Stuart Fails to Save the Universe

A comic book store owner who accidentally fractures the multiverse into competing realities is not the obvious choice to fix it — which is more or less the structural engine here. Chuck Lorre, Zak Penn, and Bill Prady build the show as a high-concept farce held inside a deliberately small-scale world: Stuart Bloom, familiar from years as a recurring presence in The Big Bang Theory, now carries the premise rather than supporting it. The comedy runs on that mismatch — catastrophic stakes, deeply provisional hero — while the quantum-interference MacGuffin gives the season something to chase through whatever realities it needs to visit.