You know The Big Bang Theory: It’s that CBS sitcom that shows up on your parents’ DVR when you’re visiting for the holidays, it’s about scientists who are nerds, and the one guy says the catchphrase “Bazinga!” a lot. That is also apparently the sum total of Kaleb Horton’s knowledge of the show, yet he has spun from that thin thread a rich tapestry of evil and sadism.
Horton, a writer and podcaster who has contributed to Vanity Fair and Vice, has for months been writing fake spec scripts for Big Bang that imagine—again, and by his own admission, based on mere passing familiarity with the show—Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper as a Nietzschean sadist in the Leopold and Loeb tradition, bent on treating humankind as the subjects in his deranged science experiments. He also says “Bazinga!” a lot. Horton posted his first pseudo-spec script, originally written in installments on Twitter, on Bitter Empire back in May. He’s now back at it, and the results are as bizarre and darkly humorous as ever. Bazinga.