The Big Bang Theory The Complete Seventh Season (Blu-ray Review)

The Big Bang Theory, now entering its eighth season this year on CBS (season premiere 9/22), has long been one of my girlfriend’s favorite primetime shows.  She’s actually the one responsible for making me such a huge fan too.  Although I have to be honest.  Five years went by before I even watched a single episode of the series.  It just looked so stupid to me.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big geek in life much like the male cast, but the fact that a hot blonde could ever want anything to do with these nerds was never plausible to me.  So I remember one Thanksgiving at my parent’s house and they had The Big Bang Theory on the television in the backroom.  It caught my eye because I heard the guys on the show talking about an outing they were planning to see the remastered version of The Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theaters.  Pretty much if you say anything Indiana Jones or Star Wars related you have my undivided attention.  After liking what I saw and hearing my parents and Kori talk about the show so lovingly I was convinced I had to give it a whirl so without any regrets I purchased the first five episodes of season one off of iTunes and I too fell in love with the boys.  So it’s with great pride, enthusiasm and joy that I present to you my coverage of The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Seventh Season Blu-ray review.

Season 

The Big Bang Theory The Complete Seventh Season releases on Blu-ray Combo Pack this Tuesday, September 16th courtesy of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.  The Blu-ray set contains all 24 episodes on Blu-ray, DVD and UltraViolet HD from the seventh season plus over an hour of extras to get your geek on with.  The hit CBS sitcom stars series favorites Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch.  The seventh season of The Big Bang Theory also blesses us with such guest stars such as Bob Newhart, reprising his role as Professor Proton, Will Wheaton, Carrie Fisher and James Earl Jones as themselves and series regular Laurie Metcalfe as Sheldon’s (Parsons) mom. 

The seventh season of The Big Bang Theory opens with Leonard (Galecki) returning from his North Sea expedition to find that his relationship with Penny (Cuoco) involves more beta-testing than he’s ever done in a lab.  Ha!  That was funny!  You can laugh!  Howard’s (Helberg) attachment issues with the women in his life (his hilarious mom who we still never see and wife Bernadette) and Raj’s (Nayyar) social breakthrough with women in general provide even more laughs.  However, in the end Bernadette (Rauch), Amy (Bialik) and Penny all still stand loyal by the men in their life, even when they’re sitting in marathon role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.  Perhaps, making the show even funnier because of his character’s more appearances this season, comic book store owner Stuart (Kevin Sussman) really reels the laughs in with his cracks on his depression and suicidal tendencies.  I know those subjects are not funny, but it’s all n good humor and you can’t help but laugh.  Trust me.  You will!  All in all, it’s still a great television show to geek out with and take in all the cool collectibles in the background, many of which I personally own resulting in the show hitting even closer to home for me.

The seventh season of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory aired on CBS from September 26, 2013 to May 15, 2014.  And just in case you have been sheltered from the world these past seven years I want to kind of give you an idea just how popular this CBS television show is.  I bet you can’t walk into any major department store nowadays without seeing a Bazinga t-shirt or a Big Bang Theory item here or there.  The show most definitely interjects its own brand of pop culture into our retail markets.  Just this past March, The Big Bang Theory was renewed for an additional three years, extending it through the 2016–17 season for a total of ten seasons.  I really hope it doesn’t end there, but how many shows can you name that have stood the test of time and remained strong over ten seasons?  Well, the last three season remain to be seen yet, but if the seven previous seasons have anything to say about it I think we’re in pretty good hands.  Don’t you think?  Plus Parsons, Galecki and Cuoco all have brand spanking new million dollar per episode contracts.  So all in all, there’s a lot to celebrate here for a show that’s remained strong for seven seasons now and also a lot left to look forward to in my opinion.  

I guess you say a lot goes down during this seventh season of The Big Bang Theory.  There are marriage proposals, train rides, Comic-Con, partying with James Earl Jones, Penny in a gorilla suit and even a Star Wars flavored episode that brings back Bob Newhart as Sheldon’s science idol Professor Proton.  Of course there’s a hell of a lot more ground to cover here, but I just wanted to whet your appetite in lieu of spoiling anything for the fans waiting to check this out on Blu-ray for the very first time.  Perhaps I can spend just a brief moment talking about a few of my favorite episodes from the seventh season.  One involves Sheldon’s contemplation of whether to purchase a Sony PlayStation 4 gaming console or the Microsoft X-Box One.  He even dragged his girlfriend Amy into this hilarious debacle, which reminded me so much of a situation I could easily find myself in because of my indecisiveness.  The other episode is the May 4th episode produced in cooperation with Industrial Light and Magic themselves.  It was great to see the ways in which the show’s producers strived to painstakingly reproduce the special effects of the films and pay homage to the original trilogy (there’s even a special feature dedicated to this subject that we’ll talk about in greater detail down below). If nothing else, you will now know the order in which you should watch the complete Star Wars saga whenever you have such a marathon.  It’s called The Machete Order, but quite honestly I think three films one day is enough for me.

I lied.  I should have said I wanted to talk about several episodes up above.  If you have not seen this season yet, tread carefully here as this paragraph contains SPOILERS.  The final episode of the season really humanized the show for me.  Let me put it in context for you.  Leonard and Penny tell the group that they are engaged, and while they are happy, everyone makes a bigger deal that Raj and his new squeeze Emily had sex.  Leonard’s mother is unmoved that he is engaged, but accepts Penny because Sheldon is really fond of her (she really loves the intellect of Sheldon if you couldn’t tell).  Sheldon is angered because the university will not let him change his field of study and considers quitting (we’ve kind of all been there in life).  He is further upset that Leonard and Penny do not want to live with him after they are married, thus breaking up the brosome we’ve come to know, grow with and love over the past seven years.  Sheldon is disturbed at Amy’s suggestion that they could live together and his last nerve is broken when he discovers that Stuart’s comic book store has burned down.  There’s a lot going already in 22-minute sitcom huh?  But wait!  There’s more!  Sheldon decides to leave town to figure out what he wants.  Leonard objects, but Penny says that they should let him go.  I have to tell you it was closest the show ever came to provoking a tear jerking moment when goodbyes were said at the train station.  It was really, really sad.  However, Sheldon calls Amy to say he is all right, after which a distraught Amy attacks Leonard with a pillow for letting Sheldon go.  And believe it or not, it gets even better before we cut for the eighth season of The Big Bang Theory.  Howard’s mother (offscreen Carol Ann Susi) keeps driving away the nurses hired to look after her, even poor, “penniless” Penny rejects the job.  Howard offers Stuart the job, giving him money and a place to stay while he gets back on his feet after losing his store.  Stuart loves the job and develops a surprising closeness with Howard’s mother.  THE END.

With all that being said, make no doubt about it, I heart The Big Bang Theory.  If laughter is the best medicine in life, then sign me up for three more seasons here.  I’ll take all the helpings I can get.  Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same way I do though.  In what they tout as the “real” geek community The Big Bang Theory is called out for being “fake geek,” not accurate and too commercialized.  I don’t think anyone else on the WSB staff, besides Kori and I, even care about the show.  So it’s a conundrum to me.  We all share the same passion and love for pop culture phenomena and geek notions/ideas as presented on the sitcom, but somewhere there’s a disconnect.  Oh well!  It could really be much worse.  I could be stuck reviewing an entire season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. like Brandon Peters had to do here.  Yuck!  I chalk it up to each their own.  I get where some of the arguments are coming from in regards to The Big Bang Theory haters, but I don’t let their beliefs and thoughts infiltrate my own.  This is one of those rare shows, like Seinfeld in my opinion, that I can turn on anytime/anywhere and even if I have seen the particular episode countless times I still laugh whole heartedly.  For me, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

So when you open your Blu-ray Combo Pack of The Big Bang Theory you’ll find a total of five optical discs.  We’ll talk a little more about these in greater detail down below in the Special Features section, but all I want to cover here before moving onto the vitals of the Blu-ray discs is the fact that Episodes 1-12 (as listed in order below) can be found on the first Blu-ray disc where as Episodes 13-24 are housed on the second Blu-ray disc.  I did not care about the DVDs so you’re on your own there.

1.	“The Hofstadter Insufficiency”
2.	“The Deception Verification”
3.	“The Scavenger Vortex”
4.	“The Raiders Minimization”
5.	“The Workplace Proximity”
6.	“The Romance Resonance”
7.	“The Proton Displacement”
8.	“The Itchy Brain Simulation”
9.	“The Thanksgiving Decoupling”
10.	“The Discovery Dissipation”
11.	“The Cooper Extraction”
12.	“The Hesitation Ramification”
13.	“The Occupation Recalibration”
14.	“The Convention Conundrum”
15.	“The Locomotive Manipulation”
16.	“The Table Polarization”
17.	“The Friendship Turbulence”
18.	“The Mommy Observation”
19.	“The Indecision Amalgamation”
20.	“The Relationship Diremption”
21.	“The Anything Can Happen Recurrence”
22.	“The Proton Transmogrification”
23.	“The Gorilla Dissolution”
24.	“The Status Quo Combustion”

 

Video 

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment knocks it out of the ballpark here with the best looking video presentation yet of The Big Bang Theory.  You don’t believe me?  That’s fine.  I half expected that and in preparation of your doubts I have packed my Blu-ray review full of reasons down below as to why I’m smitten here in this category.  Let’s examine this.

• Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 1.78:1
• Clarity/Detail:  The one thing that initially scared me about this set was the OMG factor that they jammed 24 episodes on only two Blu-ray discs and even managed to squeeze extras in them too.  I feared there wouldn’t be much breathing room at all.  And after reading Kenneth Brown’s video section in his review over here for the sixth season I was cringing at how this was going to look on the Blu-ray format.  While I kind of think Mr. Brown was a little too harsh in his criticism it all goes back to that eye of the beholder notion or way of looking at things from one’s own perspective.  I actually found the detail in this presentation to be impeccable from all the textures in the clothes, hair, the flower patterns in Penny’s blouses and even the food in which they eat at the university cafeteria.  Perhaps some of the richest detail can also be found and captured in the backgrounds as I can clearly make out geek items and collectibles that I too own.  It’s like little Easter Eggs in the show for me.
• Depth:  Due to the rich clarity discussed above the onscreen characters really pop of the screen three-dimensionally for me.  I love it because it all brings me back to my favorite Blu-ray review saying, it has that Blu-ray pop we all know and love!
• Black Levels: Like a comic book, the black levels here are all deep and inky throughout.  I have absolutely no problems here.
• Color Reproduction: I found the colors in this video presentation to be like the show itself, rich, full of sprite and vibrant!  Howard is still able to pull off colors and color schemes that I can never imagine myself ever having the courage to try.
• Flesh Tones: I did notice a few oversaturated moments here or there.  However, for the most part, the skin tones were all natural and accurate.
• Noise/Artifacts:  Nothing negative really jumps out at me here.  I can’t say I was distracted by any blemish and/or anomaly and that’s a good thing!

Audio 

The Big Bang Theory The Complete Seventh Season arrives on Blu-ray with a rather front heavy surround track, but that’s to be expected considering the nature of the CBS show.  After all, it’s a comedy not an action thriller.  So let’s peel back the layers and dissect them deeper.

• Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0
• Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
• Dynamics:  This show is that of a television comedy so don’t expect any miracles here.  While we want the dynamics to be larger than life here, there’s nothing wrong with them just being satisfactory either when it comes to grading comedies.    Don’t get me wrong, there are some noticeable moments, but for the most part it is what it is, a bunch of geeks sitting around in an apartment having fun with their inner geeks and awkward social insecurities.
• Low Frequency Extension: As I kind of covered up above just now in the dynamics section there are very few robust moments here.  However, one such moment where I did notice the subwoofer kick in was in the very first episode where the mythical Kraken hysterically comes out of the water and consumes Leonard into the angry, rainy seas he was voyaging through.
• Surround Sound Presentation:  I kind of blew my proverbial load in regards to the surround sound of this package while talking about the LFE channel up above.  Rest assured, the surrounds are there, but you have to seek them out.  Quite honestly, you really don’t notice the rears at all until the traditional transition screens appear that catapult us the viewers from one scene to another or that segregate the commercial breaks.  That familiar swishing and swirling sound creeps up and infects the rears behind you.  But yeah!  I wanted more!
• Dialogue Reproduction:  Top notch!  It’s a comedy we’re watching here and you couldn’t ask for anything more.  From the laugh track to the clear and intelligible dialogue throughout not one spoken word was missed here.

Extras 

The Big Bang Theory The Complete Seventh Season hits the Blu-ray format with a total of nine special features that will take you a little over an hour to digest.  However, most importantly, in addition to the seventh season spread across two Blu-ray discs, you’ll also find three DVD discs in here that house the entire season too (I did not review these) and the coveted redemption code to redeem and watch the entire season anywhere you go utilizing playback software capable of streaming or downloading UltraViolet HD Digital Copies.  That alone to me is worth its weight in gold, proverbial price of admission and makes this a special features package to care about.  So without further ado, let’s tackle and discuss the remaining 9 bonus supplements you’ll find spread across the two Blu-ray discs.  For your reading and future playback convenience I have also identified which special feature appears on which Blu-ray disc.

• String Theory Serenade (Disc 1, HD, 7:01) – There’s an episode where Bernadette is quarantined and Howard Wolowitz serenades her.  This one takes a closer look at the crafting of that song.
• James Earl Jones: The Un-Conventional Guest Star (Disc 2, HD, 5:39) – This one takes a closer look at how much fun James Earl Jones had when he guest starred on the one season seven episode of The Big Bang Theory.
• BBTea Time (Disc 2, HD, 3:08) – This one is kind of a throwaway in my opinion, but here’s what happens when Kaley, Mayim and Melissa encounter three young girls who resemble them.
• The Big Bang Theory‘s May the 4th (Disc 2, HD, 15:15) – In honor of Star Wars Day, The Big Bang Theory enlists the help of FX studio Industrial Light and Magic to recreate Professor Proton as a ghost much like that of Obi Wan Kenobi in the original trilogy.  This one was my second favorite extra here because it shows the length of detail they all took this episode to make it as authentic as possible to the Star Wars films
• The Big Cendrowski: Backstage with the Coolest Director and Cast in the Universe (Disc 2, HD, 16:06) – Out of all these supplements (minus the UV Digital Copies) I found this one to be the most interesting and worthy of my time.  Here we get to hang with the director of the show (he has been doing this for 7 years now) and witness a typical Monday on the set and see firsthand how the show gets made.  I have to be honest with you all.  It looks like an absolute blast to be part of this.  How can work be so much fun?  I guess you just need to watch this special feature to answer that question.  In addition to witnessing some of the tapings of scenes we are also greeted with cast and crew interviews, behind-the-scenes pranks, etc.
• 2013 Comic-Con Panel (Disc 1, HD, 29:10) – This one is just what the title implies, The Big Bang Theory complete Comic-Con panel from 2013.  The Big Bang Theory Comic-Con panel included Melissa Rauch, Steve Molaro, Bill Prady, Dave Goetsch, Eric Kaplan, Jim Reynolds, Steve Holland, Maria Ferrari and David Salzburg.
• Johnny Galecki Crashes the BBT Writers Panel (Disc 1, HD, 3:29) – Witness Johnny crash the 2013 Comic-Con writers panel dressed as Boushh the Ubese bounty hunter from Star Wars Return of the Jedi.
• Gag Reel (Disc 2, HD, 8:51) – This one was a bit long for me.  It’s funny at times to watch actors flub their lines, but after 5+ minutes of it I grow a little weary.  So this one is nothing more than the usual stuff you would expect to find on a gag reel, but super-sized in length.  There’s some good moments here, but for the most part it’s all flubs.

Summary 

Life is hard.  It’s stressful.  Sometimes I don’t have the freedom or opportunities to do the things I want in life.  Thankfully, there’s The Big Bang Theory.  The CBS sitcom affords me an escape in life away from the unpleasantries of it all sometimes.  Most of the time my girlfriend and I can be found rocking The Big Bang Theory during dinner on her MacBook Pro.  With the supplied UltraViolet HD Digital Copies viewing The Big Bang Theory anywhere is a breeze.  One week I watched the first two seasons without even thinking much about it.  It’s like the perfect distraction I guess you can say.  The show is like Sanford & Son or Seinfeld to me.  It’s wildly entertaining and it never grows old on me.  I can’t say that for very many shows.  The haters out there will say what they want, but the person that matters most is myself and I know how to let the good times roll with the four coolest geeks in Pasadena, Howard, Sheldon, Leonard and Raj.  The Big Bang Theory The Complete Seventh Season releases on Blu-ray and DVD in two days.  If you like what you read up above, please help support our site by clicking below to bring the set home and check it all out!  Thanks for reading!  Enjoy!

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The Big Bang Theory

The Complete Seventh Season

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