“The Maternal Congruence” – A visit from Leonard’s mother delights Sheldon and horrifies Leonard, on THE BIG BANG THEORY, Monday, Dec. 14 (9:31-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Source: http://the-big-bang-theory.com/

“The Athens Recurrence” – Sheldon attempts to help Penny understand Leonard’s work, and Wolowitz becomes jealous when Leonard starts hanging out with his new girlfriend, on THE BIG BANG THEORY, Monday, Dec. 7 (9:30-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Source: http://the-big-bang-theory.com/

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CBS has announced the details of the ninth episode of the season, The Vengeance Formulation, in which Battlestar Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff and National Public Radio’s Ira Flatow will appear as themselves.

“The Vengeance Formulation” – After he’s humiliated on National Public Radio, Sheldon vows to destroy Kripke, while Wolowitz tries not to destroy his new relationship with Bernadette, on THE BIG BANG THEORY, Monday, Nov. 23 (9:30-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. “Battlestar Galactica” star Katee Sackhoff appears as herself, offering Wolowitz some relationship advice.

Cuoco stopped by The Early Show on Monday and shared her excitement for the show with co-anchor Harry Smith.

Just three years ago, critics were saying that a TV show with geeks (who are brilliant physicists) and a cute girl next door would never work, but Cuoco and the rest of the cast have been pleasantly surprised with more recent reviews.

Today, “The Big Bang Theory” is considered the best comedy on television.

“They took it all back, our last TCA (Television’s Critics Association review). Really, people were actually coming up to us saying ‘I hated your show last year and the idea and now we love it,’” Cuoco said. “It took a while for them to believe what it was going to be and they thought it was going to be two nerds next door to the cute girl, we’ve seen it before. And it’s so much more real than that and now they like it.”

And to add to the excitement, this season Penny gets to be in love. “How fun is that? With Leonard. Whatever!” she joked.

Out of all of the nerds, Smith pointed out Leonard (played by Johnny Galecki) was the perfect match for Penny since the beginning of the show.

“I think the relationship with Leonard will be shaky and there will be problems and all this stuff, but I love their relationship,” Cuoco gushed. “Johnny and I have the best time working together. But it’s got – the show’s got to last, so I’m sure it will go in and out just like life.”

If Penny’s relationship with Leonard doesn’t pan out, she has three other nerds to choose from.

“There’s three other guy there. So, I’m going to have to date one each season, then the nightmare sequence will be Penny and Sheldon(played by Jim Parsons).”

“And then who knows what. The dream sequence, they’ll all be in there together!” Smith joked.

“Harry, it just could go anywhere!” she added.

Joking aside, it was a big year at the Emmys for “The Big Bang Theory.” Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon Cooper was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series.

“We had such a blast. It was a dream,” Cuoco said. “I’ve wanted to go to the Emmys my whole life, so it was awesome.”

You can see “The Big Bang Theory” Monday nights at 9:30/8:30 Central, on CBS.

Source: CBSnews.com

“The Big Bang Theory,” the CBS comedy about two brilliant physicists and their attempts to relate to the world around them — and to the cute blond woman next door — began drawing surprisingly strong ratings this summer after it moved to a later time slot on Monday, at 9:30 p.m., immediately following that network’s highest-rated comedy, “Two and a Half Men.”

In some weeks of the summer “Big Bang” repeats drew bigger audiences among certain important demographic groups than when the same episodes were first broadcast. So far this fall “Big Bang” has further expanded its audience, becoming the highest-rated live-action comedy among the sought-after young-adult demographic group.

If current trends prevail, its total viewership could soon surpass that of “Two and a Half Men,” long the most-watched comedy on television. Last Monday’s “Big Bang” drew 12.96 million viewers, according to Nielsen, only 5 percent fewer than the 13.63 million for “Men.”

Already “Big Bang” has beaten “Men” among viewers age 18 t0 49, the demographic category most valued by advertisers.

The comedies have more in common than their popularity. They were co-created by Chuck Lorre, they tape on adjacent stages on the Warner Brothers lot, and they share several writers and much of their technical crews. And with the upstart closing in on the longtime ratings champion, Mr. Lorre said, he sometimes isn’t sure how to react when the ratings come in.

“There’s a lot of ambivalence,” he said on Tuesday night, during a break in the taping of a “Big Bang” episode. “It’s ‘Yeah!’ then ‘Awww.’ But it’s all good. I can’t claim to understand how this works; I’m just thrilled that it’s working.”

The cast and crew of “The Big Bang Theory” are enjoying their success all the more after surviving two near-death experiences. The show’s first pilot was rejected by CBS, but the network asked Mr. Lorre and Bill Prady, his co-creator, to retool their script and try again. The first version featured the same two male lead characters — Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, a theoretical physicist, and Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter, an experimental physicist — but also included a female lead character who was “very damaged and very tough,” Mr. Prady said.

“We had a really hard time casting the role, and in retrospect it was obvious that the problem was not the actresses but the conception of the character,” he said. Focus groups that watched the original pilot were left with protective feelings for the two naïve, socially awkward scientists, and they did not like the prospect of a bitter, manipulative woman taking advantage of them.

“What we all liked was the relationship between these two guys, one who wants his world to be bigger and the other who wants his world to be smaller,” Mr. Prady said. “I think that’s what everyone looked at and said, ‘This is worth trying again.’ ” The creators decided to keep the male characters and to persuade Mr. Parsons and Mr. Galecki not to take another series in the year between the two pilots.

They also called back one of the actresses who auditioned unsuccessfully for the original female role: Kaley Cuoco, a former child actor who played opposite John Ritter in the comedy “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.” Much of the edge was taken off the character of Penny — so much that at first she looked to be little more than a jiggly blonde next door with no apparent motivation for being interested in two science geeks.

It took awhile to find the character’s voice, but now Penny “is one of the guys,” Ms. Cuoco said. “She’s not some untouchable creature.”

Over the first two seasons Penny and Leonard edged toward each other and are now in a full-fledged relationship. But theirs is not the unbelievable type of couple — a gorgeous female and a paunchy, slacker male — that has been so popular in Judd Apatow films recently.

“Penny has been in horrible relationships and picked the wrong guy constantly,” Ms. Cuoco said. “I think she has more baggage than the guys.”

As a result, Mr. Galecki said, “It went from a show that I think may have made fun of intelligent people half of the time to a show that defends intelligent people 99 percent of the time.”

The most interesting relationships are those between the two male leads and among their two boon companions: Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), an astrophysicist who is shy to the point of muteness around women, and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), an engineer who maintains an outsize confidence in his skill as a ladies’ man, despite living with his mother.

Those did not turn the series into an immediate hit, however. “When it went on the air, it was disregarded almost immediately,” Mr. Lorre said, noting the show’s respectful but not great reviews. Then, a few weeks into its first season, came the second near-death experience — the writers’ strike shut down production for three months. Once the strike ended, CBS moved the series from its 8:30 time slot to 8, leading off its Monday-night lineup — an especially tough position for a first-year comedy.

The series stayed there in its second season, performing admirably. Then in February, on a night when a presidential news conference interrupted its regular time slot, CBS scheduled an episode of “Big Bang” at 9:30, after “Two and a Half Men.” The ratings were so promising, said Kelly Kahl, a CBS senior executive vice president for prime time, that the arrangement was made permanent.

This season the series has also been enjoying the publicity around the Emmy nomination for Mr. Parsons, as best actor in a comedy.

“It’s been such a healthy climb the first two seasons,” Mr. Parsons said. He also said he thought that the show had much potential to grow. “I feel like there’s still a strong segment out there that may not be sold on the concept of four nerds and the pretty girl next door,” he said. “I get that. I think there’s a lot more going on that doesn’t really fit in that description. It really doesn’t tell you 10 percent of why you would be interested, truly.”

Source: The New York Times

The audience for summer reruns of the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” is up 52 percent over last summer. Nielsen Media Research says the show had nearly as many viewers as television’s top-rated comedy, “Two and a Half Men.”

Summertime second runs are often when a show catches on. That happened last year with “NCIS” on CBS, which last week was the most popular drama on television.

To show you how broadcast TV still has the upper hand: An “NCIS” rerun had more than three times the audience last week of the third-season premiere of AMC’s “Mad Men” on cable. And that premiere was the most-watched show in AMC’s history.

“Mad Men” — the reigning best-drama Emmy winner — drew 2.8 million people into the world of the 1960s Sterling Cooper ad agency. Add in the viewers who saw the second and third airings later that night, and AMC had a total audience of 4.5 million for the show.

HBO had another record high audience for “True Blood” on Sunday. The pay cable network is building an increasingly strong Sunday night lineup with “Hung” and “Entourage.”

The E! Entertainment network’s new series, “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami” on Sunday was that network’s most popular series premiere since “The Anna Nicole Show” in 2002.

For the broadcast networks, CBS’ “60 Minutes” brought 12 million viewers in to watch Michael Vick’s apology on Sunday. It was No. 2, behind NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which yet again topped the list.

CBS averaged 6.3 million viewers for the week (4.1 rating, 8 share), while second-place NBC had 5.3 million (3.4, 6). ABC 4.3 million (2.8, 5), Fox 4.1 million (2.5, 5), My Network TV 1.5 million (0.9, 2), the CW 980,000 (0.6, 1) and ION Television 550,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3.1 million viewer average (1.6 rating, 3 share), Telemundo had 1.1 million (0.5, 1), TeleFutura 880,000 (0.4, 1) and Azteca 200,000 (0.1, 0).

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.4 million viewers (4.9, 11). ABC’s “World News” was second with 6.7 million (4.5, 10) and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.6 million viewers (3.8, 8).

A ratings point represents 1,145,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 114.5 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of Aug. 10-16, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “America’s Got Talent” (Tuesday), NBC, 12.88 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 12.03 million; “America’s Got Talent” (Wednesday), NBC, 11.79 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 9.15 million; “Two and a Half Men,” CBS, 8.83 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 8.64 million; “The Mentalist,” CBS, 7.643 million; “Big Brother 11″ (Sunday), CBS, 7.636 million; “Big Brother 11″ (Thursday), 7.48 million; “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Monday), ABC, 7.27 million.

The 33-year-old Sara Gilbert is best known for her nine-year portrayal of Darlene Conner on Roseanne, followed by her more recent appearance in the WB’s Twins. She also had a recurring role on CBS’ short-lived series, The Class. In 2007, she appeared as a guest on CBS’ The Big Bang Theory as Leslie Winkle, Leonard’s (Johnny Galecki) colleague and love interest.

During the Comic Con, series co-creator Chuck Lorre already hinted on Leslie’s return, and now that it has been made official, fans are eager to see what is up for the character in the second season of the series.

Gilbert’s return to the series also marks her reunion for former Roseanne costar, Johnny Galecki, who plays physicist Leonard Hofstadter, one of the central characters in the series. In fact, the character dynamics of Leonard and Darlene mimick that of Galecki and Gilbert’s characters in Roseanne.

In other news, Kaley Cuoco, who plays the feisty and “cheesecake-scented goddess” Penny, revealed earlier this month that despite Penny’s date with Leonard, they still have to clear out some issues before they embark on a real relationship.

Cuoco told TV Guide at the Comic Con, “I think it’s going to take a lot of mistakes [before that happens]. You’ve [first] got to mess things up left and right.”

To catch Sara Gilbert’s return to The Big Bang Theory and the developments in Leonard’s love life, tune in to CBS on Monday, September 22, at 8:00pm.

Source: buddytv.com