The Marvin Quadrant: Chuck Versus The Big Bang Theory: Intelligence as Commodity in the Land of Nerds
“The show is a mash-up. It’s a combination of one part The Office, one part 24, one part Alias. When you mash those shows together, what happens? What we were really excited about is if you built a show like something like The Office, where you essentially met all these characters and you loved them, and then how terrifying it would be if Sydney Bristow or Jack Bauer suddenly came into The Office, because you knew, when those people showed up, that someone was going to get shot, and someone was going to get tortured, and someone was going to get killed. That’s where the initial germ of the Chuck show came from.” Chris Fedak, co-creator.
Those of you who were at the 2022 September Sessions may recall that I talked about this show in relation to Stanford as pop culture symbol and the techno-sci-fi view of the nature of intelligence ascribed to Stanford by pop culture in my remarks. To review: Chuck aired on NBC from 2007-2012, compiling some 90 episodes featuring protagonist Charles “Chuck” Bartowski, a nice young man expelled from Stanford in his senior year for cheating. We learn early on that his roommate Bryce Larkin framed him in order to save him from imminent recruitment by the CIA, which Bryce, willingly recruited himself, knew would lead to Chuck sacrificing his niceness to become a master spy and inevitably a soulless killer. When we meet the expelled Chuck, he works as part of the Nerd Herd at the Burbank Buy More (an electronics superstore), living with his sister Ellie and her fiancé Devin, also known as Captain Awesome, both credentialed and accomplished doctors. When I revisited the series in 2022, I noticed how the writers use attending Stanford as a metaphor, to paraphrase the founding document, for preparing for a life of usefulness, though in this case through the example of Bryce Larkin a life spent playing for world-defining stakes. That is, the show presents the link between intelligence and a brand of usefulness/success that shapes, saves, or destroys the world; in yet other words, the show comments on what it means to be smart, shrewd, and strategic enough to use a Stanford education to achieve great things (for good or evil).
In the first episode Chuck receives an email attachment sent by former good friend and betrayer/savior Bryce (who has indeed become a super spy and soulless killer working for a world-protecting federal government agency); when Chuck opens the attachment, it downloads all the CIA’s and NSA’s data (all practical intelligence-oriented knowledge, basically) into Chuck’s brain, making him a valuable one-of-a-kind human computer asset who needs protection and handling provided by super spies Sarah Walker (CIA) and John Casey (NSA). Sarah’s cover becomes working in a yogurt store across from the Buy More and pretending to be Chuck’s girlfriend (their evolving relationship is the key arc of the five-year run) while John works at the Buy More (a Knight of the Baleful Countenance who growls and grunts rather than speaking much). The show plays across sitcom and action genres, weaving episode plots (all 90 episodes have a title beginning with the words “Chuck Versus”) from the warp and woof of the store life/home life (Chuck as nice guy slacker who never lives up to his potential after his expulsion) and the spy life (Chuck as a kind of nerd-at-the-core ubermensch—a second download at the end of the second season gives him access to physical skills programs—think Neo in the training room with Morpheus—that supplement his data-driven omniscience). Throughout the series his soul hangs in the balance—will he remain beloved and loving friend and brother Chuck or morph into a lethal machine, like Bryce. Oh, in relation to the show’s dramatization of intelligence, Chuck “flashes” when he sees something that triggers the “Intersect” in his brain (the name of the program Bryce sent him). He doesn’t study or learn, he does no analytical or critical work, he just flashes (the audience sees along with him a dizzying montage of images) and knows stuff. Lots of stuff. All stuff.
Let’s read this as a commentary on the nature of 21st century intelligence—it’s a download made possible by technology. Think about the students in your classroom—what do they assume about the essence of getting a Stanford education? Do they believe they come here to download knowledge? Do they imagine the download magically carries with it context for the data and how all the data connect to form a narrative and worldview that make sense? Finally, do they imagine the download to consist of whatever they do during their time at Stanford, success guaranteed by their admission and showing up, ready for upgrades? And because we’re PWR, how do the answers to these questions connect to attitudes toward reading, writing, process, research, and revision?
Life in the Nerdiverse
The Big Bang Theory aired on CBS from 2007-2019, piling up 279 episodes and spinning off Young Sheldon starting in 2017. While recognizably a hybrid-setting sitcom alternating between the home and work spheres, BBT offers several distinctive elements. Sheldon, specifically, often works on theoretical physics problems in the apartment he shares with Leonard, filling whiteboards with equations (their names together, Sheldon Leonard, invoke a founding figure in the development of the sitcom genre, producer of Danny Thomas’s Make Room for Daddy, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and The Dick Van Dyke Show). When Sheldon enters a relationship with neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, he works in the apartment they later share. They develop their theory of “super asymmetry,” for which they receive the Nobel Prize in the final season, on their wedding day, delaying the ceremony while Sheldon uses Amy’s lipstick to write equations on the mirror in the bride’s dressing room. Simply, academic work in science knows no boundaries in BBT. Amy, the neuroscientist, hosts a cigarette-smoking Capuchin monkey in her apartment, studying the effects of nicotine on his brain; more appropriately, we see her at work in her lab dissecting brains. Raj, the astrophysicist, delivers lectures at Hayden Planetarium, hosting “walks among the stars.” Howard, the engineer, takes dates (before his marriage to Bernadette) to the workplace after hours with the promise that they can operate the Mars rover by remote control. In sum, the characters work; their intelligence, graduate training, and earned expertise manifest in their daily activities, substantially shaping and defining their lives.
Neither does play in BBT recognize boundaries, as Sheldon’s restless, relentless, all-consuming intelligence invents variants of chess including three-person and three-dimensional chess as well as a version with new pieces amalgamated from traditional pieces. The central group of nerds (Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj) often discuss and work through various scientific problems, whether over lunch in the Caltech cafeteria (the Nerdiverse equivalent of Monk’s Diner in Seinfeld or Central Perk in Friends) or in Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment over dinner. They also devote much time to playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Halo as well as occasionally the vintage video games treasured by Sheldon. Their table talk features endless (deathly serious) debates focused on hypotheticals about superheroes and other objects of their fandom (while their physical ineptitude figures as a comic staple in the series, they do play paintball in full nerd-Terminator regalia). In one episode the women characters Amy, Bernadette, and Penny (two scientists and an actor turned pharmaceutical sales rep) who each end up married to one of the nerds read comic books in an attempt to understand what their mates see in them; to their surprise and to the shock of the nerds returning from a disastrous road trip to a comic book convention, the women end up vehemently debating the qualities of Thor’s hammer.
Another distinguishing element relates to the consistent references to the characters’ doctoral degrees (and the relentless mocking of Howard by Sheldon for having only a master’s degree from MIT, which Sheldon dismisses as a technical school for engineers); Sheldon also boasts often about his genius-level IQ and his eidetic memory, which makes him an inexhaustible and exhausting fountain of facts about all subjects, though he prefers to talk about trains and himself. Sheldon thus embodies a natural Intersect powered by innate genius made useful and world-changing (that Nobel Prize) by hard work and initially, at least, by social isolation, though the series arc offers Sheldon and the other nerds salvation through community and romantic connection, in synch with how Chuck—like Sheldon in his intelligence, though that comes to him via technology, not study, and like Leonard in his nerdy niceness—ultimately achieves his salvation. For our purposes here, intelligence on its own poses an obstacle not to usefulness but to happiness through human connection. Think again about students coming to Stanford; even if they’ve never watched these particular shows, they likely share some (pop) cultural premises about the relationship between intelligence (how it’s gained, what it’s good for) and living one’s life fully and happily.
Chuck and Sarah, Leonard and Penny, Sheldon and Amy—Intelligences in Conversation and the Game of Soul(mate)s
The opening episodes of both shows establish the central (heteronormative) relationship arcs and to some degree set up the series’ finales. They also tap into gender stereotypes that take years of episodes to address, question, and to some modest degree propose alternatives for, though the shows remain rooted in a wide range of gender and ethnic stereotypes. In the series premier, Chuck at first doesn’t understand anything about the Intersect that Bryce sent him, not realizing that he has become a hardware/software asset the US government aims to control (and other forces aim to hack or steal, leaving Chuck dead or de-Intersected nerd-for-life). Chuck’s initial flashes have no context from which he can work to discern what he’s become or how to interpret the montage of texts and images running roughshod over his conscious mind. Operative Sarah Walker comes to the Buy More help desk, posing as a tech-clueless damsel in distress, to ask the immediately-smitten Chuck for assistance with a computer problem, feigning guileless ignorance. The other Nerd Herders try to shift her attention to them, puzzled by her focus on sad sack Chuck. After an off-and-on romance through 90 episodes, they end the series sharing a “magical kiss” on the beach where Sarah first asked Chuck to trust her with his life as his protector. By the finale Sarah has lost all memory of the last five years (too complicated to explain) and has become the guileless ingenue she pretended to be at their first meeting; Chuck pledges his love and asks her to trust him. They start anew in their pristine seaside Eden, the spy life behind them, nice guy Chuck no longer host to the Intersect and Sarah freed of her long experience as a lethal government agent. And there’s no Tree of Knowledge on that beach to tempt them.
In the series premier of BBT, Leonard sees blond, perky Penny through the open door of the apartment into which she’s just moved, fresh from Nebraska with dreams of becoming a star, across the hall from his and Sheldon’s apartment. He moves toward the open door, despite Sheldon’s protest that nothing good can come of meeting a new neighbor. Leonard, also immediately smitten, says to Sheldon that his children with Penny will be “smart and beautiful”; Sheldon repeats that line 279 episodes later in the series finale as part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which he devotes to acknowledging his friends and Amy, his spouse and co-winner of the prize, rather than giving the aggrieved, self-aggrandizing speech he's prepared. Thus, although their romance proceeds through a series of break-ups and alternate partners, the series resolves Leonard and Penny’s arc via marriage (several seasons earlier) and impending parenthood (revealed in the finale). A nerd’s dream comes true.
Sheldon meets Amy several years into the series, when nerd friends Howard and Raj create a dating profile for Sheldon, answering the questions as he would (despite or perhaps because of the constant bickering, the nerds know each other extremely well). The match offered turns out to be neurobiologist Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, initially every bit as antisocial, intellectually belligerent, and socially inept as Sheldon. Their relationship doubles down on the premise that intelligence carries a social curse. The wardrobe staff connects Amy’s intelligence and social awkwardness to a fashion sense generously called lacking, particularly in contrast to Penny’s shopaholic-driven clothes—they end up best friends, which we can read (generously) as the series trying to go beyond the easy stereotypes with which they introduce these characters through exploration of the mysteries of human connection. Amy’s devotion to Penny as her BFF speeds her socialization/humanization through such rituals as sleepovers, shopping sprees, girls’ nights out, and constant involvement in each other’s lives, allowing her to join the community (all the nerds plus Penny and Bernadette) putting up with and gradually socializing/humanizing Sheldon. Amy and Sheldon’s romance proceeds in excruciatingly small (for Amy) increments, though they become lovers (once a year on her birthday), move in together, and marry. Their brain baby is the theory of super-asymmetry that wins them the Nobel, though they discuss the possibility of becoming parents.
As mentioned earlier, another kind of love affair takes center stage and reaches fruition in the series finale, at the Nobel Prize ceremony. Sheldon, putting aside his prepared speech getting even with everyone who’s ever doubted him, instead asks his friends to stand up from their seats in the second row of the auditorium. He says that he’s “been laboring under a misapprehension,” believing that his accomplishments are his alone. He announces to Swedish royalty, the assembled dignitaries, and the BBT audience what the audience already knows—that his accomplishments belong equally to the friends who have supported and tolerated him for twelve years. After he names them one by one, he apologizes for his past actions and says that “in his own way” he loves them all. Sheldon, finally, becomes a “real boy.”
Bildungsroman, Bildungspycom, and Bildungssitcom
Wikipedia tells us this: “In literary criticism, a bildungsroman is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, in which character change is important. The term comes from the German words Bildung (‘education’, alternatively ‘forming’) and Roman (‘novel’).” In his Inside Higher Education blog post of 6/16/23, history professor Steven Mintz (currently at Texas, formerly at Columbia), addresses the question “Can a college class teach you how to lead a meaningful, joyful life?” He begins this way:
A new kind of course has recently appeared at a number of this country’s most elite campuses—classes that purport to tell students how to create a life that is meaningful, purposeful, happy, and fulfilling. At Yale, there’s Life Worth Living. At Stanford, there’s Designing Your Life. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/2023/06/16/can-college-class-teach-you-how-lead-meaningful-joyful
Mintz goes on to lay out his “ambivalence” and “qualms” about such courses, ending with advocacy for a great books curriculum (formerly of Columbia, remember) as a better academic path to understanding the complexity of the contemporary world, how we got here, and how to proceed. From reading his blog (generally two to three focused though wide-ranging essays a week), I have a strong sense that he considers university education a form of bildungsroman. He would likely applaud the fall “Why College?” course along with ESF and SLE as posing and pursuing the right questions with the right readings. Given Chuck’s Stanford pedigree and the Caltech setting of BBT, let’s consider these two series as narratives in which characters “come of age” through a sequence of events and relationships, the arcs as explorations of self-fashioning and forming the self.
Again, we meet Chuck as a woebegone underachiever working at the Buy More, expelled from Stanford without a degree. He hangs with childhood best friend Morgan Grimes, also a Nerd Herd member (I don’t recall much mention of Morgan’s intellectual potential or college experience, as he slots neatly into the slacker sidekick role—when he briefly becomes the Intersect, his worst impulses, fueled by vanity and hubris, take over). Chuck exists in a state of arrested or stalled development, flattened by the betrayal that resulted in his expulsion. The Intersect download forces wrestling with self-definition along with quicksilver adaptation. When Chuck briefly returns to campus on a mission (in an episode clearly not filmed on location), we catch glimpses of Camp Stanford, with no evidence of undergraduates consciously forming themselves (we see frisbees and frivolity). The Intersect comes to represent education as content download made possible by technology; in the context of the mash-up genre Fedak describes in the epigraph, Chuck’s growth and self-forming take place in the field and at the Buy More, through interactions with his handlers and the dizzying array of villains that come with the spy life and the Nerd Herd crew and various managers passing through the superstore. Chuck exemplifies the Bildungspycom—the Wikipedia entry might read “a television genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from Intersect download to adult spyhood, in which challenges to character require constant adaptation and, in quiet moments, reflection on the meaning of staying a mensch.” In the universe of the show, Stanford serves as prelude to the real business of personal and professional growth, not a place where growth actually happens. Think of your students’ understanding of why they come here—for downloaded programming or a process of transformation, or perhaps an unpredictable, haphazard amalgam of the two.
Bildungssitcom, where we can locate BBT, might come to Wikipedia this way: “a television genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from prolonged adolescent nerdhood to nerd adulthood, in which interactions with friends/colleagues lead to nerd maturity at an incremental pace because characters in comedy by genre necessity don’t change fast and because being a mensch does not provide comic situations for 279 episodes—characters may change, learn, and reflect while they must remain recognizable types.”
One last category. Bildungsequence: “a curricular genre that focuses on the linguistic and rhetorical growth of the student from high school instrumentalism to rhetorical maturity, in which interactions with teachers/peers/readers encourage an embrace of shared premises putting forward language as world-building and relationship, including endless episodes of rhetorical language practice that does not make perfect but makes the experience and embrace of change, learning, and reflection into conscious, purposeful modes of being.”
Modes of Cruelty Physical and Psychical—Self-Fashioning as High-Risk Sport
The mash-up approach Fedak describes in the epigraph gives the Chuck writers license to bring torture, violence, and death into the workplace and by genre necessity into the spy missions Chuck undertakes—while Chuck himself doesn’t kill, either bumbling through dangerous situations or, once he gets the requisite physical skills, disabling threats without killing them, Sarah Walker and John Casey kill adversaries as if they’re in a John Wick movie and their bosses at the CIA and NSA order killings as a matter of routine—for a couple of seasons John Casey has a standing order to kill Chuck once the Intersect’s removal and transfer into a real spy renders Chuck a liability—he knows too much. The Buy More itself becomes a site of violence several times, though the workplace comedy genre protects the Nerd Herd in a kind of genre bubble death can’t penetrate—none of them die during the series. The CIA/NSA builds an underground facility beneath the Buy More in which Sarah and Casey conduct their spy business, occasionally interrogating and holding prisoner various villains. Violence below, shenanigans above featuring the Buy More crew studded with comic types familiar from the sitcom tradition—the slacker best friend, the stoner, the calculating snob, the sputtering bellicose boss. While literal torture, violence, and death generally have no place in sitcoms, emotional and psychological battering and bullying serve as staples; in Chuck, members of the Nerd Herd constantly snipe at and insult each other (though the insult humor doesn’t garner the endorsement of the live audience or laugh track); in many sitcoms, the sniping gets resolved in each episode via a declaration of affection or love (the first part of the Seinfeld mantra “no hugging, no learning” signaled emphatically that the sniping would stand unmitigated by characters moving toward each other physically or emotionally—they remain islands, separate as the boroughs of New York City).
In BBT, writers conceive the major characters as perpetual easy targets of each other’s jibes and insults both for their foibles and for their essences, despite the arcs of transformation—the series includes much hugging and much learning, though the foundational demand of the genre requires that characters target and attack each other’s weaknesses. I marvel at the verbal violence the scripts offer as fundamental to (comic) human relationships, whether the relationships involve best friends, romantic partners, or spouses. Sheldon’s lack of social skills, notably an inability/lack of desire to filter his disdain for others he perceives as intellectually deficient, results in a stream of demeaning observations and direct insults. Other characters respond in kind, though their observations and insults highlight Sheldon’s otherness as a kind of physics savant lacking empathy and fellow feeling—he’s an alien life form or not “a real boy,” his mother had him “tested” for a wide range of things in an attempt to diagnose his essential weirdness. Leonard hears constant insults about his shortness and lactose intolerance, Penny about her lack of formal education and failed acting career, Howard about his small size and out-of-date Beatles haircut, Raj about his devotion to his tiny dog Cinnamon and love of romcoms, and on and on—while the wider world disdains nerds, the members of the nerd community hold more power to cause emotional pain, violence through symbolic action (words, mostly, though also plenty of exasperated expressions). Formal education provides little protection from the insults of those closest to you.
Let’s consider this for a moment in relation to the classroom communities we aim to foster in PWR. We strive to encourage learning and growth. We don’t create opportunities for the lobbing of insults intended to highlight students’ flaws or essences. The classroom context, though, especially at a place like Stanford (or Caltech, for that matter) might always carry with it layers of vulnerability connected to displaying intelligence, proving one belongs, and, in the case of writing and speaking, demonstrating intelligence and the right to belong, all through language. Activities including peer review and any oral presentation, whatever work we do to lower the stakes and create a supportive environment focused on growth over time, might always include a subtext of veiled judgment and coded insult—our classrooms aren’t sitcoms, but we should consider genre elements that sneak in with the potential to undermine our intentions as teachers.
Intelligence, Intelligences, and Labor
Chuck Bartowski, whatever kind of student he was at Stanford, doesn’t have to do any work to become the Intersect. He doesn’t ask for it; at times he doesn’t want it. Other times, though, he values it immensely, as the Intersect brings Sarah Walker into his life and brings any Mitty-esque fantasies he harbors to vibrant, fast-paced life. The Intersect ultimately gets him his Stanford degree, arranged by the intelligence agencies to reward his good work processing the data downloaded to his brain. Note again that he “flashes” on the Intersect data, then reports the implanted intel to his handlers. Circumstances often demand that he accompany them into the field in order to flash on something in context; a running joke in early episodes has Sarah and Casey ordering Chuck to stay in the car while they do the dangerous spy work based on what he’s provided from the Intersect. Eventually he ignores the order and gradually proves himself by bumbling into high-risk situations and saving their lives without benefit of their specialized training. When the writers give Chuck an upgrade, downloading physical skills (similar to how Morpheus weaponizes Neo in the first Matrix movie by having Turk load martial arts programs into his brain), Chuck doesn’t have to do any work as when he faces danger he flashes on a full range of martial arts programs and presto, he’s a mayhem machine. No work, great results. Chuck attended Stanford.
Intellectual work in BBT comes from academic training and time on task leveraged by IQ (caveat lector). Sheldon, a self-described “great mind of his generation,” earns his doctorate by the age of fifteen, studying for years in Germany. Leonard and Raj, and Howard with his MA from MIT, complete their advanced degrees at more typical ages, as do Amy and Bernadette (she waits tables at the Cheesecake Factory with Penny while completing her dissertation). We see the characters working and at work putting their education to use. We see equations on whiteboards, glimpse notebooks filled with scribbles (Sheldon has saved all of his notebooks since childhood for future scholars and biographers to study); we hear numerous conversations about scientific concepts (and many science-based jokes and riddles). While Chuck’s Stanford experience initially occupies a space of life-defining failure and shame (assigning him to Buy More purgatory), Caltech in BBT functions as a workplace that highly values and rewards intellectual work (while also exploring in sometimes insightful ways the culture of higher education—no time to explore that here, though we see interactions with deans, donors, grad students, and HR representatives).
Neither show features characters who occupy the middle ground of the credentialed intelligence continuum (if there is such a thing); we spend most of the time with the highly-educated with occasional interactions with those Amy once refers to as “muggles.” Genre, whether mash-up or comic, traffics in extreme types—in terms of consumers of these shows, nobody wants to devote time to average folks.
Concerning (and Consuming) Anti-Intellectualism
In Chuck, intelligence at best carries risk—at its worst it leads to death. As Fedak notes in the epigraph, the mash-up premise of the show catalyzed by the Intersect download into Chuck’s brain brings on an endless array of antagonists intent on killing Chuck or at the very least stripping him of his upgrade and returning him to the ignominious anonymity of life in the Nerd Herd. In the comic world of BBT, Sheldon most obviously bears the burden of intelligence—the scripts incessantly portray him as an “alien” or, like Pinocchio, “not a real boy”—in self-defense he aspires to emulate Mr. Spock, in total control of his emotions and a reliable source of a pure form of logic. The other scientist characters, though not as rigorously defined as not fully human by the scripts, all manifest burdens experienced during their intellectual journeys leading to earning the credential of the doctorate. Leonard, for example, proclaims himself “king of the nerds” on a date when he and Penny attempt to reboot their relationship; he also considers himself an underachiever despite his doctorate and faculty position because his siblings have achieved even more in their professions (and both his parents have doctorates and high-profile careers). Rajesh for the first several seasons suffers from “selective mutism” that renders him incapable of speaking to women unless drinking alcohol. Amy, laser-focused on her career, goes on her first date with Sheldon to placate her mother, who requires her to date once a year. All bear burdens due to their elite intellectualism.
Calling out the anti-intellectualism of the United States has a long history; we should expect popular entertainment to share in this suspicion and disparagement of intellectual achievement. Chuck functions as a hero because of his fundamental niceness and nerd status—super-intelligence via the Intersect is imposed from outside him, allowing him to remain likeable and relatable (though anything but average while the Intersect). In BBT, the comic genre conventions deflate the characters’ intellects to create room for human foible and foolishness. I suspect fans of the show love the characters for their all-too-human flaws, not their credentials; the actors can have their fictional doctorates (though Mayim Bialik, who plays Amy, has a real one) and make millions of dollars (and residuals from massive syndication deals now jeopardized by streaming) too because they portray scientists as a friend group making their way through the same minefields as the viewers.
A Final Word about Writing and Rhetoric in Relation to Chuck and BBT
We don’t encounter much writing in Chuck’s world, which is mostly about flashing and transmitting/translating data for practical use. We see a lot of math on whiteboards and hear a lot of talk about science and pop culture stuff among the nerds at work and at home in Pasadena, along with the steady low-level conflict of intimate friends entwined in each other’s lives. Several episodes, though, use writing as a plot device reinforcing cultural attitudes toward writing and what it’s for as well as how it fits into the show’s preoccupation with intelligence. Penny, surrounded by a friend group with advanced degrees, writes an essay for a community college class; Leonard can’t help but correct it (the script assumes we’ll accept he’s a good writer because he’s smart, as evidenced by his degree and profession), leading to a fight and ultimately to Penny getting a B on the essay (with secret help from credentialed friends and automatic good writers Amy and Bernadette, both sworn to never tell Leonard). Leonard writes a whodunit mystery novel; we don’t see him writing, though we do see Bernadette reading the manuscript and asking if Penny minds that Leonard has based the bossy, insulting female character on her—the fight in this episode gets resolved by Leonard’s realization that he has based the character on his mother, a renowned psychiatrist who withheld affection and studied Leonard throughout his childhood, describing him in the title of one of her books as “needy baby, greedy baby.” The whole core group composes for oral presentation letters to Howard from the father who abandoned the family when he was twelve; Penny delivers one of these letters too, as speaking in this case doesn’t require the credentials that academic writing requires, and Penny has long been the center of the show’s emotional intelligence.
Thus writing has practical and personal uses, though both shows, particularly BBT, unquestioningly separate writing from the technological, theoretical, and practical intelligence that provides the central driver of five and twelve seasons. The characters perform how smart they are, whether from downloads or innate ability aided by study, with writing off to the side, necessary to sending ideas out into the world (the Nobel Prize results from Sheldon and Amy publishing their paper on super-asymmetry) but peripheral to their intelligence. We don’t need to wonder why many students don’t accept the value of the writing and rhetoric requirement when the wider culture reinforces the lesson that intelligence resides in the brain, with writing a form of stenography.
Bonus Content #1: Academic Credentials in Sitcom Culture
Characters with doctoral degrees, at least with degrees considered core to their identities, tend to cluster in shows with academic settings, as recently demonstrated in The Chair and Lucky Hank, both centered on English Departments. We can assume the advanced professional degrees in Business, Law, and Medicine earned by characters in the many shows set in those professions, though characters rarely speak directly of the degrees themselves the way BBT characters do—in procedurals specifically, we see characters practicing their expertise though rarely talking specifically about credentials (we may see diplomas on office walls). In the realm of sitcoms, we can consider the role of academic credentials in several eighties classics of the form. In Cheers, Diane Chambers, played by Shelley Long, stumbles into the eponymous bar, planning to meet and run away with her graduate school professor, who jilts her in the first episode (returning later in the run with the aim of rekindling the relationship). We can assume that she’s ABD; while she doesn’t speak of her academic credentials or lack thereof, she performs intellectualism, taking her place as a literary nerd/snob among the denizens of the bar, most notably bar owner/bartender/retired baseball pitcher/recovering alcoholic Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson. One strain of the show’s humor stems from the chasm between her academic hauteur and the working-class ethos of the Boston bar, embodied energetically by employee Carla, mail carrier Cliff, and accountant Norm—Norm!—Carla in particular regularly clashes with Diane. When Diane leaves her job in the bar to pursue a writing career, choosing self-realization over Sam, Rebecca Howe, played by Kirstie Alley, replaces her in the cast; her academic credential comes from business school training, though after attempting to bring business school professionalism and strict procedures to the easygoing culture of the bar, she soon reveals herself, like Diane, as all too human and ultimately becomes one of the gang in a way Diane never did. Note the inversion compared to BBT—Penny from Nebraska joins the world of the nerds, while Diane and Rebecca, not science geniuses but women with professional academic chops or at least aspirations, join the hoi polloi, becoming more open and expanding their sense of themselves in the process of becoming a member of the community.
Frasier, the Cheers spinoff, repeats the Cheers formula but shifts the focus, with credentialed psychologists Frasier and Niles Crane living in professional and social worlds peopled by regular folks like dad Martin, a retired cop, Daphne, the physical therapist working with Martin as he tries to manage an aging body, and various characters at the radio station where Frasier hosts a call-in show for regular folks with questions about their lives. In this series, intelligence does not so much pose a burden to the Crane brothers but rather provides a reliable undercurrent of comic inconvenience and exasperated challenge as they manage their intellectual pride and refined tastes while dealing with a world that doesn’t care about what they care about, such good things as meticulous grammar, esoteric allusions, fine wine, and classical music—all tastes associated with both Frasier and Diane during their time as denizens of Cheers.
Bonus Content #2: Sitcom and Sci-Fi Genealogies
Here I offer a kind of fantasia of resonances, a Burkean parlor of actors and genres. Some starting premises: I expect that actors choose roles based on the desire to work and advance their careers, and I assume that actors develop reputations based on successes in previous roles, becoming identified with particular genres and character types. As a life-long consumer of television and movies… I notice the following cross-currents (though I’m probably missing a lot).
First, re Chuck, Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Enterprise) and Linda Hamilton (The Terminator franchise, Resident Alien) appear as Chuck’s parents, Stephen Bartowski and Mary Elizabeth Bartowski, respectively reclusive genius creator of the Intersect and intrepid undercover spy infiltrating a world-spanning and world-threatening criminal organization. While Chuck does no work to become the Intersect, his father invented the technology at great cost to himself and his family, as his genius turned Stephen into an absent father. The Intersect serves as Chuck’s belated inheritance; he becomes the embodiment of his father’s genius (Bakula never intones “Chuck… I am your father,” but still), giving life to technological power far beyond the everyday tech skills Chuck calls on as a member of the Nerd Herd (I know this complicates earlier claims about a Stanford education, but television isn’t dialectical inquiry aiming for absolute truth). Mary Elizabeth abandons her children as well, devoting herself to a years-long mission to become the most trusted associate, code name Frost, of arch-villain Alexei Volkoff. Both parents believe they ensure their children’s safety by leaving them to fend for themselves, not wanting them endangered by proximity to the violent, cut-throat world the parents inhabit. Of course Chuck winds up in this world, as does his sister Ellie, at least intermittently.
Timothy Dalton (James Bond for a time, a time lord in Doctor Who) plays arch-villain and surrogate father Alexei Volkoff (true identity nerd-adjacent English scientist Harley Winterbottom, former associate of Stephen Bartowski, transformed into Volkoff by an early flawed version of the Intersect, evidence of its potential risk to character and soul); mild-mannered Harley has many Chuck-like nerd traits, though with a British spin. While Dalton lends his Bond credentials to the show, John Larroquette (Night Court) lends a comic aura to his portrayal of Bond-like master spy Roan Montgomery, a mash-up himself alternating between rogue and imp. Brandon Routh (Superman for a time, Legends of Tomorrow) pops up as super-agent Daniel Shaw, like Bryce Larkin before him morally compromised and made dangerous by his spy training. Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix franchise, Jessica Jones) appears in the last season of the series as Gertrude Verbanski, another super-agent who’s opened her own independent security firm and turns out to be John Casey’s true love as the showrunners work to conclude each main character’s arc (and salvation) beyond the series.
Second, re BBT, we encounter many actors familiar from roles in the sitcom genre, emphasizing the lineage extending from founding figure Sheldon Leonard. What an all-star roster: Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne, The Connors) as Sheldon’s mother, Judd Hirsch (Taxi) as Leonard’s father, Katey Sagal (Married with Children) as Penny’s mother, Jack McBrayer (30 Rock) as Penny’s brother, Christopher Lloyd (Taxi, the Back to the Future franchise) briefly as a new roommate/renter/squatter. Bob Newhart, another giant of the genre from both Newhart and The Bob Newhart Show, appears several times as Professor Proton, host of a television science show Sheldon and Leonard both watched as boys, with both giving Professor Proton (real name Arthur) credit for inspiring them to become scientists. After Arthur dies, he continues to appear to Sheldon in dreams dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi to dispense advice (however unhappy he is that the outfit doesn’t include underwear, just the robe and light saber, with which he impales himself in one episode—he’s dead so it doesn’t hurt).
Beyond the sitcom lineage, the show weaves real life figures from sci-fi, comic books, and science into the narratives. Wil Wheaton (Star Trek TNG) appears often as Sheldon’s antagonist (Sheldon yells “WHEATON” the way Shatner yelled “KHAN” in the second Star Trek movie); Brent Spiner/Mr. Data and LeVar Burton/Geordi from Next Generation also make appearances. Going back to roots, William Shatner participates in a Dungeons and Dragons game at Wil Wheaton’s house (other players include Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Kevin Smith). Leonard Nimoy supplies the voice for a Mr. Spock action figure that speaks to Sheldon. Adam Nimoy interviews Sheldon for a documentary he’s making about his father. Adam West (Batman in the sixties) plays himself, hired to attend Sheldon’s birthday party; in the car as the main cast nerds drive West to the party, they debate and rank their favorite Batman actors. Mark Hamill officiates Sheldon and Amy’s wedding, replacing Wheaton at the last minute after Howard finds and returns his lost dog, Bark Hamill (named by fans). Note how actors from “nerd genres” seem drawn to play themselves on the show (didn’t hurt that the show ran for twelve seasons, attracting a fan base that valued and cared about what nerds value and care about).
Assorted scientists and tech figures appear as themselves, everyone from Stephen Hawking to Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak. Stan Lee and Neil Gaiman turn up at the comic book store the nerds frequent. In the lead-up to the Nobel Prize for Physics, a cadre of famous physicists (at least famous to people who follow Physics) show up in episodes, likely agreeing to appear because the show features scientist characters (and some audience members) who know who they are and understand their work—and they knew in their souls that no other sitcom would have a story arc with roles for them. With all these appearances, BBT brings together work, play, and fandom spheres of nerd-dom, dramatizing a capacious, all -encompassing nerd world.
Bonus Content #3: A Quick Note on Bildungsromcom
In Groundhog Day, a classic Bildungsromcom, Bill Murray’s weatherman Phil becomes a (new) man through his commitment to Andie McDowell’s Rita, learning through repetition to care for the community (“nobody dies today”), mastering new skills (playing piano and making an ice sculpture of Rita’s face), but most of all getting over himself and his selfishness. The repeated day forces him to contemplate what drove his previous narcissistic self, in some ways a parallel to the episode structure of a long-running sitcom. Murray’s Peter Venkman, a shady professor, has a similar arc in Ghostbusters. Grosse Pointe Blank perhaps provides us the movie closest to the mash-up genre of Chuck, with John Cusack’s Martin Blank as a version of Sarah Walker and Minnie Driver as a version of Chuck, with romcom conventions mashed up with killer-for-hire conventions—we get laughs and a high body count as Martin comes of age and aims to start anew with Debbie after reconnecting at their high school tenth reunion. Martin’s recruitment after high school into government spy/assassin work provides a parallel to Chuck’s derailed recruitment by the CIA and Sarah’s adoption/abduction as a teenager into the CIA training program that turns her into a lethal operative. Martin, when explaining his dark path to Debbie, tells her that the questionnaire he completed when applying to the military revealed that he lacked a moral sense, which led to his diversion to special ops; when the movie begins, he’s set himself up as an independent contractor who kills for money.
