The cast and creative forces behind CBS' breakout comedy know the geek squad won't get the girl, but it gets the laughs.

"The rhythm of the language they've written for Sheldon, I love that challenge," Parsons said. "The writers are so good at using so many words and scientific jargon and being verbose in general and burying the joke in there. The challenge of threading that out, driving these speeches in a way it still hits the comic rhythm, I love it, though I want to pull my hair out sometimes."

Parsons uses a trick he learned in a junior high speech class to help him enunciate in Sheldon's unique way. He places a pencil in his mouth to help with the placement of his tongue and teeth.

"What you see is not the result of a casual, instinctive approach," Prady said. "These guys work hard. From time to time, they'll get together to prep for the table read. I've never heard of a cast doing that. And they always find stuff that winds up being a guide for us as we rewrite. It's an unbelievably constructive collaboration."

When production on the pilot wrapped, veteran writer-producer Chuck Lorre, who co-created it, said he could feel he had a hit. "Something was happening that transcends what you imagined."

Galecki remembers how the majority of TV writers blasted the show before it launched.

"It went from being a show that was lambasted before it even aired for making fun of intelligent people to a show that intelligent people claim is uniting them, which is unexpected and touching," he said.

"It's a very intimate reaction that they have. I think they relate to these characters not because they want to emulate them because they think they're cool. They relate to them because they relate to that time they put their foot in their mouth or that time they embarrassed themselves like these characters have a tendency to do."

Nayyar, who plays Raj, an incredibly introverted astrophysicist, saw it himself at Comic-Con when a boy told the cast that he used to feel like a geek because he performs in theater and loves comic books, but the show had changed his life.

"He got very emotional and he said that he found himself and he wasn't ashamed of who he was anymore," Nayyar said. "That meant a lot to us. A lot of people at Comic-Con thanked us for giving 'our people' a voice. I definitely never expected that to happen on a sitcom. We're here to be funny, you know what I mean?"

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maria.elena.fernandez@latimes.com