Tuesday TV Touchbase: Stuart Fails To Save The Universe

Last week Andrea and I caught up to the season 1 finale of Stuart Fails To Save The Universe.  

How you feel about this show probably depends on your opinion of it's progenitor, Big Bang Theory.

If you hated BBT (and I know you're out there, Dean!), well, I may as well be Sisyphus rolling a rock up a mountain when it comes to the futility of making an appeal for Stuart Fails To Save The Universe.  

I will say that while having a working knowledge of BBT provides a level of (dare I say it) nuance and (I can't be serious) depth to the proceedings, I think it is possible to (let's say) "enjoy" SFTSTU without the BBT connection.  

The universe, nay the multiverse, is in danger and the 4 people least qualified to save it need to save it.  

Stuart, Denise, Bert & Kripke have travelled from universe to universe in a desperate quest to save a broken reality. 

Among the worlds they've encountered:

• A pleasant world of peace and tranquility if you don't mind the electric shock nodules implanted in your neck by our A.I. overlords. Acclaimed film/TV/stage actor Christine Baranski explains everything.   
• Another pleasant world of peace and tranquility free from technology. It's a nice place until Kripke introduces the concept of capitalism.  
• A world where science is a myth and magic is real.
• A world where humans descended from cows. It's like our world but with more eating grass, corn and cud. 
• A world where everyone is a centaur.
• A world where everyone is telepathic.  
• A world inhabited by DC Comics' super heroes and villains. At last, a world that Stuart finally understands. 

And the world they encounter in the season finale:

Where Stuart Fails To Save The Universe is a multi-cam sitcom on CBS where Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke discover they are fictional characters.....

....portrayed by Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lupkus, Brian Poeshn and John Ross Bowie.

It's a bit of a mind fuck.

The season ends with Stuart, Denise, Bert and Kripke leaving the studio where Stuart Fails To Save The Universe is shot and wandering outside into the dark, towards Burbank and an uncertain future.  

What the who where when now? 

Stuart Fails To Save The Universe is admittedly an absurdist mess, one weird ass logic defying Earth after another, a random journey guided by the over riding principle that Stuart somehow started this mess of a fractured and dying reality and it's somehow his responsibility to fix it.   

In addition to Stuart having NO idea how to accomplish any of this, he now has a nemesis, The Adversary, aka "the swirling ball of cosmic shit".   

Is Stuart Fails To Save The Universe a good show? I really don't know.  I like it well enough and it makes me laugh. But I can't help feeling like something crucial is missing, something to bridge the absurdist comedy and the high concept sci-fi.  

After Chuck Lorre, Bill Brady and Zak Penn spent a season throwing stuff at the walls to see what sticks in season 1, maybe season 2 will have a bit more purpose and structure to make some sense of what they built.

SPOILER: the only people from The Big Bang Theory who do not appear in SFTSTU are Howard, Leonard and Sheldon. Otherwise, we do get alternate versions of Raj, Penny, Amy and Bernadette. 

If it's the end of the season for Stuart Fails To Save The Universe, it's also the end of the season for the Official Stuart Fails To Save The Universe Podcast.  For some reason, Andrea insisted we make watching the podcast part of our viewing schedule.

The podcast hosted by Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton actual runs longer than the episodes it covers.  Each nearly hour long podcast has 2 sections, an interview with one or more of the actors from the show and the other half speaking with the production staff who work on the show's costumes, sets and scripts.  

I will say the production staff does deserve kudos for having to create a new set each week for a different universe.  Also commendable is the work they do on the one recurring set in the series, Stuart's comic book shop.  The shop has to be adjusted in ways both subtle and obvious to reflect the particular quirks of a specific universe.

For example, in the centaur world, all the super hero action figures have be transformed into half-horse.  Except Aquaman who is a seahorse. 

Wil and Felicia interviewed Chuck, Bill and Zak a few times where the writing/producing trio make it very obvious their making up shit as they go along.   

Which may explain my issues with the lack of purpose and structure I had with Stuart Fails To Save The Universe.  We'll see if season 2 can remedy that.  

Side note: I recently re-discovered a webseries from Funny Or Die from about 10 years or so back called The Earliest Show starring Lauren Lupkus (Denise from SFTSTU).  Lauren and co-star Ben Schwartz play a pair of TV talk show hosts who anchor a show that broadcasts at 3:00 A.M. The two hosts are way too damn happy to be hosting a show at this ungodly hour.

I had watched this series back in 2016. I was reminded to seek it out again when it came up during an interview with Lauren. 

    

That is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.

Coming up on future editions of the touch base:

• Scrubs
• Lanterns
• Abbott Elementary 
• Blue Skies 
• Batman: Caped Crusader

And more! So much TV, so little time! 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.