The Big Bang Theory writers room panel is one of the best things about San Diego Comic-Con each year, and this year's panel conversation was no exception. Although at times The Big Bang Theory characters seem a little exaggerated or over-the-top, this weekend the writers team confirmed that several real-life stories have made their way into The Big Bang Theory plot. The first is a story about misremembering birthdays. The second involves a Fitbit. You can check out the full stories, below.
Showrunner Steve Molaro kind-of threw his writers under the bus when asked what real-life plots made their way into the Big Bang Theory. The showrunner can recall at least two times during Season 9 when real life informed the comedy's fictional storyline. The first has to do with Jeremy Howe, whose wife can't remember the actual date of his birthday. Here's what the writer had to say:
That's based on my wife. She knows it's one of two days. Either the 20th or the 21st. Hilariously, I love it when she gets it wrong and I've shared it with [the writers]. So, when we need a Leonard and Penny story, Steve Holland pitched it, 'What if we take Jeremy's wife not knowing his birthday and make it into an episode?... After it aired, she actually got it wrong, again.
The birthday plotline came up in "The Platonic Permutation," when Leonard and Penny go to a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time as a married couple. Penny needs to look something up on Leonard's iPad, but when he tells her the password is his birthday, she can't figure out how to unlock the device. He rubs this in further by rattling off a slew of random facts about Penny's life, including her birthday!
That's not the only real-life story that made it into the latest season. Other series writer Saladin Patterson also admitted in the writing room that he tracks his wife with his Fitbit, which also wormed its way into the plot.
You know I was sharing with the room---first mistake---that I had gotten a lot of members of my family a Fitbit for Christmas, including myself. And that along with the Fitbit it will send you emails that update you on the number of steps and activities of your family members. I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart... the room turned it into something like I was monitoring every step my wife takes. Maybe I would stop the wrong when the email came in and say, 'Hey guys, guess who beat who this week?'
This didn't totally directly translate into "The Perspiration Implementation," but Bernadette did get Howard a Fitbit hoping to encourage him to exercise more. Like Saladin, she was totally tracking Howard's progress, which meant he went out of the way to build a device that would trick his Fitbit into thinking he was working out when he wasn't. It was pretty fun, and even funnier in retrospect when you look into that story's origins.
The Big Bang Theory has already been renewed for Season 10, and considering the nature of the storytelling on the CBS comedy, we can expect some pretty great stuff to come up. You can find out more about Season 10, here. And check out when your favorites will be returning to TV with the fall TV premiere schedule.
