my big bang theory

I had the most surreal evening I’ve had in a long, long time. And I think that’s saying a lot. I’m really tired and, like the real person that I am, have to get up to go to work tomorrow, so I will try and make sure this isn’t a surreal experience for you too.

My friend Nick works at Warner Brothers (no, he cannot get you a meeting or a screen test) and got tickets to the taping of the second episode ever (the first being the pilot) of a new sitcom called “The Big Bang Theory” from the same creators of “Two and a Half Men.” Here is the premise: Leonard (Johnny Galecki of “Rosanne” fame) and Sheldon are two brilliant, but very nerdy and socially awkward, physics PhDs at CalTech. Then a gorgeous, ditzy girl moves in next door and teaches the two guys lots of lessons about life and love. Hilarity ensues.

This should be enough build up to either make you gag or laugh, and gag was my initial impulse, but I’ve never been to a sitcom taping (unless you count watching the entire series of “The Comeback” – a must Netflix if you haven’t seen it!) and thought, hey, sounds like a fun time. So Nick and I camped out (sort of literally) for almost two hours before they let us into the studio, and then waited another hour. It was a lot of waiting, and about 100 degrees outside and 50 degrees inside (Nick made me take a sweatshirt, and while it looked utterly ridiculous while we were waiting, it was a mechiah inside). And very LA.

They played the pilot for us while we were waiting, and while it wasn’t amazing television, it was actually pretty clever. The actor who played Sheldon was the actor who played Tim in “Garden State” (the knight who was dating Peter Saarsgaard’s mom), and he was fantastic. Johnny Galecki was good, appropriately nerdy. The other two guy friends were very good (one sleezy-stereotype and the other Indian-sterotype), and the girl, Penny, was pretty good. The science jokes were funny (I’m a bit of a nerd myself) and well timed.

But the act of watching a sitcom being filmed was so weird. The episodes, sans commercials, run about 22 minutes, and it was the longest 22 minutes of my life. About 3+ hours long. They film it chronologically, in order, “like a play” they said. Except a play doesn’t stop and start as they move scenes around the set, and reshoot, and wait for actors to flub their lines. I could sort of see the live action, but sometimes the screen felt too boring. There was a lot of waiting and repetition. It was often frustrating. And really hard to force myself to laugh the third time when the joke wasn’t funny the first time. It was like being in the television show. I was creating the laughter. I was the laughter. Ha ha.

Then there’s a host who’s supposed to keep the audience entertained and happy (except the seats were horribly uncomfortable and I was sitting next to this HUGE man who oscillated between pushing me into Nick and my chair), but that’s a big joke (no pun intended). His name was Mark, and he was like William Holden on crack. He wasn’t very funny, and when he was funny, he got his laughs by poking fun of the people in the audience. It was kind of game showesuqe; he tried to give away $20 (seriously; it’s not a lot of money but people did some crazy shit) with dancing contests, laughing contests, farm animal noise making contests, a blind-dating game, a singing contest, really stupid people participating in stupider magic tricks. And then he made fun of a lot of old people. It was somewhat pathetic, slightly funny, but mainly just weird.

Today at TIOH we had a disaster and emergency preparedness lecture (it was on PowerPoint and boring and I took a brief nap in the middle), and one of the things he focused on was earthquake preparedness, because that’s the most likely disaster to strike our school. All through the taping I looked up at the ceiling, and the vast web of cables and monitors and booms and beams, and then realized there was no good place to duck and cover (the chairs were about 10 inches by 10 inches), and then kept thinking that this would be the worst possible place to be in an earthquake. If it happened, we would all be dead. Or seriously maimed.

While we were walking out of the lot, we walked past the soundstage of “New Adventures of Old Christine” and saw Julia Louis-Dreyfuss herself load up her lime green New Bug and then drive off the lot. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss! Celeb sightings at 10PM on the WB lot are always good, bizarre way to end an evening.

And now, I've seen a sitcom being filmed. I am done with LA. Goodbye, nurse!