Aye Aye Aye

I wondered how long it’d take for The Big Bang Theory to address con culture directly. They’ve yet to attend an all-in-out con, but that might be more a finale piece.

For now, we just get…oh, I don’t know…how about James Earl Jones?

When the boys try and fail to score the notoriously popular Comic Con tickets, Sheldon immediately decides upon the next simple and feasible course of action: building his own con from the ground up. Therein lies the irony: Leonard, Howard, and Raj mock Sheldon’s own efforts while they play into a con of their own, finding and purchasing tickets from a scalper. A risk indeed, but the best heroes always take risks.

Perplexed by their excitement and subsequent disappointment—although, at least, she understood why they were upset when the tickets ran dry—Penny, Bernadette, and Amy decided to counter the Comic Con enthusiasm of their respective partners by doing something “adult” and “sophisticated.” When the afternoon tea they expected actually catered to a younger target audience, Penny asks the hard-hitting questions every twentysomething asks: am I an adult yet? What makes a person an adult? Myself a twentysomething, I vouch in Penny’s stead that we all have our moments of feeling particularly adult…or not. I got my own groceries, yeah! I spent five hours playing Flappy Bird, no!

The women of the show question their own ascent from childhood and the remaining Con-less gentlemen hide from a sketchy Scalper. This is just about where the plot of the whole episode stops.

Why? Because Sheldon found James Earl Jones for his would-be convention.

While it was cool of the network to list Mr. Jones for the episode—and cooler still he played, well, a cool guy (at first)—it certainly detracted the spotlight from the rest of any kind of plot. But Blogger! It’s James Earl Jones. He can be a plot in and of himself, right?

Some may enthusiastically agree. Some may be chanting “filler” in the back of their heads as I type. What do you think? Trot it out while we wait for next week’s Valentine’s Day-themed installment. All aboard!