The pilot of “The Big Bang Theory” — the massively successful CBS sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady — went through a few iterations before it reached its final form, but the point I’m making here is that once everything clicked into place, the show found its way. After stars Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki appeared in the original, unaired pilot alongside actor Amanda Walsh, Prady and Lorre got some rough feedback and changed quite a lot, recasting Kaley Cuoco as the new female lead, Penny, and retooling everything. This, to put it lightly, worked … and according to a book about the series by Jessica Radloff titled “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” one moment in the final pilot set the tone for the entire series (sort of).
As the pilot opens, Sheldon Cooper (Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Galecki) return home from a failed visit to a “high-IQ sperm bank” (a scene that aged so badly it was pulled from syndication) and meet their new neighbor Penny, at which point Leonard invites her over for lunch. Penny sits in Sheldon’s usual spot on the couch, and Sheldon freaks out. As Prady told Radloff, this moment felt … exactly right, and it defined Sheldon immediately.
“The struggle that Jim creates, and the battle that Sheldon ultimately loses until he finally reclaims his spot, is so fascinating to watch,” Prady recalled. “Look at that struggle. That’s the whole character. He knows it’s rude to ask guests to move if they’ve seated themselves. He knows that. His mama raised him right. But he can’t do it. And that’s the struggle of that character encapsulated in a moment.”
Here’s the thing: Sheldon initially explains to Penny why his spot is so important, but then, he’s forced to sit on the “wrong” side of the couch, slowly losing his mind as Penny introduces herself. “Sheldon basically has a breakdown when he can’t get what he needs, and it makes his skin crawl and his muscles twitch,” Parsons explained in the book. “I am positive I was mimicking a thousand brilliant other performances that I had seen and absorbed in my entire life and stored away for the chance to use one day because I thought that they were magnificent. I just knew this was my chance to do my tortured dance.
One piece of direction helped Jim Parsons lock into Sheldon Cooper right away on The Big Bang Theory
In the moment, Jim Parsons recalled that the episode’s director, Jimmy Burrows, gave him a very specific piece of direction, which helped him really hone in on the moment. “And when Penny sits in Sheldon’s spot, I’ll never forget the words Jimmy Burrows said to me, which were, ‘When she sits in that spot, I want you on her like a cat! Like meow! As in, Oh no you don’t!’ And that one note, that one direction, launched that whole section for me,” Parsons told Jessica Radloff. “Once I knew that’s what he wanted my reaction to be, everything else unfolded from that.”
“The audience went wild at that moment,” Chuck Lorre said, remembering what he saw as the cast filmed in front of a live studio audience. “They were in love with Sheldon’s neuroses. I’m standing on the stage, and I look at Jimmy Burrows […] and Jimmy looks at me, and we both look at each other with these big grins. We knew this was working. It was one of those goosebump moments you never forget. We got it right.”
As Bill Prady noted, Sheldon doesn’t pitch a fit or yell at Penny and force her to move; rather, he politely explains to Penny that he always picks the same spot on the couch and why. “In the winter, that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm and yet not so close as to cause perspiration,” Sheldon clarifies to Penny. “In the summer, it’s directly in the path of a cross breeze created by open windows there and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide to create a parallax distortion.”
As soon as Penny, crying about an ex-boyfriend, gets up to find a tissue, Sheldon scooches right over into his usual spot without missing a beat, but it’s clear that the situation was driving him up a wall before an oblivious Penny moved away from the couch. It’s a perfect resolution to the problem, and for the rest of the series, that “spot” belongs to Sheldon and Sheldon alone, even when the character moves out of the apartment later on.
For a long time, it doesn’t seem like Sheldon Cooper (a stubborn and largely antisocial individual who was initially written to be asexual) isn’t going to end up in any sort of romantic situation, but after Mayim Bialik joined “The Big Bang Theory” in season 3, that all changed. Bialik’s character, Amy Farrah Fowler, also happens to be a brilliant scientist (like Bialik in real life, Amy is a neuroscientist), and Sheldon does end up falling in love with her. Then, in season 10, Amy’s apartment floods … and she suggests an “experiment” where she and Sheldon move into Penny’s apartment so that Penny and Leonard, who are now married, can live together in Sheldon and Leonard’s former apartment. (Yes, that’s a big switcheroo; it’s a sort of “musical apartments” situation.)
Sheldon is famously afraid of change, so this move was a big deal … to say nothing of the fact that now the sanctity of his spot on the couch was in question. As executive producer Steve Molaro told Jessica Radloff in the book, though, Sheldon’s spot remained secure, largely because the cast always ended up spending time at the “original” apartment anyway.
“Sheldon’s spot was always going to be his,” Molaro said. “It didn’t matter if he lived there or not. It was important that it always felt like ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ and one of the most important things is that the couch is in that living room and that couch is Sheldon’s spot. I didn’t want that to ever change.” Molaro is right … and in the very last moments of the series, Sheldon is nestled safely in his spot, because, at this point, Penny knows better.
