At least so far, it's turning out that "The Big Bang Theory" holds up to repeat viewings remarkably well

Sorry for the commercial, but it's the price we pay for access to an official CBS clip. For that matter, we have to make do with a really limited selection of clips. I couldn't find one with Sheldon's mother, but this scene between physicist-roommates Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) isn't bad.

SHELDON: Hard as this may be to believe, it's possible that I am not boyfriend material.
LEONARD: Glad I was sitting down for that.

by Ken

What I was hoping to be able to put at the top of this post was a clip from one of the precious episodes of The Big Bang Theory featuring the wonderful Laurie Metcalf as the Texas Christian (and I don't mean the university) mother of Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), who appears most often in response to phone pleas from Sheldon's roommate, Dr. Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki). I happen to have been lucky enough to see several recently, and as I expected, I could watch them over and over again. (Here's a clip you can watch onsite.

LEONARD [opening the apartment door to MRS. COOPER]: Hi, Mrs. Cooper, thanks for coming.
MRS. COOPER [entering]: Where is he?
LEONARD: He's in his bedroom.
MRS. COOPER [walking toward the bedroom, then setting her purse carry bag and turning toward LEONARD]: Now when you said on the phone he broke up with a girl, you meant an actual girl, not somethin' you kids whipped up in the lab.
LEONARD: She's real.
MRS. COOPER [as they walk toward SHELDON's bedroom]: Did they sin?
LEONARD: No. No, it's not like that. It's, uh . . . I don't know what it's like. [They round the corner in the hallway.] There is something I should prepare you for.
MRS. COOPER: Oh, relax, Leonard, I have raised that boy. Why, I've seen him at his best, I've seen him at his worst. There's nothing he can do that'll surprise me.
LEONARD [turning to knock on the bedroom door]: Hold onto that thought.

But it turns out that Mary is not so much surprised as astonished to find her boy sitting in the middle of his bed surrounded by a roomful of cats -- a room apparently pungent with the attendant odors.

Of course it wasn't entirely by luck that I managed to catch those episodes in such a short period of time. With, apparently, new syndication deals in place, The Big Bang Theory is all over the dial, or rather the cable roster. TBS alone seems to be programming about 60 hours' worth it a week, and in New York we get it on both our Murdoch-owned channels 5 and 9.

It's been an interesting test for me, because I did't have much experience of multiple viewings of Big Bang Theory episodes, a crucial test -- for me at least -- for a show's durability. I think I've seen all of the episodes in first run, except maybe for an occasional missed one. Probably I've seen a number of episodes a second time, but not that many, and very few more than once. So far I'm finding that the show, about four well-employed scientific whizzes in their late 20s who remain the easily ostracizable nerds they grew up as.

Since it's the craziness of Sheldon (Jim Parsons) that keeps the whole shebang in motion, the big question in my mind was how bearable it would be in heavy repeat doses, and so far I'm finding that thanks to the combination of writing and acting, that craziness is so intricately and intriguingly detailed that it holds up remarkably well and provides plenty of bounce-off opportunities Leonard, fellow physicist Raj Koothrappali (whose perennially scowling parents, played by Brian George and Alice Amter, back home in India, appear frequently enough on Raj's laptop to qualify as semi-regulars), and mere engineer (without even a doctorate!) Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) -- whom collectively Howard's still-unseen but loudly heard mother would describe as his "little friends." And of course there's Sheldon and Leonard's neighbor, waitress-slash-would-be-actress Penny (Kaley Cuoco). (Series co-creator Chuck Lorre has explained that the naming of Sheldon and Leonard wasn't at all coincidental, but in fact pays tribute to that giant of the American sitcom, producer Sheldon Leonard.)

And I'm finding those many opportunities welcome for just having the show on in the background. In fact, I often wish I were paying closer attention, as when I realized that I had stumbled on the episodes in which the gangs' lives came to include Sheldon's, well, not girlfriend, but anyways the girl alluded to in the above scene, Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) and then Howard's actual girlfriend, Bernadette (Melissa Rauch). I must have seen both those episodes originally, but of course having no idea at the time that these young women would actually remain in the boys' lives -- and it is hard not to think of them as "boys" -- I clearly didn't pay enough attention at the time. Similarly, it was different re-viewing the episode in which rumor has it that Howard is actually going to propose to Bernadette. Knowing how that plotline plays out made for a markedly different experience.

At first I found the show something of a guilty pleasure, thinking it was kind of easy fun to ridicule the nerdy overgrown boys. I watched it anyway, though. Gradually it came to seem to me that the show is remarkably fair to both the "boys" and the people whose lives intersect with theirs. We all have our strengths and, er, limitations, after all. I know that sounds kind of lame, and surely wouldn't induce anyone who isn't a regular viewer of the show to give it a shot. It's not as if the show is wanting for viewers, though. I just worry that there are a lot of people who might be crazy about who haven't been exposed.

There's certainly no lack of opportunity now!

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