Ending With A Bang

Ending With A Bang

By Jonathan Aquino

Saturday Stories

May 25, 2019

I

I have always loved "The Big Bang Theory" because it is very super smart. It is on my top favorite American sitcoms along with "Frasier" and "Friends." It just ended like "Game of Thrones" and "Avengers," and since I started on a new work schedule that I've requested, it feels like the end of an era. I learned from Sheldon that 73 is the perfect number because 73's mirror is 37, and 37 is the 12th prime number, and 12's mirror is 21, and 21 is the product of 7 and 3, and the 21st prime number is 73. If you convert 73 to binary numbers, it is 1001001 which is also the same if you read it backwards. That was during episode 73. Then Raj said that when you type 5,318,008 on a calculator and turn it upside down, it spells "Boobies."

II

One of my favorite scenes is when Sheldon met Stephen Hawking. Another is when Penny gave Sheldon a gift, a signed napkin, and Sheldon almost fainted as he read: "To Sheldon ... Live long and prosper ... Leonard Nimoy." Another is the four of them had a flat. Leonard was trying to change the tire and he was tapping it in a certain rhythm, and Howard and Raj began to sing the opening of "We Will Rock You" in time to the beat. Then they were very shocked when Sheldon also began to sing: "Buddy, you're a young man, hard man, shouting in the street, gonna take on the world someday ... You got mud on your face ... you big disgrace ... waving your banner all over the place..."

III

I got a copy of the original script for the pilot episode by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. It begins in a fertility clinic, and Sheldon just finished a deposit at the sperm bank while Leonard was in the waiting room. But in the TV series, they came in and asked if it was the place where smart people can donate, and the receptionist said if they had to ask that, they are in the wrong place. Then they left when Sheldon felt some moral quandary. He said: "I couldn't stop thinking we were committing fraud. Some poor woman is going to pin her hopes on my sperm. What if she winds up with a toddler who doesn't know if he should use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve?"

IV

And of course, I also like the opening theme – "Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state ... then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait ... the earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool, Neanderthals developed tools, we built a wall ... we built the pyramids ... math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries that all started with the Big Bang!"

Photo courtesy of PristineAuction