I was a casual viewer of "The Big Bang Theory" for years, but never got invested enough to catch up on any of the episodes I missed or check out any of the earlier spinoff shows. However, "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" was such a weird prospect that I had to give this thing a look. After all, I was paying for the HBO Max subscription anyway.
So, the guy who owned the comic book store in "The Big Bang Theory," Stuart (Kevin Sussman), is positioned as the star, joined by his assistant manager and ex-girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus), and two CalTech academics, Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn) and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie). All four end up on a universe-hopping adventure together, thanks to a device that Sheldon and Leonard from "The Big Bang Theory" purportedly created. A push of a button allows them to bounce from universe to universe, which is very handy in the first episode, since our heroes start out in an apocalyptic version of Pasadena and need a way out.
I've watched five episodes so far, and the show is not very good. Creator Chuck Lorre and his longtime collaborator Bill Prady are joined by Zak Penn, who has written an awful lot of superhero movies. They've taken a collection of minor characters from "The Big Bang Theory" - who I barely remember and haven't seen onscreen since 2019 - and promoted them to series leads. Meanwhile, the main cast of "The Big Bang Theory" occasionally drop in for cameos. And this doesn't really work. Kevin Sussman is a character actor in his fifties, playing an unremarkable schlub who isn't very amusing or sympathetic. Brian Posehn is born to play sidekicks, so he and a cartoonishly evil, lisping John Ross Bowie muddle through okay. I don't feel I've seen enough of Lauren Lapkus yet to say much, though I've liked her previously on "Comedy Bang! Bang!" and other shows.
The big selling point of "Stuart Fails to Save the Universe" is that Chuck Lorre decided to give genre-bending storytelling and meta-humor a try, abandoning his usual realm of sitcom couches for a show that features an entirely new universe with totally different rules each week. We jump from the apocalypse, to a world run by robots, to a world where magic is real, to a world where Stuart is in a mental hospital, to a world inhabited by pre-civilization collectivist tribes. Also, being on HBO Max means fewer content restrictions and a bigger budget for all the CGI in the show. The result is similar to watching a live action "Rick and Morty." Alas, it soon becomes apparent that Chuck Lorre is no Dan Harmon.
The pacing is frantic and the dangers are grandiose, but the humor in "Stuart Fails" amounts to the same old Chuck-Lorre-sitcom one-liners, middlebrow manchild shtick, and caricature based humor. Stuart isn't really friends with the other two guys, so there are no existing group or family dynamics to play off of the way that "Rick and Morty" does. Stuart still holding a torch for Diane is the only sign of any sort of real emotional connection anywhere. So far, there are also no compelling stakes to the story aside from finding a "normal" universe somewhere that the group can call home. Though, as the title indicates, Stuart and his travelling companions usually leave each universe worse off than they found it, the show never really gets very dark or satirical. Frankly, the characters are too simple-minded for that.
So far the most clever bits are usually in the opening sequence, which prominently features snarky signs and messages that change in every episode. All the episodes also have spoiler titles, such as the pilot being called "Spoiler: Gary Dies." And a character named Gary does in fact die. There's not much cleverness that makes it into the actual episodes, which are keen on using all the tropes and tactics of smarter, geekier shows, but don't put them to particularly good use. Since Lorre and his collaborators are new to this kind of material, I expect that they'll improve over time. The show has already been renewed for at least another season.
I, however, don't think I'll be sticking around much longer for "Stuart Fails." "President Curtis" is a similar show that premiered around the same time, and is already much more promising - but that's another post.
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