TV review
If you told me before watching “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe,” the bafflingly slight sci-fi comedy spinoff of the long-running sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” was made in an alternate dimension to be so hollow that it alerted viewers in this one that the apocalypse was coming, I’d have said that was ridiculous. Surely a show like this wouldn’t create a psychological unease so great it could make all who witness it question the trajectory of the world as we know it, right?
And then I watched it. Over the course of 10 episodes, following Stuart (Kevin Sussman) — the nebbish, nerdy owner of the comic book store from “The Big Bang Theory” — as he bumbles his way through various dimensions in an attempt to save a universe that’s fallen out of balance made me ponder if something fractured in our own. Though it almost entirely jettisons the often forced formal rhythms of its sitcom predecessor and the overbearing laugh track accompanying it, “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” somehow feels even more fake.
Some of this is by design: The show’s sci-fi premise and the intentionally ridiculous scenarios it creates ensure you’re never meant to take it seriously. Unfortunately, it all falls into such a formulaic pattern — the characters discover a new place, drag out a single joke for an episode, then move on — that it ends up blurring together. Where the idea of an action sci-fi surrounding a character like Stuart would be a fun throwaway gag in something like “30 Rock,” stretching it into a series offers painfully diminishing returns.
Much of this stems from the stiff meta quality it insists on, its winks to the audience more wearisome than whimsical. There are incredibly obnoxious and ugly title sequences that speak directly to us about how wacky it all supposedly is, what can only loosely be called jokes about comic superheroes of old and a prevailing sense that this is all just a bit the show’s creators are seeing how long they can run with. It’s abstractly silly, but never pays off for more than an occasional chuckle that soon gets lost in the many more groan-worthy moments.
Most frustratingly, many of the episodes play out like fan fiction of “The Big Bang Theory” rather than a truly fun sci-fi comedy in its own right. In addition to Sussman returning as Stuart, the show brings back Lauren Lapkus as Denise, Brian Posehn as Bert and John Ross Bowie as Barry to set them off on a tiresome adventure that’s heavily reliant on iffy visual effects and lacking in humor. The reason this is all happening surrounds some nonsense about another key character from the original sitcom creating a device that now threatens the universe. However, what’s even more nonsensical is the perfunctory parade of cameos, which are never actually used to create genuine comedy and instead become closed loops of empty reference.
It’s not just that the series is only barely a comedy, with each oddly short and yet overlong episode playing like a one-note sketch that has been stretched to a breaking point. No, it’s something deeper than that. This is a show that, the more it goes on, the more it plays like a simulacrum of better movies and shows. Smashing together a hodgepodge of references — beginning as a “Fallout”-esque dystopia before lazily bouncing around to poke fun at everything from classics like “The Matrix” to, based on one particularly eye-rolling needle drop, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” — it’s less a parody than a genre riff that’s perpetually out of tune.
Even as it throws a lot at the wall to see what sticks, “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” ultimately plays as one big shrug that can’t be bothered to scrape together enough madcap sci-fi silliness or meta jokes to leave much of an impression. For all the universes the show sporadically takes us into and the inescapable strangeness of its existence, it never finds one that’s actually worth saving.
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