Warning: this article contains spoilers for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe season 1, episode 10, “Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience.”
As the season winds down, the four lead characters of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe are abruptly dropped into the comic book store. It’s the version viewers remember from The Big Bang Theory, complete with that laugh-track feel.
For a finale, that’s a bold move. Now the people behind the series have explained what drove the decision.
Why go back at all
In an interview with Deadline, creators Chuck Lorre, Zak Penn and Bill Prady were asked about the origin of the idea and whether the scene was intended as a tribute to the original show. According to Penn, paying homage played a role, though it was never the guiding purpose.
“Yeah, that was definitely part of it. These guys [Lorre and Prady] have a lot to say about it, so it was pretty fertile ground. I don’t think we said at the beginning of the season, we must comment on the sitcom, that wasn’t a goal,” Penn said.
Lorre’s logic was more straightforward, and he seemed to relish it. Once the series had already trapped its characters inside a comic book, putting them inside a sitcom was fair game.
“If our characters on their adventure, on their journey, could be trapped into a comic book, they could certainly be trapped into a sitcom. I mean, we’ve gone past any boundaries of rationale, and this is a spectacularly cool thing to do, let’s do it. Can we explain it? We’re gonna try, we’re certainly going to try,” Lorre said.
It’s hard to imagine a line that sounds more like Chuck Lorre. He concedes there’s no real logic behind it, then goes ahead regardless.
The set you saw wasn’t the original
Critics have described the series as by far the most daring spin-off in The Big Bang Theory franchise, and the finale makes that case. Getting the meta sequence right demanded considerable effort.
The sitcom sequences were shot outside Stage 25 on the Warner Bros. lot, the place where The Big Bang Theory was made. That might suggest the production simply rolled the old comic book store back onto the stage. That’s not what happened.
According to Prady, the team had to construct the set twice. The first was the single-camera store used throughout the season. The second was a multi-camera version made to capture the traditional sitcom aesthetic.
“We didn’t use the original sets, but you’re right, we had to build. The only way to do this, because a multi-cam set looks different than a single-cam set, is we had to build the set two times. We had our single-cam comic book store that we’ve been using all season with four walls and a ceiling, and on the next stage over at Universal, they built the multi-cam version of that set and the multi-cam version of the stockroom,” Prady said.
They built a fake audience, too
Rebuilding the shop was just one piece of the puzzle. The crew also needed to reproduce the interior of a multi-cam soundstage.
“But they also had to build the interior of a multi-cam soundstage, they had to build audience risers, the sound booth and the lighting booth that sits behind the audience, the camera alley, all of those features of multi-cam stage, they had to build. Our amazing production team actually went over to Georgie and Mandy, which was in production at the time, so that they could copy it and get it right. And it was also a change for the director of photography,” Prady said.
In other words, the team visited the franchise’s other spin-off so they could accurately recreate a replica of their own former workplace. (That’s a rather charming detail.)
Even the cameras had to change
Prady explained that the change in filming approach extended right down to camera movement.
“The camera moves in multi-cam are completely different, the cameras go onto dollies, you have dolly moves that don’t exist in single-cam, and all of that had to be duplicated. So it was a pretty, pretty complicated task,” Prady said.
The finale leaves a number of unanswered questions that Stuart Fails to Save the Universe season 2 could explore. The trip to the stage is no longer among them.
From every indication, the team behind the HBO Max comedy was happy to take on the additional work. Lorre said shooting the season’s closing moments outside the soundstage made for a “fun night.”