and a period of emotional growth. Lorre once and again demonstrates his talent for loading his script with withering one-liners, usually delivered by Sheldon.

Parsons plays his part to deadpan perfection, always ready with the perfect ka-BOOM smackdown to dash the hopes of Leonard, the more optimistic of the two. Leonard is a single guy who just wants to have a life outside of his small circle of Klingon Boggle champions, whereas Sheldon, more than being resigned to his fate, embraces it.

His combination of anal retentiveness and bitterness carries the show. However, that’s quite a load for one actor to shoulder in what is supposed to be an ensemble comedy. One also wishes there was more kindness in the show, both to Cuoco’s character and to these guys. The geniuses never flog Penny with their intellect, but neither does she give them much in the way of proof that anything substantial percolates beneath that kind veneer.

Provided the ratings aren’t too terribly shabby (they’d have to be worse than “The Class,” which crawled through an entire season before getting axed), CBS is likely to give “Big Bang Theory” and its producers time to perfect the formula. And while it’s unlikely to be a great leap forward for the sitcom genre, odds are it’ll keep the Monday night block chugging along.