The Big Bang Theory - Revenge of the Nerds!
CBS Watch! Magazine|April 2016

​The Big Bang Theory more than proves its point.

Shawna Malcom
The Big Bang Theory - Revenge of the Nerds!

ORIGINALLY, THE BIG BANG THEORY didn’t explode so much as implode. The comedy’s pilot didn’t make CBS’ 2006 schedule, despite being co-created by Chuck Lorre, the uber-producer who’d handed the network a hit with Two and a Half Men. The producers then retooled the sitcom about socially awkward Caltech geniuses and the lovable waitress who puts up with them, and it managed to land a spot on the next year’s lineup…only to be hit, along with the rest of Hollywood, by the 2007 writers strike. With production promptly shut down, and only a handful of episodes hitting the air, it wasn’t certain that Big Bang would live up to its name.

Then came an unexpected twist. “Because of the strike, CBS didn’t have new shows to air,” remembers executive producer and showrunner Steve Molaro, “so they just repeated the episodes we’d made, and the show started to take.”

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