Clashing parents heat up 'Big Bang Theory' season finale
The Big Bang Theory aims for comedic nuclear fusion in Thursday’s ninth-season finale (CBS, 8 p.m. ET/PT), mixing stars from hit sitcoms on TV’s most-watched comedy.
Taxi’s Judd Hirsch makes his first appearance, joining returning guest stars Christine Baranski (an Emmy winner for Cybill) and Roseanne’s Laurie Metcalf for a family gathering that's anything but warm and fuzzy.
Hirsch says he was a Big Bang fan before Johnny Galecki, who plays Leonard, asked him to play Leonard’s father.
“I said, ‘I love that show,’ ” Hirsch says. “That it has lasted this long is a tribute to how well-written and acted it is.”
Hirsch plays anthropologist Alfred Hofstadter, who arrives for the delayed marriage celebration of his son and wife Penny (Kaley Cuoco), months after they eloped.
Hirsch says Galecki told him that his Alex Reiger, the level-headed guy at the center of an eccentric Taxi crew, influenced his portrayal of Leonard. “It’s not the same guy but the same position, the one of common sense.”
Alfred and ex-wife Beverly (Baranski) can’t stand each other, creating tension at a get-together that includes the whole Bang gang, including Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and his mother, Mary (Metcalf). To complicate matters, Alfred hits it off with Mary, despite the clash of his scientific viewpoint and her religious beliefs.
“There is an unexpected attraction,” says executive producer Steven Molaro, who says the tentative plan is to pick up the story with the guest stars in the fall.
Baranski, who worked with Bang co-creator Chuck Lorre on Cybill and just finished CBS’s The Good Wife, describes the Beverly-Alfred relationship as “horrible,” likening Leonard’s parents to the viciously battling couple in 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “They don’t even care (what they say). They’re emotionally so exposed,” Baranski says. “It’s a dysfunctional, toxic mix.”
“It doesn’t surprise me that Chuck would have created such a giant hit with The Big Bang Theory. It’s truly witty and it’s all about fundamental human connections,” says the actress, adding that the comedy turn “delayed my going into mourning for (the end of) The Good Wife.”
Attracting the three high-caliber guestsis “a mind-blowing thrill, says Molaro. “The minute Judd walked onto the stage, I heard Kaley (say), ‘He really does look like he could be (Leonard’s) father.’ It just felt right.”
Thursday’s episode concludes a season that featured big changes for Bang’s awkward geniuses: Penny and Leonard got married; Sheldon and Amy (Mayim Bialik) had sex for the first time; and Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) are preparing for a baby.
“I like that we can do more mature stories about babies and weddings and at the same time Sheldon is having a fight about people cutting the line at a movie screening,” Molaro says, referring to last week’s episode.
Bang is renewed through next season, but Molaro says the show could go further, if Warner Bros. can lure the actors into new contracts. “There’s a lot of people that have a say in that, but it certainly looks like it will have a life beyond (Season) 10.”