Well, that was fast.
We’re just in the middle of the first season of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe and HBO already decided to renew the show for a second season. Well, that’s not that big of a surprise as the show is actually good. But what is a surprise is how good it is when it really shouldn’t. Still, I have been enjoying the show so much so I am glad we’re going to get more of multiverse hopping adventures with Stuart, Bert, Denise and Barry Kripke.
One of the aspect I do enjoy about Stuart Fails To Save The Universe is how they manage to fold in cameos from other characters from The Big Bang Theory. After all, this is a spin-off of The Big Bang Theory so having them show up but in other roles is pretty fun. So far, we’ve seen main characters like Raj, Penny, Bernadette and Amy come in. We’ve even saw some supporting characters like Wil Wheaton, Zack and Ramona Nowitzki appear as well. This opens the door for virtually every character from the Big Bang Theory to show up in Stuart Fails To Save The Universe if Chuck Lorre gives them a call.
So, who else should appear in Stuart Fails To Save The Universe? Of course, the prime choices would be Sheldon, Leonard and Howard but, if you really think about it, they should be reserved for something really big as they’re the ones who built the device that inadvertently created the mess in the first place. Something like the series finale or something on that level. That still leaves a lot of other Big Bang Theory characters and even other characters from that show’s other spinoffs Chuck Lorre can call upon to make a cameo. There’s a lot but I have my eye of five specific characters.
Leslie Winkle used to be one of the more recurring supporting characters from The Big Bang Theory during the show’s first couple of seasons. She was kind of a female version of Leonard but more snarky and sure of herself. While she is friendly to Leonard (and they even became “friends with benefits” for a time), she has shown a lot of derision towards Sheldon. Then again, Leslie has shown to be incredibly smart herself so she does kind of have the right to do that.
Now, I’m not a writer but if I were to plug Leslie Winkle in an episode of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe, I would like her to be something like the leader in a world where males have been wiped off the planet. Sort of like a Y: The Last Man sort of deal. Make it so he captures Stuart, Bert and Barry and orders them to help repopulate the world while Denise tries to save them… with Barry obviously resisting getting saved. Just spitballing here.
#2 Mary Cooper
One of the supporting characters who has shown up a lot in The Big Bang Theory is Sheldon’s mother, Mary Cooper. Although very idealistically different from her son as she is a devout Christian against Sheldon’s atheism, she has proven to be a huge support for, not only her son, but the entire gang as well. Which is why I was pretty bummed out she didn’t appear in the final episode of she show where Sheldon and Amy received their Nobel Prize. What’s up with that, Chuck Lorre? She deserves redemption by giving her a cameo in Stuart Fails To Save The Universe!
Now, once again, if I were to create an episode for her to be in, I would actually go in a very opposite direction for her. I’d still make her super religious but not as Southern Baptist. As Stuart Fails To Save The Universe has gone to post-apocalyptic worlds before, I’d have her run into the gang preaching about their creator: The Atom Bomb. Yeah, it’ll be much like the subterranean human survivors from Beneath The Planet of The Apes. Once again, just spitballing here.
#3 Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye
A lot of prominent scientists have appeared in The Big Bang Theory, so there’s a lot to choose from here. Unfortunately, the most prominent one, Stephen Hawking, has sadly passed away. So, let’s go with squeeze in probably the two other most mainstream names in the field of science today who did clock an appearance in The Big Bang Theory and have them make a cameo in Stuart Fails To Save The Universe. I’m obviously talking about Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.
Unlike the other ones I’ve mentioned here, both Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye wouldn’t have big roles for their cameos. They would be more of a throwaway gag like how Penn and Teller showed up in that one gag from the first episode. However, I would like to maximize the humor aspect so make them be something like simpletons so they would be diametrically opposite of how intelligent they are in real life and have the group comment on how different they are from their world. Keeping it simple for them as this is a simple cameo for them both.
#4 Katie
Let’s go for a deep cut here. Most general audiences probably don’t know that the Big Bang Theory they watched for 12 seasons wasn’t the original version of the show. No, what you’ve been watching was a revision of Chuck Lorre’s original incarnation where Leonard and Sheldon bunked with a street hardened woman named Katie. Test audiences did not like Katie as she was simply too mean and uncaring towards Leonard and Sheldon, who were nothing but nice to her. So, Chuck Lorre did a few tweaks to the character and out came the sweet and charming Penny.
Now, I know Chuck Lorre will never do this but I honestly would like to see an episode of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe where they all travel to the universe where this is the version of The Big Bang Theory. It’s kind of like the world they remember but it’s all topsy-turvy. Raj and Howard wouldn’t be there as they don’t exist in this universe. The gang would meet Katie, who did live with Leonard and Sheldon but she eventually got kicked out because she was too mean to them. Heck, have them run into Katie on that same curb where Leonard and Sheldon saw her in the unaired pilot! Pretty meta, right?
Did you know William Shatner is 95 years old? I didn’t. So I’m not sure if he’s up to doing something like a simple cameo for an HBO show. Still, this is kind of a wish list for me and, since Stuart and William Shatner are actually friends in The Big Bang Theory continuity (as well as other celebrities like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Smith and Joe Manganiello), it would be nice to see all of them make a cameo but that’s a long shot. So, if I had to pick one, it would be Shatner, obviously.
Like with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, I’ll go limit William Shatner’s cameo to a one-off gag but I would really love it if they enter a universe where Star Trek doesn’t exist. After all, Star Trek inspired a lot of sci-fi so things will be off-kilter there in some way. But going back to William Shatner, since Star Trek didn’t exist in that universe, he wouldn’t have become popular because he played Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. No, in this universe, he’s popular because he played TJ Hooker for five seasons! Once again, just a one-off gag.
BONUS: George Cooper, Sr.
As Stuart Fails To Save The Universe deals with the group going to alternate universes, this does give Chuck Lorre a lot of room to explore a lot of “what if…” scenarios within The Big Bang Theory universe. So, my proposal would be to have them go to an alternate timeline where George Cooper, Sr., Sheldon’s father, doesn’t pass away and still lives on to this day.
This would also be a very different universe as, because of the butterfly effect, this would be one where Leonard doesn’t move in with Sheldon. This means Sheldon also doesn’t meet Howard. This leads to the device the group use to move between worlds stops working because Leonard, Sheldon and Howard never built it in the first place. Now, I know it should still work because the machine is technically from a different universe. But if you remember in the episode where science doesn’t work, they had to use magic to power up the machine. So, this does mean the machine can be affected by the events of whatever universe they’re in, meaning they’re stuck in that timeline until they find a way to get the machine to work somehow.
Season finale, anyone?
Are there any other Big Bang Theory characters you would like to make an appearance in Stuart Fails To Save The Universe? Let me know who they are in the comments section below!
3rd World Geeks 