‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’ Review: ‘Big Bang Theory’ Spinoff

It is possible to imagine, without excessive strain, a version of HBO Max’s The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails to Save the Universe that’s a total charmer. 

On the earlier series, Kevin Sussman’s Stuart Bloom was a nerd even among nerds, a comic book store owner so painfully awkward he made Leonard Hofstadter look like Travis Kelce. The new show, then, offers Stuart a chance to redeem himself by restoring not just his world but a whole zany multiverse of them. If you’ve got a soft spot for misfits done good, or for genre-hopping, mind-bending sci-fi nuttiness, this should theoretically hit the mark.

In reality, however — or at least in our reality — the results are rather less inspiring. Occasionally amusing but more slapdash than inventive, gamely performed but irredeemably sour, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is a skippable addition to Chuck Lorre’s ever-expanding solar system of Big Bang Theory spinoffs.

By the time we catch up with Stuart in the Kyle Newacheck-directed premiere, his universe is already in dire need of saving. Pasadena is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of burnt-out ruins and mutant monsters. Improbably, Stuart’s shop remains standing, though the day-to-day business of running it has changed: Books are bartered for with cans of beans or cat food, and a stereotypically geeky debate about whether Hawkeye belongs in the Avengers unstereotypically ends with one longtime regular (Ryan Cartwright’s Kyle) stabbing another (Josh Brener’s Trevor) to death.

But salvation — or possibly doom, or in any case an unexpected change of pace — arrives in the form of another Stuart from another reality. Other Stuart informs Regular Stuart that this hellscape is the result of a malfunctioning quantum entanglement machine that only he can fix. One explosive clash with armed goons later, Stuart is in possession of a device that looks more or less like a microwave but has the ability to propel them through different dimensions with the push of a button. 

Since Stuart has no say in the destination, much of the upbeat, wacky appeal of Lorre, Zak Penn and Bill Prady’s series lies in finding out what each new world will have in store for Stuart and his traveling companions: best friend Bert (Brian Posehn), nemesis Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and once and future love interest Denise (Lauren Lapkus). 

Some are enjoyably silly, like the one where they’re all centaurs. Several draw on well-worn genre clichés, like the one where magic is real or Pasadena’s an active combat zone. (In one of the series’ sharper jokes, a commander invokes future generations of war re-enactors as inspiration to embrace a suicidal mission: “Afterwards, they’ll go out for beer and wings and talk about how you died a noble death.”) Blessedly few reference IP owned by HBO Max’s parent company, though they’re enough to give off a whiff of Ready Player One-esque cynicism. And one or two, toward the end of the season, are genuinely clever in ways that could portend a more ambitious and more poignant season two…

But probably won’t. Almost every 22-minute chapter here follows the same comfortably familiar outline, with the leads getting acclimated to a new universe, getting tangled up in a life-or-death showdown and then fleeing to the next one. Almost every one hinges on high-profile cameos, which is fun at first but increasingly feels like the show distrusting its own protagonist to shoulder leading man duties.

With each successive leap, Stuart grows closer to the hero he’s meant to be. The guy who was once so self-deprecating that he regards his mission as sus precisely because it was given to him by a variation of himself (“When did we start listening to me?”) evolves over 10 episodes into one who declares he and his friends are “not background characters anymore,” and refuses to take an out when one’s handed to him. Sussman plays Stuart’s evolution gracefully, slowly dialing up the confidence without losing sight of the nervousness and dorkiness so central to the character.

But Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’s understanding of heroism ends there, with what it means for Stuart’s self-image. There’s no curiosity about the universes Stuart is passing through, no sense that he registers the untold billions or trillions of lives he’s saving as people rather than abstractions. Even recurring supporting characters like comic book guys Kyle and Trevor, or jockish bro Gary (Tommy Walker), are treated by Stuart and company as one-dimensional NPCs — the latter despite being subjected to increasingly horrible deaths for the unforgivable karmic crime of dating Denise after Stuart did. 

Nowhere is this indifference to people more apparent than in the treatment of female characters (at least the ones who aren’t big splashy cameos) as rewards or status symbols or spoils of war. One male character boasts of amassing a harem by offering food to the starving and threatening to murder the unwilling. Another, having arrived in a land where monogamy is unheard of, essentially tricks a woman into marriage. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is self-aware enough to understand the former as a creep, albeit a “funny” one, but seems to regard the latter as akin to an overgrown toddler finally getting the toy he’s always wanted. In its portrayal of cross-gender relations, the series is consistently cruel to women, insulting to men, empathetic toward nobody and cynical about everything.

Not even Denise, the sole female lead, is immune. Having been turned down by one Denise, Stuart goes on to “claim” (his word, not mine) a different Denise from a different universe — and then, via some interdimensional BS that would make Bear from Obsession green with envy, speed-runs his way into a committed relationship without any risk or effort at all. Sussman’s innate sweetness and Lapkus’ easygoing warmth does some to help sell their characters’ connection, but not enough. To the end, the romance is nothing more than a prize for Stuart for trying to save the universe. Whether he fails, as the title suggests, or succeeds, is almost beside the point. The only thing Stuart Fails to Save the Universe actually cares about is whether Stuart is able to save himself.