The Big Bang Theory season 5

Did You Know?

• In Canada, the season premiere ("The Skank Reflex Analysis") garnered 3.72 million viewers on CTV Television Network.
• The highest Canadian rating in season 5 was 4.05 million for "The Infestation Hypothesis".
• The lowest Canadian rating was 3.17 million for "The Stag Convergence".

Production

The show was renewed for three more seasons in early 2011, covering the fifth through seventh years. Season five featured several notable guest appearances. Leonard Nimoy voiced the action figure of Spock that Sheldon imagines talking to in "The Transporter Malfunction." The next episode, "The Hawking Excitation," brought in physicist Stephen Hawking. Astronaut Mike Massimino appeared in two episodes, "The Friendship Contraction" and "The Countdown Reflection." The season ended with Howard Wolowitz launching to the International Space Station in a Soyuz rocket. To build realistic sets of the Soyuz capsule and the ISS, the crew got technical advice from Massimino, used NASA photos, took measurements from the Kansas Cosmosphere, and gathered parts from an aerospace junkyard in Los Angeles.

Release

The fifth season of The Big Bang Theory was well-received by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, all eight critics surveyed gave it a positive review, resulting in a perfect score and an average rating of 8.4 out of 10. Oliver Sava of The A.V. Club awarded the season a B+ grade. Sava singled out Raj as the show's weakest character, arguing he had not developed like the rest of the cast and remained stuck in a season one mindset.

Episodes where Raj had a smaller role, such as "The Pulled Groin Extrapolation" and "The Russian Rocket Reaction," received high marks from Sava, while "The Wiggly Finger Catalyst," which focused on Raj, was called one of the series' worst episodes and given a D+. Sava also noted that his favorite relationship on the show was between Amy and Penny. Jenna Busch of IGN, who had disliked the previous season, found season five to be much more balanced.

She rated individual episodes between 5.5 and 9, with an average of 8.0, and observed that the series had matured by adding more women to the main cast. Tom Gliatto of People gave the season three out of four stars, describing it as bright and obvious like a cartoon but written with a clean, precise patter of jokes. At the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards, the show was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, losing to Modern Family. It also received nominations for technical and editing categories.

Jim Parsons was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor for "The Werewolf Transformation," losing to Jon Cryer, and Mayim Bialik was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress for "The Shiny Trinket Maneuver," losing to Julie Bowen. The season premiered on CBS on September 22, 2011. It was released on DVD in a 16:9 format on September 11, 2011, in Region 1, and later in Regions 2 and 4. Episodes are also available for purchase on Amazon Video and the iTunes store in the United States.