After arguing over who’s earned the right to slap their annoying friend, it appears no one gets to - the phone rings. Then, Chekhov’s gun arrives in the promise of a slap: Sheldon told his friends if he fell asleep before the Nobel call came, they could slap him. So what happened? Not much! The Season 12 build-up to Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) winning their Nobel Prize was honored with a sharp cold open that showed what “Big Bang” was capable of when clicking on all cylinders. Wes Anderson's Best Shots: 30 Perfect Images That Define His Career 'Copshop' Breaks Through in Action-Crazy Specialty Box Office Rankings 'I Am the Night': Chris Pine Breaks Down the 'Euphoria of Killing' at TNT's Wild FYC Event
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'Better Things' Review: Season 3 Finale Wraps a Powerful, Unparalleled Ghost Story And as other endgames go horrifically off-the-rails, this one felt refreshingly true to itself. While not as sharp in its dialogue or performances as the mecca of friendship sitcoms, “Friends,” “Big Bang” treated its ending like one precious, yet not too precious, final hour to spend with the gang.
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(Though, it’s quite likely any revival would be part of the WarnerMedia portfolio.) But what “The Big Bang Theory” did best was make time for its characters to just be - to sit and talk and eat and speculate about impossible pop culture pairings or concoct ludicrous big-brained ideas. In 10 years, when the cast’s second careers don’t go as planned and CBS needs to drum up a hit, maybe they will come back.
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Cynics may say these choices were made to preserve any chance of a revival.