By Rebecca Murray, 20, reporting from Saint Augustine, Florida, on a show who's ending you just can't guess
Television shows, even the generally good ones, can be filled with characters that are predictable. Girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy is dating someone else and after a lot of trials and tribulations they seem to get together. (Like in Grey's Anatomy you can guess nearly every time what Meredith is going to say next.) Girl is usually either smart and pretty and underestimates her own looks—or the tall, knowingly gorgeous one who feels that no one can see past her exterior.
So I started looking for more original TV. I had my first success with the Big Bang Theory, and I found myself downloading as many episodes from iTunes as I could. I don't normally say this, but watching this show is worth being broke.
The show centers on Leonard and his roommate Sheldon—extremely intelligent scientists and full-time geeks—and their new neighbor Penny, a waitress in the cheesecake factory. As you can imagine, there's a love interest. Leonard tries his hardest to impress Penny, but most of the time fails because of unwanted help from his completely OCD and very finicky roommate.
The banter is original, all the characters (including the mostly normal Penny) are lovable, and I usually find myself laughing at Sheldon's very scientific approach to women and romance: "At least now you can retrieve the black box from the twisted smoldering wreckage that was once your fantasy of dating her and analyze the data so that you don't crash into geek mountain again." This Big Bang's a great way to, if not collide with, get that fun occasional bump with your inner nerd. —Rebecca Murray