‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’ creators break down that super-meta Season 1 finale, and promise more ‘Big Bang Theory’ cameos in Season 2
Thanks to its multiversal premise, the first season of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe truly went all over the place. But the season finale went somewhere unpredictable — to a multicam sitcom called… Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.
From the beginning, The Big Bang Theory spin-off has centered on comic book owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) as travels across various universes to help fix a big problem that began when a quantum interference device — created by Big Bang’s Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Howard (Simon Helberg) — apparently malfunctioned in Stuart’s presence. Helping Stuart in his quest is girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus), geologist friend Bert (Brian Posehn) and nonfriend Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie).
Each week, the quartet have traveled to a myriad places like a universe where magic rules; a universe where people believed in sharing everything (until our heroes taught them that selfishness rules); and a universe where humans are the descendants of cows, making grass-eating the norm. But things got even trippier in last week’s penultimate episode, "Spoiler: We Couldn’t Get Green Lantern," where Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke were trapped inside a comic book universe alongside DC Comics characters like The Flash and Mr. Freeze.
That leads directly into the Season 1 finale, "Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience," which takes place inside a multicam sitcom where our characters watch themselves being portrayed by actors in front of a live studio audience. Also, remember the "atom wipes" that would appear in between Big Bang Theory scenes? Those showed up, too.
Gold Derby broke down the super-meta finale with Stuart executive producers and creators Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady and Zak Penn, and also quizzed them about Season 2.
Gold Derby: If I were a fly on the wall when you were discussing the finale, what would I have heard?
Zak Penn: Part of it was that we needed to find a place to go that we hadn't gone yet — and also put ourselves in a corner.
Chuck Lorre: This might seem a little mundane, but the idea struck us as funny, so we committed to it for that simple reason. Before we wrote "Fade In," we all agreed, "This is funny; let's chase it and let's see what happens." The show is fundamentally a comedy so hopefully laughter might be part of the response.
Some specific questions about the finale: Why was Kyle (Ryan Cartwright) the one who explains everything at the top of the episode?
Penn: Why not?
Prady: When we got to the comic book episode, we learned that those versions of Trevor (Josh Brener) and Kyle seem to be working for the Adversary. That’s not to say that every version of them has been, but those versions did. So they’re the characters who know.
Penn: And Ryan is good at giving exposition.
Prady: We liked him giving the exposition and having him read it out of an origin story comic book.
Throughout the season, you were able to do so many different things in all the various universes. Did that help at all with going into the finale?
Lorre: This entire journey for us has been, "What's next? I don't know. What do you think is next?" We figured it out on the fly — we didn't really have a master plan.
Penn: Although with the last two episodes, we knew where we had come up with the things that we wanted to do, so we started writing toward it.
Prady: When we started talking about them being trapped in a comic book, we realized, "OK, they can be trapped in media. What if they're trapped in a sitcom?" I mean, it's an important distinction. This show they're trapped in isn't the same as the show you're watching, right? Because the show that they're trapped in is a multicam sitcom.
On CBS, I noticed.
Prady: On CBS.
When we pull back in the last seconds of the episode, you see Young Leonard and Two and a Half Women posters on the Warner Bros lot wall, so we know it’s not our universe.
Prady: If you had to guess, that it's pretty close to our universe! But yeah, it's off a smidge, right?
Looking at the comic book episode and the finale, were there rights issues in terms of getting the DC characters or The Big Bang Theory graphics?
Lorre: We had to work with DC on the Flash stuff, but they were great. Jim Lee [artist and DC’s CCO] was incredibly helpful and supportive of us, so that part of it was really fun.
Prady: It’s in the title of the episode, but the only thing is that we started with Green Lantern, and they said, "Green Lantern is not available." You can understand why.
Penn [to Lorre]: In terms of The Big Bang Theory stuff, though, I know someone pretty high up over there, so I just asked him. [Laughs]
Prady: But you know what? I never asked if they had to go find an old laptop to find the atom wipe.
Lorre: We wrote it in, but I don't know what was involved in getting it.
The Szechuan Palace, another great touchstone for Big Bang Theory fans, is a part of the finale. Wast there a lot of discussion about those nods to the original show?
Prady: When it comes to Szechuan Palace, your assumption is that we said, "Wouldn't it be cool if they ordered from the same place the guys on Big Bang Theory ordered from?" The reality is that's the name that comes to mind for a Chinese takeout place. It's the name that came to mind 20 years ago, and it's the name that came to mind last year.
Lorre: What he's saying is don't attribute intelligence to this process. It's that same neuron fired 20 years later.
But we did get another scene of people on a couch talking, which Chuck has said he’s been doing for 40 years.
Lorre: That's deliberate. One of the things I most love about the finale was that it felt very comforting, but also surreal when we heard audience laughter. I've been listening to an audience laugh now for 35 years. So when these characters start hearing laughter and can't figure out what's happening, that to me was worth everything. And the lighting changed because on a sitcom set everything's lit up like the sun; you're not setting up for each shot like you would on a single camera.
Prady: It's worth talking about what an amazing thing the crew did. The only way to do this was to build the set two times, because a multicam set is physically different from a single-cam set. On one stage we had the single-cam set of the comic book store we'd been using all season. Then they had to build the multicam version of the set, both the stockroom and the store proper, on the next stage. Then they had to make a fake multicam soundstage with bleachers, a fake sound booth and everything. And we also had to shoot the episode differently, because single-cam shows are different and we had to do multicam moves. The crew went over to the Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage soundstage to watch what a multicam stage looks like to duplicate everything.
Who was in the multicam audience?
Lorre: A couple hundred extras.
Prady: Mark Sweet was the warm-up guy; he also did The Big Bang Theory, and does Georgie and Mandy now.
Lorre: I go back with Mark 30 years, and he is the master of the live audience warm-up. He’s been doing the same act now for 100 years and puts it on each week, so we tried to incorporate a lot of his stuff into the show basically as an homage. He's just a wonderful guy.
Prady: And then another fun thing is, Big Bang did not have a laugh track — we used a live studio audience. During the Stuart finale episode, those laughs were from the Big Bang library.
The show was renewed for a second season last month, and Season 1 ends with the quartet walking off the Warner Bros. lot. So Season 2 could go anywhere.
Prady: When you say it could go anywhere, what are some examples of places it could go? And then in each of those examples, what would some of the different characters be doing?
Lorre: Let us know what you come up with. [Laughs] We're on our hands and knees walking through a dark room. That's how we're doing it; we just started thinking about writing.
It was fun to see so many Big Bang people return this season. Are you expecting to do more of the same for Season 2
Lorre: We're certainly going to try. It was fun for us, too. One of the premises of this thing from the very beginning was that the legacy actors from The Big Bang Theory could appear in some other incarnation and make it fun for them as well.
Prady: I enjoyed finding small parts and recurring those people as well, so we'll probably try to do that if we can.
Lorre: I think you can reasonably expect to see some of them and, perhaps, seeing Tommy Walker [who plays Gary] die a few more times.
Penn: Why not?
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The whole Green Lantern is not available for obvious reasons is still BS. I mean they used the GA Flash not Barry or Wally…so why was Alan Scott off limits??? He’s got absolutely no role or impact on the GL show. Hell he probably doesn’t even exist on that earth.