It's Sunday afternoon as I write this. I can't publish this manually, because if I've read my call sheet correctly, I'm currently playing Dr. Isaac Parrish on Eureka. If we're on schedule, I'm working in a scene with Erica, Colin, and Neil. If my experience on the show so far is any indication, I'm having a whole lot of fun right now.
Final If: If I've pushed the right buttons in Typepad, this should have published about one minute after The Wheaton Recurrence finished in the Eastern time zone. If you haven't seen the episode yet, you don't want to click more, because it's going to be spoileriffic.
Yeah, so … Evil Wil Wheaton plays to win, doesn't he? Sheesh.
Because I'm in Canada, and I want to get the most out of Vancouver while I'm here, I'm just going to grab some highlights from my production notes today; the in-depth stuff may come later, once I'm done with Eureka, if any additional details come back into my mind.
Day One
I told a brief story about something really, really funny that happened at the beginning of this day on Radio Free Burrito Episode 23. If you've been looking for an excuse to listen to my podcast, there you go.
From the moment I walked into the stage, I felt embraced and welcomed back, like I was coming home. We settled in for a table read, with about fifty studio and network people listening. It went very well, and my notes say, "I don't think I wrecked any jokes. It's weird to hear my name called out as a character."
I got to pick out my T-shirts again, and since I was already wearing an Electric Sheep shirt from Diesel Sweeties, I suggested that the costume department may want to look at Rich's store for ideas. Just like last time, when I suggested Penny Arcade, I was able to get permission from Rich almost instantly via text message. In the old days, this would have been a complicated, time-consuming, inefficient process involving FAXes, phone calls, and a whole bunch of bullshit. It delights me that it's as simple now as grabbing my phone, sending a text message, and waiting for a reply.
I also have in my notes that I was playing ping pong with Kunal, and that I was "saved by the stage bell." After The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary, I trained with my son Nolan, who is a fantastic and competitive ping pong player. I only rallied with Kunal, but at least I felt competent, which was nice.
When I got home from the set, I wrote:
All day long, the cast and crew made me feel like I was part of their family who they didn't get to see very often, even though I've only been there once before. It was really neat to feel like they were as excited to have me back on the show as I was to be there. I really am a lucky guy.
It was a relaxed day, which I bet is nice for the regulars because they taped a show last night. We started with a table read of the episode (which was hilarious) and then spent the rest of the day running the episode. Just like last time, this is the part of the process where we're making very rough pencil sketches on a sketchpad; we haven't even begun to think about picking out paint and brushes for the final canvas … but that will happen very quickly, probably by the middle of the day tomorrow, because we only have seven working days to take this from a bunch of creative people sitting around a table reading it to an actual show that goes out to millions of people on the magic talking box thingy.
Day Two
So I'm guessing you know about the big reveal in this episode by now, and if you don't, you only have yourself to blame for being spoiled: the breakup of Leonard and Penny was a very big thing for the cast, and I could feel a slightly different energy on the set as a result. I knew that there were very high stakes for the actors and characters, and I was aware of some focused tension that wasn't there when I did Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. I don't mean that we weren't having fun, or that we weren't focused last time, just that everyone was aware of the significance of this episode, and how challenging it is to handle something as serious as a breakup within the context of a comedy. I remember talking with Mark Cendrowski, the director, about it, and he said that there's a tone in this episode that they don't usually hit, so everyone had to make adjustments.
In my notes, I wrote that Jim was teasing Kaley about Maxim. I can't recall specifically what he said, which is really a bummer, but I recall thinking this time and last time that they have a really great relationship, like brother and sister who genuinely like each other but just tease each other at every opportunity. Jim works so hard to make Sheldon come to life, and it's not nearly as easy as he makes it look. The fact that he can do this while joking around with everyone is a testament to his talent and dedication as an actor.
I noticed, again, that no detail is taken for granted or overlooked. Nothing happens "just because." Everything is very specific, and grounded in reality. Johnny and I were talking about his wardrobe, and he told me this wonderful story about what Leonard wears, and why. That's the sort of detailed character work that the audience doesn't ever know about (except in cases like this, where I tell you) but is just one of many parts that must be connected precisely to bring a character to life.
Kaley, Jim, and Johnny were rehearsing the scene in the laundry room. I stood off to one side and watched.
If you recall, the scene begins with Leonard in the room, and Penny walks in to talk with him. We don't know Sheldon is in the hallway until the end of the scene.
So Kaley is offstage with Jim, while Johnny pulls clothes out of the dryer. Suddenly, I hear Kaley shout, "OUCH!"
Jim replies, incredulously, "Why would you even do that?"
To this day, I don't know what she did, but it was frakking hilarious to hear that exchange without being able to see it.
When I got home, I wrote a little bit about the day:
We rehearsed the show again this morning, and then we had our first run through for the producers after lunch. This first run through can be really stressful for some actors (including a rookie version of me) because we haven't had a lot of time with the script to get comfortable with the dialog, work out all the comedy beats, and settle on final blocking. I mean, we've only really run it once, and it can feel like putting on an incomplete performance or doing an underprepared audition for people you really want need to make happy.
I've done several run throughs (seven, total, over two episodes) while working on The Big Bang Theory, though, and it hasn't been stressful at all. In fact, it's been a whole lot of fun, and very informative to me as an actor. See, at some point in the last ten years or so, I realized that the writers and producers are working it out just as much as we are, and that they want it to be awesome just as much as we do; this is why we do the run throughs every day until we tape. Knowing this takes a lot of the pressure off for me.
Day Three
I felt "off" all day. My son was sick, so I was worried about him, and I was upset that Andrew Koenig's body had been found in Stanley Park. I felt distracted all day, and not very funny, especially during the run through.
I wanted to tell Bill and Chuck what was going on, but after we finished the run through, and all the writers and producers huddled together, the "actors need to go away so we can do our work" field was very strong, so I wandered off to my dressing room for a little bit to stay out of the way. When I came back, they were all gone, so I just packed up my stuff and went home for the weekend.
It bothered me, though, that I felt like I hadn't done my job, and I knew that if I didn't talk to Bill about it, it would bother me all weekend, so I called his office. He was gone for the day, but his assistant put me through to his cell phone. I told him how I felt like I was "off" all day and
why, and Bill said, "I'm going to say the best and worst thing possible: we didn't notice." I felt relieved and stupid.
We ran the show again during the first half of the day, and then after lunch, the producers and writers came back for another run through. Just like I did last time, I stood among them for the scenes I wasn't in, hoping to pick up some writerly secrets that I wouldn't get while I was in a scene doing my acting thing. I noticed that about half of the writers and assistants wore geek gear from places like xkcd, Think Geek, and The Guild. It delighted me to know that our people work on this show.
One thing I saw that I'd never noticed before: Imagine that you're looking into the set, just off the fourth wall. There are about thirty writers and producers spread out across fifty feet or so, watching the scene. Some of the writers and all of the assistants had scripts and pencils, and were spread out fairly evenly among everyone there. When a joke landed, they made check marks in their script next to the line. I imagine that they take these scripts back to the writer's room, and compare notes to see what worked for everyone, what worked for some people, and what jokes didn't land at all. I point this out because I think it's interesting, but also as an example of the incredible amount of work that goes into fine tuning a show like this.
Near the end of the run through, Chuck was giving notes to us, and he said that the relationship between Sheldon and Evil Wil Wheaton was a rivalry between equals. He said that I was "Lex Luthor to Sheldon's Superman." I was pretty fucking psyched about that, so when he continued, "you know, sort of like Doctor Octopus and —"
I interrupted him and said, "Nononono! Lex Luthor is perfect. Let's just stick with Lex Luthor!" It was a massive breach of etiquette, but everyone laughed really hard, especially Chuck, so I guess it was okay.
I'm not sure if this made it into the final cut, but I bet it did: Sheldon does a Vulcan mind meld with his bowling ball, and it's very, very funny. Jim wasn't sure how to do it, so I demonstrated on Simon, which I realized afterward was probably an invasion of Simon's personal space – hey, sometimes my inner geek gets a little excited and I pet the rabbit too hard, George.
I don't recall why – maybe someone didn't know what the mind meld was – but Bill and Lee ended up demonstrating the mind meld on each other so someone near them could see it. In my notes, I wrote that they joked about the "dark horrors" they each saw, which was funny to everyone, but positively hilarious to the geeks.
Day Four
We spent all of this day filming the bowling alley scenes. I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to work in front of the audience, but I totally understood why we had to do it this way; these scenes were so technically complex, if we'd shot them in front of the audience, it would have taken six hours to do the episode, and nobody wants that.
Monday morning came very early for me, and I was four minutes late. Everyone on the set was ready to go, so I felt like a total dick for being late. I mean, four minutes?! These guys are fast!
We blocked the scenes a little bit, and then went off to makeup and wardrobe while the cameras got set. It's delicate work, setting up the cameras, and I didn't really appreciate how important it was until this episode. The way they frame shots, who they put in them, and little things like how much space is around them are very important to the telling of the story. That little beat where Leonard and Penny just sit down and look at each other after Sheldon sprays the hell out of his shoes was originally about a half page of dialog, and during one of the rehearsals, one of the producers realized that they could accomplish the same thing, tell the same story, using framing and just some awkward tension between the two of them.
After makeup, I sat in my dressing room and wrote down a lot of the notes that I used to write a lot of day three. While I did that, I heard the crew say things like, Leonard bowls, then we're on Sheldon, and then we push in on Wil Wheaton." It was a little bit of a mindfuck, to hear that, and to be playing myself, even if it's an evil version of myself, when I heard my name said in the same way as the other character names.
In my notes I wrote,
"It's almost 9am, and we're about to start, so I have to put my game face on.
"Yes, my delightfully-evil game face."
Hurr. I was excited, what I can I say?
Once we started filming, I had a lot of fun, and felt much less pressure and stress to get it right than I did during all of our rehearsals and run throughs, because I knew that, one way or another, we would shoot the scenes until we got them just right. It was great to have Bill, Mark, Chuck and Lee there to give me notes and ensure I hit exactly the right level of evil – more than once Chuck reminded me not to play Evil Wil Wheaton "too arch" – and after a few takes, I felt a little too comfortable in my Lex Luthoresque role.
Fun fact: when I tell Sheldon, "I'm living rent-free right here," I thought I'd messed up the line. I think it was originally written, "I'm living rent-free in your head." I'd gotten the line change just a few minutes before we shot it, and while I got the intention right, I didn't get the words right. I felt like I'd dropped the ball, and even though I thought it was a funny line, it was changed a few times over the next several takes. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the way I did it on that one take actually made it into the show, because I still think it's funny, it reads better than I thought it did on the set, and it represents one of those rare moments when I got to truly make something "mine."
It was a long day, but ultimately a fun and creatively satisfying one. I was, as expected, a little sad when we wrapped because it meant I was done calling The Big Bang Theory home, but just like last time, I left with a strong sense of camaraderie and esprit du corps, and the not entirely unrealistic hope that I'll get to bring Evil Wil Wheaton back at some point in the future.
Day Five
I went to the taping, even though I wasn't going to work in front of the audience. I mostly went because I didn't want it to be over, but also because some of my friends and family had planned for a week to come watch the show, and Nolan desperately wanted to challenge Kunal to a Ping Pong match. I am proud to say that he held his own, and restored our family honor.
The taping went very well, and the audience seemed to love my scenes. When I came out for the curtain call at the end of the show, they cheered for me! It was really wonderful to feel like the audience was as happy to see me in the show as I was to be in it.
When everything was done, and the audience was gone, I walked backstage with some of the cast and crew. Just like last time, it felt like the end of summer camp, and I didn't want to go home. Just like last time, though, everyone made me feel like I was already there.
You know it was a popular episode when this page refused to load for over 20 minutes! (Had a link straight over from the RSS feed imported to Goodreads, so I knew I had the exact right page.)
This was a fun, fun episode. Not entirely because of the return of EWW (even that can’t really stack up against Sheldon learning how to make nice to Penny by reading CATHY!), but that was certainly a big part of it!
Can’t wait for part 3 of the trilogy. 😀
Also, anyone looking for the t-shirts might want to check out http://willwheatonstinks.net/. (I am saddened and ashamed that I found it by accidentally misspelling Wil’s name.) http://willwheatonstinks.com/ has no t-shirts, but it’s kind of fun too.
Thanks! On facebook I had to make it quigonjennifer haha. I really am the nerdiest girl I know. Between the Star Wars tattoos and my biggest crush being a Star Trek character, I don’t think there’s any redeeming me.
And thank you for letting me breathe easy that he is, in fact, a nice guy. I’d hate for my first crush to be a douchebag.
I’d be shocked if that happened, but a lot of women (myself included, not gonna lie) sometimes have a pull towards the bad boys, so…
Evil Wil Wheaton, why do you taunt? Gosh darn you, gosh darn you!
Thanks so much for explaining about the tshirts! I spent the whole episode trying in vain to read them.
Also, amazing wonderful work on TBBT, and I love reading your tweets and your blog, too. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with us.
Wil, excellent show!
I noticed that Warner purchased wilwheatonstinks.com, .net, & .org – and did absolutely nothing with them!
They could have made a small mint with ad click-throughs. If the studio releases them you could acquire and have some fun.
Alas, wilwheatonstinks.info, .biz, .me, .mobi, and .us were ignored by the studio and are set up with (appropriate? read – non-offensive) links.
Er… dunno who has seen this or, Wil, how you feel about being voiced over, as it were, but I think this is rather brilliant:
The guy who VOs Sheldon is very good. “¡Silencio!” – perfect!
Not sure when this episode airs in Australia, so I had to …obtain it…
I’ll just watch it again when it airs here! 🙂
It’s interesting that your line reading “I’m living rent free, right here.” wasn’t the intended line. Because it’s my favorite line of the episode. Well, second favorite. Sheldon’s line about playing the dead meemaw card cracked me up.
I had to see this ep(living in Australia, it won’t air for quite a while), and I just finished watching it.. My best friend thinks you are evil and doesn’t like you in it, but I think it was awesome. You should be on TBBT as a regular.
I don’t watch sitcoms (including BBT); they make me cringe and want to slap someone. However, the fact that this show is made by geeks for geeks fills me with joy. I’m glad you had so much fun with it, WW.
Great job Wil. They MUST have you back again!
And yes, I must have obtain a bowling shirt.
Wil you were deliciously evil!
I love the writing on this show- I think my favorite line was in the laundry room scene when Leonard says something along the lines of “Of course I’m ahead, I’ve been in this relationship two years longer than you.” So poignant and heartbreaking given what happens later because of you, you twisted evil genius!
Brilliant! I totally loved it! It was so weird, like seeing a family member on TV.
My sister, who is a complete non-geek, has never seen star trek and has little or no knowledge of the actors in it, even said “you could totally see him as a regular character!”
I would love that so much…
My high school spanish is quite rusty – but that was hilarious to watch.
I’m always jealous of your ability to keep the mistress known as Theatre and the wife known as Writing, BOTH happy.
Damn you and you’re getting-back-on-of bicycles.
(Part of me though is glad to know that it can indeed be done).
Also there’s the entirely relatable-yet-not-quite factor that this earlier sentence encapsulated:
“I felt a sense of wonder and awe that I haven’t felt since the first time I walked through the Enterprise on stage nine in 1987”
Those moments, when you are humbled and excited by your art, are what one’s career is all about, right?
PS
By the way, did you see THIS? “Picard’s chair for sale!” (ok, the Vegas version, but still)
http://my.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20100409/a752d6e5-ead9-4c85-a6bd-499bfa35b407
Great job with being evil Wil on Big Bang Theory. I didn’t know you twittered. Im really anti twitter, but I will twitter for you if you want me to.. *wink*. You are very interesting person. I want to hate your characters, but I adore them. I think your adorable also….*awww*. Are you a pet cat type of person?
I would love to go bowling with you. Ha ha
Its great to see you getting work, but more, getting work on all the shows my wife and I watch and love. We loved you on The Guild, and now your on some of our favorite mainstream shows. The Big Bang Theory just fits our lifestyle perfectly. We get all the jokes and know people that are a lot like some of the characters on the show.
Eureka is an amazing show. I wish they wouldn’t take such long hiatus’ between seasons/half-seasons, because we usually can’t wait for it to return.
I gotta say, we are really loving the “evil-ish” characters you play/played. I suspect the Eureka character is also going to be something similar since most guests wind up being involved with what ever bad thing is happening in that episode. 🙂
Just wanted to say that since I’ve been following your blog and appearances in other mediums I have come to be a big fan of yours and I am pleased to see you doing so much for not only the acting world but the gaming community as well.
Loved the episode but was disappointed with the break up. I get so tired of tv shows and movies using the break up as a shock and awe tactic to gain viewership. Perhaps this isn’t the intention of the writers in this case but it just gets to be an old device. Does no one stay together? Can no one deal with these issues and move forward together? Just a pet peeve of mine…it seems it would take more courage as a writer and a show to show the opposite of every other show and movie that is out there.
I realize that is a gross exaggeration but I hope you see what I mean. At any rate. Wonderful acting and I applaud you as an Icon for we the gamer geeks and Sci-Fi and Fantasy junkies out here.
Larry
I would like to have the Wheaton Recurrence shirt. Where could I find one of those? It seems so egotistical and hilarious at the same time. I believe the Wesley Crushers bowling shirt should be given to you. It was in mockery and flattery of you and that should have been a memento of that. As you can tell, I am bored doing mind numbing work. I need more brain stimulation like mutating cells or making explosives instead of creating MSDS’s for Hazardous materials…cube job.
Someone really needs to make those Wesley Crushers bowling shirts. I would totally buy one, even though I’m crappy at bowling (I don’t think Wii Bowling counts). Great job on the show, Wil! Lying about dead grandmothers, breaking up couples…is there anything Evil Wil Wheaton won’t do to get his way?
If the dead Meemaw card doesn’t show up in the next Killer Bunnies set I will be so disappointed.
I knew someone had to make those; and I’m glad one of those people is a fellow geek. Type with a Data or Sheldon voice in your head and inter-office memoes in a condescending (redundant, I know)Rodney McKay voice… trust me. Even if you only entertain yourself it does relieve the monotony 😀
I hate to admit it, but I’ve been waiting for something to split up Leonard and Penny for a long time. Leonard needs someone more like Zoe from Fanboys – cute and ubernerdy.
I suppose I might be biased, though. I nursed a pretty solid crush on Leonard for most of the first season, and as a girl who worked in a comic book store for two years, I feel like my “people” have not been fully represented 😉 Some of us gals can do better than just quote Star Wars movies.
It would be cool to see him as a regular character, but I’m afraid it would take away from the other interactions. I think he’d become more Newman to Seinfeld than Lex to Superman as a result. Even Lex wasn’t in every episode of Superman.
Also, I must become a member of the Wesley Crushers. That shirt reeked of awesomesauce.
So, Wil … Whoopi … you hit that, right? LOL
Great episode.
I think it says volumes about the trust in your acting chops that they chose you to play a key role in the Penny/Leonard breakup. To make Penny’s decision credible, she really needed EWW to get into her head to convince her that breaking up with Leonard was actually the way she could hurt him the least. And you played that beat beautifully.
You should have made an exception for this one, DrGaellon 🙂
Rubik’s Cube tissue holder.
Attacking twitter habits is bad form,Sheldon. But if they could manage some real time tweets from Evil@wilw for your next adventure… talk about a mindscrew! Castle has live chats so that fans can watch and comment together and is soooo much fun. Real time tweets would be a blast.
It’s kinda fun to see Evil Wil enjoy evil so much that he’d recruit (there’s a word that looks wrong when you type it). So he doesn’t dislike Sheldon for being Sheldon but for being “Innocent”.
Ooh wait. Maybe Penny should… nope. Penny wouldn’t tweet while on a date with Wil. But maybe Evil Wil would tweet under Penny’s name… just to be evil.
[cue Darth Vader theme]
Enjoyed EWW2 – keep up the good work.
Would like to see more. Perhaps one day Sheldon & EWW can team-up against a common foe.
I know you (and conversely the mirror universe EWW) are not to be blamed for the writer’s intended direction of last night’s tragic conclusion. But I could not shake the feeling that BBT took a sudden veering off course that heads to the badlands of comedies gone seriously wrong (Cheers & Frasier for example… perhaps the only one to successfully navigate the realms of comedy-turned-drama being M.A.S.H.). I will of course give them the benefit of the doubt and check out the next episode or two to see if they can steer their way back from the shark-jumped abyss. But they have lost several viewers if this breakup is permanent. Mine because it harkened my geek-love-failure days a little too closely for comfort, and my friends for daring to make Penny heartless (their favorite character…past-tense?).
Salute to you for a character well played. Maybe too well played. The laughs were spot-on when it was you vs. Sheldon. I waited these last couple months since you broke the news to see Sheldon’s mega-ego matched by the awesome dickness of Evil Wil. But overall the A-line story overshadowed the comedy with too serious a tone to feel like I just watched a feel-good-to-be-geek sit-com. Conversely I wanted to crawl away into a self-shielded hole of Depeche Mode and Cure songs (it unfortunately started pouring rain last night… talk about your Eeyore moments!). I just hope the producers didn’t just doom the series.
Boo! I didn’t DVR the show, and apparently you can’t watch it online. Sigh…I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for a recurrence. I mean, rerun.
I can't believe someone made those pages. That is so awesome!
That was my favorite line also.
During the episode last night when your “character” was telling Penny about his two year relationship, I could have sworn you said you were dating a girl, “Anne”. Did you? I thought that would be a funny shout-out to your wife.
Based on interviews with the cast, I doubt the breakup is permanent.
What’s better is that on Feb 25, Warner Bros registered (the properly spelled) wilwheatonstinks.com, .net, and .org. But all three are dead pages.
You suppose they got permission from Paramount to use “Wesley Crusher”? 🙂
Another great job Wil, what I love the most is you can go from “The Evil Wil Wheaton” to “Chaos” to a nasty un-sub. Shows a particular range that you don’t see with a lot of actors. Just saw “The Two Live Crew” job the other day, and I love the dueling keyboards.
Anyways I think there needs to be a tshirt – “Evil Wil Wheaton, Now with even more EVIL!”.
You sir kick arse.
Wanted to jump in and voice my opinions on the show. First off, like most of the posters above, I loved your performance on the show, and I hope you do return semi-sporadically. I think you could be used in a similar capacity to Sara Gilbert’s character, only (obviously) in Sheldon’s personal life. It could be an interesting refocusing of the franchise: instead of having a lot of plot points dealing with the relationship between Penny and Leonard (which seems to be over, but I’ll be addressing that later), perhaps a future episode could have both you and Gilbert return, antagonizing Sheldon so much that he has something of a mental breakdown.
Now on to the issue of Penny/Leonard. It’s probably wishful thinking, but I don’t see the relationship as ended. It’s probably more of a spat than anything, and the two will be back together before long. I remember that in the first couple episodes of this season Penny and Leonard almost broke up, and IIRC that too was precipitated by Penny feeling pressured by the relationship. I know, I know, people will point to the line that Leonard has near the end: “I’m pretty sure it’s already over.” (or something to that effect.) I would chalk it up to Leonard’s apparent lack of experience in relationships and lack of self-esteem regarding Penny than a permanent end to the two being together.
The only problem that I had with the episode was Sheldon’s ending reaction. I know that the writers probably didn’t have a clue about how popular EWW would go on to become, and in hindsight I felt that Sheldon’s reactions to losing to you in both your episodes could have been juxtaposed. In The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary, the only real thing at stake for Sheldon was the prize money in the game, and that came off as a pittance compared to the money that Sheldon appears to be making in his job as a physicist. Again, I’ll grant that when writing TCCCC, nobody knew that you’d be invited back for a second episode. It’s just that the stakes in this episode seemed to be higher for Sheldon (money vs. dressing like a female superhero), and for losing a second time all we get is a subdued “wheeeeaaatooonn.”? I’m thinking that your underhanded methods causing him to lose to you for a second time would get him even madder (though how can you top the Star Trek II shout-out?).
And I’ve written myself into a corner with this analysis. I’ll just end here by saying I loved you in both episodes and hope to see you square off against Sheldon in the future.
Actually I did the same doubletake – he said “and” but muffled the “d” a bit so it kinda came out sounding like “Anne” in that context.
I watched it last night. Funny, with some breakup tension.
The best line was “It means I’m living rent-free right ….. here”. Was this inspired by Ebert’s quoting Chaz recently? ( though I guess it’s an old saying. )
The pointing made it … menacing.
That last line was just.. I can’t find the word to fully describe its awesomeness. Even though I knew it was Evil!Wil talking, I actually thought that you were offended by Sheldon’s suggestion that Evil!Wil had done what he’d just done… then came “..keep thinking that” and it was… ooh, just perfect delivery (by brother’s used that exact tone on me before in everyday teasing). I feel like that couldn’t have gone wrong for Evil!Wil. Even if Penny hadn’t left, it would’ve thrown off her game. Brilliant! It looked like you were just delighting in screwing with Sheldon purely for the malevolent sake of screwing with him. You, sir, are a magnificent comic actor.
Evil Wil Wheaton…or Eww, as I now have started calling him is truly epically evil in this episode.
In a 30 minute show working under sitcom formula constraints you managed to hit EV-IL “like the fru-its of the dev-il” perfectly without going overboard into pure camp.
Nicely done Wil. And now that you’ve actively injured yet another of TBBT core players (rather than Sheldon’s original percieved slight) I can only imagine you’ll need to come back at least one more time for your comeuppance.
I just hope I never make Evil Wil Wheaton mad at me…he is a very, very dangerous man 🙂
Like they have to. It’s aired on CBS, which is owned by the same parent company as Paramount.
I am always sad to see episodes of The Big Bang Theory come to an end, but never more so than when ‘Evil’Wil Wheaton appears. *tear drop falls*
I really hope they bring you (well, evil you) back again soon!
Great job on last night’s TBBT, Wil. The climatic build up to the breakup of Penny and Leonard was both sad and timed well. Somewhat predictable from the beginning of the episode, but also not quite expected since previous episodes never really led you to believe that they would break up.
The bowling scenes were classic. Loved your t-shirt “CRUSH ALL HU-MANS!” and of course, Sheldon’s reveal of the “Wesley Crushers” bowling shirts. I have to give you major kudos for having fun with your Star Trek character name. This is one of the reasons why you are one of the most respected celeb-types on Twitter. Thanks for being cool.
That was a great episode, though I wish they had used you more. There was a lot more comic potential in the evil you than they let you show. I would also have thought that the build up with Sheldon needed to be bigger, but I am assuming that the first episode you were in covered that.
Given the high amount of geekiness this show has, I’m a bit surprised it is still on the air. Maybe I am underestimating the level of geekness in America today (that’s what my non-geek wife seems to think), but this show is much smarter than your average sit-com. I mean I can’t imagine a Velokovsky hypothesis reference coming from “Full House” or “Who’s The Boss”. In any case, I take the fact that the show is doing well as a sign that society may be getting smarter.
Amen to that one, Mike!
Ok bear with me on this one.
Evil Wil Wheaton is evil AND has a beard.
Westley Crusher was goodie-goodie except for some very polite macking on Robin Leftler and maybe some innocent taking over the ship.
All I can help but think that there is a mirror universe connection here somehow.