TBBT’s Most Annoying Plot Detail Has an Actually Great Idea Behind It

For more than a decade of its run, The Big Bang Theory has seen many things come and go, but only one particular part of the plot remained untouched right up to the show’s ending back in 2019.

Ever since the sitcom’s season 1, the characters have been vocal about their discontent regarding the building elevator that the series itself has never seen functioning. However, things finally changed in The Big Bang Theory’s season 12, with the building’s tenants using every minor opportunity to go up and down in the elevator that at that moment had to make it up to the characters’ suffering from climbing the stairs for years.

Though it always seemed to be something astonishingly audacious to keep the elevator broken for 12 years in a row, the show’s creators had a very clear purpose for the never-functioning device, and it’s actually what has given the entire series the best moments that it ever had.

Every new season of The Big Bang Theory saw its characters encountering each other in the building’s hall every so often and thus climbing the stairs together to come back home. Since Penny, Leonard and Sheldon’s apartments were on the fourth floor, the characters had to come up with a small discussion theme just to avoid awkward silence while going up the stairs.

The rare scenes that gave viewers some precious moments of Penny and Sheldon arguing about something or Leonard and Penny mocking Sheldon while he wasn’t there with them eventually turned out to have the show’s funniest jokes or most insightful conversations that later on affected the characters’ life in one way or another.

As The Big Bang Theory’s co-creator Bill Prady once revealed, he and Chuck Lorre felt like they needed to provide the show set with a specific location for the characters to talk at, but Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment didn’t seem to be that good after all.

Prady then remembered that while he was working on Dharma and Greg (also alongside Lorre) there was a specific street set that served for nothing else but for the characters’ conversations.

As the creator later put it, he and Lorre “tried to do that at Big Bang and it was just too much real estate and we started talking about, ‘What if they always had to walk up the stairs?’”.

The Big Bang Theory’s elevator and stairs eventually became more than just a mere location. The latter provided the audience with the funniest jokes and the former’s comeback as a functioning device was met with a raving reaction from the fans, appearing to be one of the best moments of the sitcom’s ending.

Source: WonderCon