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Everyone who has already watched “The Big Bang Theory” knows that each time Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) enters a home, he must knock on the door exactly three times, a bit like a very special vampire. But Why Does he do this, and how did the writers find it?
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In Jessica Radloff’s book in 2022 “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series“Some of the writers and performers who worked on” The Big Bang Theory “explained the origin of the three Knock system of Sheldon, which comes down to that: it started as a harmless thought of the writer and producer Lee Aronsohn, who just thought it was funny, but in season 10 of the show, Sheldon said to Penny (Kaley Cuoco) reason behind the trile. not His mother at 13, and now he is afraid to hit only once. “The first is traditional, but two and three are for people to put their pants,” said Sheldon in Penny.
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“We were not looking for the opportunity to justify this behavior, but it appeared very organically in the room, where he speaks to Penny and he says that that’s why I hit three times,” Radloff, writer and executive co-producer Tara Hernandez. She continued:
“It frightened a lot of people because something that was played as really silly and a joke was actually rooted in something that was a little traumatic for Sheldon. Moments like that, which are a little frightening, are always my favorite in a room of writers because people were going to react very strongly.
Kaley Cuoco also reveals in the book that she had had it own interpretation of what the “blows” meant, and it had to do with The name of an elusive and never revealed girl of Penny (The character does not get a last name until she marries the Leonard Hofstadter of Johnny Galecki), and everything was thanks to the comment of a fan. “I think it was a fan who said to me one day:” It wouldn’t be funny if your name was Penny Penny, and Sheldon knew all the time and that everyone just started to do it and later, he was like “I knew it was your name!” “The cute idea, but the show went with a slightly darker interpretation.
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How did Lee Aronon proposed the SHELDON three KNOCK system on Big Bang theory?
As Lee Aronsohn said to Jessica Radloff in the book, Sheldon’s three Knock system was just a little bit that he found … and he didn’t know that he would take his own life. “It was just one of those things where the direction of the scene was Sheldon hits the door, answers Penny. And I just said: “What if he did that?” “, Recalls Aronsohn.” And I demonstrated that at the place suddenly and Penny opens the door, it was three strokes. It showed the obsessive compulsivity of Sheldon. “Aronson explained:” People like that like models and the structure, so we had fun with Sheldon once that has been established. Once upon a time, he hit his door twice, and the second, she opened the door, and Sheldon could not continue! He fought and fought and struggled and finally had to return to the door and leave, hit, strike, hit, Penny. “”
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Peter Chakos, a publisher and co -producer on “The Big Bang Theory”, found him fun in the moment, but like Aronsohn, he had No Idea it would become, for lack of a better term, everything. “I was there when Lee did,” said Chakos. “It was just a time when Sheldon struck once and Penny replied. I saw Lee play in his head and think, If Sheldon hits three times, is it funny? And then he launched it, and it became fodder for the series. “”
Aronsohn left the show as a writer in 2011 after the fourth season, but here is the good news: he approves the intelligent Retcon by Tarn Hernandez of the three shots. “I had left when they found this, but it is a brilliant reverse engineering,” Aronsohn told Radloff. “Certainly, from a point of view of history and the character, I like the explanation that he was obviously traumatized by walking on his father […] And I left at that time. Then congratulations. “”
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The triple blow of Sheldon ended up having long -term ramifications for the theory of Big Bang and the young Sheldon
Steve Holland, a longtime writer of “The Big Bang Theory” who has finally become an executive producer, recalled – as Tara Hernandez did – that some people were not wild about the process of reflection behind the three shots of Sheldon. “We found this revelation in a way in the moment, but I remember that people in the crew were turned upside down by this revelation,” recalls Holland. “A person said:” It’s overwhelming that that’s why they do that. I don’t like her blow of this darker place. “”
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In the end, the three -strokes caused a tiny continuity problem for The very first spin-off of “The Big Bang Theory”, the prequel to a camera “Young Sheldon”, “ which actually provides a different explanation of the Sheldon system. Like Steve Molaro – another executive writer and producer who ended up co -creating “Young Sheldon” alongside Chuck Lorre – told Radloff: “I think the real answer is, we just try to find a way to add weight and importance to the scene when he said, and it was a way to do it. If I knew. Episode of season 7 shows a 15 year old child Sheldon entering two adults engaged in that Sheldon would call “Coitus”, his father with a “strange woman“… Except that this woman is her mother Mary (Zoe Perry) disguised as a young girl from the Oktoberfest after she and Sheldon spent the summer in Germany.
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The three Knock system also caused some confusion later in “The Big Bang Theory” after Sheldon left his apartment and Leonard to live with his wife Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik). “And as writers, we discussed the rules for Sheldon in the future,” sounded Holland. “Should he do his” hitting, hitting, hitting “when he returns to his apartment? But maybe if we leave the door cracked to his old apartment, he does not have to strike!”
You can see each special shots of Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory”, which is streaming on max.
