What Ails Her?

“It’s sweet that he thinks there’s a story?”

Now that March Madness is over (far, far over) and April lurches spring into summer, I can say for certain the Big Bang Theory is regaining its story again. Sheldon dropped String Theory…until he picks it up again, probably. Amy might be ready to move on in their relationship! Raj has a girlfriend! Penny has a movie!

It makes me wary of the season finale. How many more seasons can we expect? FRIENDS only had 10.

In the midst of Anything Can Happen Thursday, Sheldon, Penny, and Leonard find Bernadette and Amy having drinks with out them. For mature and responsible reasons! The nerve! Frustrated by her movie and their behavior, Penny drags Sheldon along with her to continue their night. She leaves Leonard behind…for some reason.

She and Sheldon wind up at a fortune teller’s quarters, where the needlessly patient medium tells Sheldon that if he invested in his relationship, the rest of his pursuits would fall into focus. Small chance. We’ll see if the storyline heeds her words; judging by the post-episode clip, the forecast seems cloudy.

Howard and Raj, tending to Howard’s mother, conversely watch a gore flick so Raj won’t lose his cool in front of Emily the following evening, where they will watch the same film. Although, Emily seems a little more than prepared for the probability. Too prepared.

I have to say, a) Raj had a great idea, and b) he handled himself far better than I expected. No nausea quips or running from the room. In fact, the writers added in thought-provoking questions anyone might ask of themselves should they like watching controversial material. Are they mentally unstable? To which, I say, no! No, I’m not unstable for enjoying the socially variant. Yes, I can sit here and watch the How I Met Your Mother finale as many times as I want to!

Next week: Star Wars Episode VII. And the casting decisions surprised everyone.

"What Is It?" "A quarter."

Let’s see what I missed.

Sheldon couldn’t decide between an Xbox One and PS4, Penny’s grappling with the “gorilla job,” and Raj got in touch with both the online redhead and Lucy.

It’s like the episodes stopped.

March Madness finally made its off-court exit, and Sheldon might have waited a little too long to buy either the Xbox One or the PS4.  Released at the same time and leaving lots of competition in their wake, anyone who followed E3 2013 would understand his dilemma. Anyone else might have been a little lost for wear in this plot line.

Penny discovers, after yet another failed audition, the horror-movie-gorilla roll came back around with swinging fists. Now that Leonard’s more supportive, the choice really does rest with her. On the one hand, she needed the rent money. On the other…well, Monkey See Monkey Kill.

Anyone with the opportunity to share a cast list with Wil Wheaton, however, shouldn’t pass up the chance lightly. Bring on the bikinis.

The biggest surprise this episode rested with Raj’s sanity. Between the lot, he ended up demonstrating most that yes, I did miss a month’s worth of character development.

When he apologizes with his happenstantial online dating match, he reignites a second chance and dinner date. And so naturally fate has to make his life harder by default. That very evening, Lucy e-mails him to meet and catch up. Penny choosing jobs and Raj choosing suitors? Is it still April Fools?

I’m a little confused by the ever-present Lucy; if you’re going to cite the character so much, at least pay her actress to come on set once in awhile! Then again, I do like this new character. We’ll see if Raj’s astronomy evening works its star-crossed magic.

Next week, we’ll not be watching How I Met Your Mother and perhaps finally get to see what game console takes up the last slot on Sheldon’s entertainment system.

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory: the edition of a dining room table could cause a cataclysmic end to life as we know it. Learning science every day on the Big Bang Theory. In other news, IKEA is a thing.

I wonder how slow the writer’s room was that they thought, say, let’s finally get Leonard and Sheldon a dining room table! Somehow the notion strikes Leonard’s fancy (or was Penny manipulating him?) and he refuses to budge on the matter, despite Sheldon’s protests. Nothing short of taking up the extra space makes Leonard cease and desist and—when he does purchase the table and coordinating table settings, Sheldon’s forced to face the music and realize change doesn’t always spell chaos. It didn’t with his Spot, and it didn’t with Amy…no matter what Amy tells him. Get it, girl.

While Raj and Howard share a magic wand TV remote, Howard gets a call from NASA inviting him back into space to fix the equipment he installed on his previous venture. He accepted the offer immediately…unfortunately. He failed to remember how he lamented the previous months of work, unlike Raj and Bernadette who remembered only too clearly. (And he really SHOULD know better than that—he did tie the knot before he left!) Their own persuasion unsuccessful, they host a brief intervention to knock him off the idea. As it turns out, the most convincing element to keep his roots planted right here happened to be Survival Training. Still, the thought doesn’t make his blood-pressure skyrocket quite like a phone call home to Mom.

Next week, Sheldon and Howard strive for faster friendships. Now that I finally remembered to wait for the previews, I really wish I knew where they were going.

“This is so much better than watching TV like a muggle!”

--Every Big Bang Theory TV commercial

--Not really, it’s Raj

Where Wine Comes From

I thought the closest they could get to another Sheldon was Amy.
I was wrong.

To recap, in order to get her Bed and Breakfast Valentines Day retreat (it does fall on a Friday this year), Amy organized the trip there by 1915yadayadavintagel-Locomotive! I know what I’m talking about.
Valentine’s dinner would be served there, with all the fixings. And Bernadette and Howard along for the ride.

Amy, however, never suspects that Sheldon would meet a second train enthusiast. Hyper-enthusiast. Can recreate specific trains of specific kinds with their mouth-iast.

And no, before you hypothetically ask, I don’t think Sheldon was completely right in his respect defense. Enjoying oneself just because they used the terminology (Mr. Literal) doesn’t give one free reign to completely ignore their own joys and feelings. But I have to hand it to the man—he knows how to make an argument sound convincing. No matter how the network spun the scene.
Did they ever spin that scene.

Although, perhaps, Sheldon might have learned his lesson after all. We can rest assured Amy joined him the remainder of the train dinner…sans strange third rail.

On the other side of the county, we discover Penny never read the childhood classic, If you give a dog a chocolate. Oh, sorry. That’s not how that goes? Explains Penny’s confusion a little more, then, when she and Leonard have to take Raj’s dog Cinnamon to the vet’s late Valentine’s night. Ironically enough, the one renting out the telescope got the sweeter end of the deal. I definitely think something’s up with that (passably normal?) veterinarian. And who self-described should have been a dentist.

All right, I’ll let you all off your hooks. Go watch the Olympics, you crazy cats. Happy (early) Valentine’s Day!

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!