By Kofi Outlaw

Just when I was beginning to praise THE BIG BANG THEORY (see last week’s episode review) the show had to go and throw me a curveball this week, breaking from its central premise (nerds meet girl) to deliver a spin-off episode of sorts, mainly focused on Sheldon (Jim Parsons.)

When a new boss took over the physics dept Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon work in, Sheldon made the mistake of telling the new boss that he’s basically an idiot and promptly got fired (I thought these guys were geniuses?) Since he apparently had not had a day off from working since the fifth grade, at first Sheldon was thrilled by the notion of some ample free time. He started off with a little light cooking—using rotten eggs; went grocery shopping with neighbor Penny (Kaley Cuoco)—only to annoy the hell out of her, questioning her about her menstrual cycles. Boredom soon turned Sheldon into even more of a neurotic shut-in, obsessed with trying one weird endeavor after another, including weaving on a loom, and attempting to genetically engineer a fish that could glow in the dark.

Increasingly worried about his friend’s Howard Hughes syndrome, Leonard decied to take the drastic step of calling Sheldon’s mother (another one of Galecki’s ROSEANNE co-stars, Laurie Metcalf.) However things don’t go quite as Leonard had planned; Sheldon’s mother turned to be more backwater Christian conservative, rather than the cool head needed to prevail over her son’s madness. His mom’s intrusive presence only drove Sheldon further in seclusion, hiding in his room like a scared child. Finally Mom decided enough was enough and dragged Sheldon back to his former job to apologize to his boss, who took was allured by Sheldon’s mom and re-instated Sheldon at his old post as a favor to her.


Now I was just beginning to really dig how THE BIG BANG THEORY was developing its central relationships. Then came this episode, which, for all its funny parts (and there were a few, carried mostly by Metcalf,) still had a ‘who cares?’ air to it. Kaley Cuoco barely showed up this week to collect a paycheck; ditto for Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar, who were basically ethnic backboards for Metcalf to bounce her jokes off of. Still, the episode wasn’t terrible, and my half-interest allowed me to get some good blogging done. I’d call that a win-win. But next week TBBT, I suggest you get back to the basics.