The Big Bang Theory — The Decoupling Fluctuation (S6E02)

(My review of the last episode of The Big Bang Theory, The Date Night Variable)

When the question of marriage is brought up, Amy jumps to share her intentions with Sheldon: their wedding will be in exactly four years. Her loins are on fire every time that she is near Sheldon–but why? When Penny’s attempts to evade the question fail, she is forced to admit that she loves Leonard (though she’s never admitted that to him). However this love isn’t what she’s felt before, it’s much more boring. She is clearly unused to being with a nerdy, non-adventurous, loving guy.

When Sheldon is forced to hold hands with Amy at the movies, he complains that Leonard and Penny aren’t doing the same. Amy is very quick to spill that Penny is thinking about dumping Leonard. When Leonard does Sheldon a favor, he remembers what a nice guy his best friend actually is. Sheldon starts to tell Leonard about the secret, but stops, he wouldn’t want to upset Amy. So he tries to be subtle by using a Transformers analogy. What Leonard got out of this idea was ridiculous, he thought that Sheldon was the emotionless robot and Amy was finally turning him into a man. Come on now, Leonard. That will never happen! Don’t be ridiculous!

Sheldon returns to Leonard’s room in the middle of the night to confess it once again, but decides against it. Instead he goes to the root of the problem: Penny. When she wakes up and starts screaming, he complains that she frightened him. Oh Shelly. At first he tries to prove how great of a guy Leonard is, then tells her flat out that he knows about her plans. Before he leaves he asks her genuinely, “Penny, please don’t hurt my friend.” And because she does love Leonard responds, “That’s the last thing I want to do.” The first thing she does when Sheldon leaves is call Amy to complain about her blabbing. Sheldon tries to reach her first to warn her, but was just a minute too late. At least he tried!

When Penny tried to break up with Leonard, she saw his puppy dog eyes and couldn’t do it. So instead she slept with him. And in the best line of the episode, Amy cleverly responds: “If that’s all it takes, it’s a good thing you don’t have a dog!” And immediately after, Leonard sends Penny a cute text and makes her feel even worse. If he’s such a sweetheart, why is she so insistent on breaking up with him? She just has to help him man up and become more courageous.

Howard is being bullied by the other astronauts, it’s like high school all over again. There’s really nothing he can do about it, he even tried to have his mom complain to NASA (it only made things worse). He says that there’s a video of him on YouTube called “Astronaut Screams for 9 Minutes” after being scared to death by a supposed martian. However, they didn’t actually bother to film it and put it up online. It would have been so easy to do and an incredibly amusing extra piece of footage.

Since Howard is in space, Raj is incredibly lonely, so he finds a friend in Stuart. When Sheldon complains about the introduction of a new member of the group, Stuart becomes Howard’s replacement. He went to art school, which is just as ridiculous as Howard going to MIT, so he thinks it will be a good fit. Sheldon forces him to do everything just like Howard, including eating Raisinets at the theater. When they are playing a card game, he complains that Howard would never play the card that Stuart did. And since he’s so desperate for affection, he plays a different card, allowing Sheldon to win.

Sheldon suggests that Leonard go out with the boys to try to pick up chicks, he might want to find a replacement for Penny. Sheldon is really doing everything that he can to protect Leonard from the breakup without breaking his promise of secrecy to Amy. This is oddly human of him. Leonard, sadly, has no idea that he is even in a rough patch, so he rejects the idea. They can’t just replace a close friend with another random person. Oops, that’s exactly what happened with Stuart. Though he looks incredibly worried that he’ll be kicked out of the group just moments after he joined, I think his place is secured.

(My review of the next episode of The Big Bang Theory, The Higgs Boson Observation)