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The Big Bang Theory: The Bat Jar Conjecture

By fred | April 22, 2008

(S01E13) From the very first day I started watching this show, it was obvious who was the comedy force on the team of nerds, or physicists, we get to witness week after week. It’s not to say that the other character are useless or cannot be funny, but Sheldon is the one that drives the show and generates the very large majority of all laughs.

So much that it isn’t uncommon to see the episode be centered, one way or another, around Sheldon. Yet, last week, while this was still the case I found the episode not to be as funny as the show usually is. It was unsettling, because while it happened in the past it was because the show tried to do without Sheldon for too long, this time it wasn’t the case, this time Sheldon was failing us, sort of.

This episode, obviously, was once again all about Sheldon and who he is, the fact that he thinks he’s better & smarter than everybody else, that he doesn’t need anybody, and his needs to prove those things to the world. And it worked, of course, because while he doesn’t realizes it, Sheldon really is funny.

Still I felt this episode wasn’t as good as it used to be. I’m not sure if this is me expecting more from the show than I should, but I am under the impression that past episodes used to be funnier than the recent ones. This week was without question better/funnier than last week, and many things did work, but the opening scene didn’t really work for me.

Everyone using Spock’s last words to convince Sheldon to join the team for so geeky of them, and it was funny, but apart from that it wasn’t good. Take Penny for instance, were we really supposed to laugh because her key “A” is stuck, because she spelled coke, toe nail and yogurt on the keyboard ? Really ? Cause hearing that the word that came to mind is definitely not funny…

But for most of the episode I felt like writers didn’t really know what to do with Penny. It’s like the original concept was to have those geeks on the one side, and Penny on the other side, and to make things funny because she was a “real” girl, the kind that’s hot, gets drunk and party all night, specimen of something they only read about, but along the way something happened, and writers realized that they didn’t need her that much, they could do just fine with Sheldon and other geeks.

Seeing Penny wanting to be there for the big confrontation between Sheldon and his friends only to fall sleep during it was, well, boring. Although I liked it when during rehearsal Sheldon, of course, had to give away all the answers – “I buzzed in! – And I answered, it’s called team work.” – and when he asked Penny some rhetorical questions, she just turned to Leonard: “You said I only had to ask questions.”

But was I the only one who felt that they didn’t have enough this week, and this is why we got that last scene with Penny asking the geeks some pop culture questions they couldn’t possibly answer, of course ? I felt like the entire scene wasn’t really funny (except maybe for the “sexiest man alive” bit) and had been added only because, well, they had time to fill now that the big fight was over and yet it wasn’t the required 20+ minutes.

Speaking of said fight, the way it went down was highly predictable, and I found it just a little stupid that, by the look of things, had Sheldon and his original team members not split, there would have been no competition, since they were the only two teams to compete ! Anyways, at least it ended with some pretty funny and so Sheldon-esque dialog :
“
- Sheldon, is proving that you are single-handedly smarter than everyone else so important that you would rather loose by yourself than win as part of a team ?
- I didn’t understand the question !
“

Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Big Bang Theory