The Big Bang Theory: The Lizard-Spock Expansion
By fred | November 18, 2008
(S02E08) All along I’ve said how this show was owned by Sheldon, there’s no question that he’s the funniest of all character and makes the show week after week, which is probably why pretty much all episodes are Sheldon-centric, even when the main plot isn’t (supposed to be) about Sheldon directly. I guess there’s a risk that this show could turn into “The Wacky Sheldon Show” and focus more – if not only – on Sheldon’s eccentricity instead of coming up with more “creative” stories.
In the mean time, maybe that’s what people want ? The first season was mostly about Penny and her relationship with Leonard, but now that this is in the past, focusing on Sheldon (even better, his interactions with Penny, as illustrated brilliantly in their recent battle) is probably what people are looking for when tuning in to this show, and the side-kick characters that are Raj and Howard are probably best left in the unknown.
This episode focused more on Howard, and maybe I’m biased but it didn’t work as good for me. I just didn’t find it all that funny, should it be situations or dialogs there wasn’t your usual geek-wackyness that I’ve come to known and love from this show. It also didn’t help that we had a few very old/cliché scenes (such as Leonard asking Sheldon to come, so he could tell him that he was leaving, couldn’t tell him where he was going, but should he be asked about it he should pretend not to know where he was going, even though it wasn’t actually a lie at all. Yet, the fact that he had to “lie” about this whole situation made Sheldon greatly unable to hide that he was hiding something… Yes, even with Sheldon in the middle of it, things can fail to be funny.), or that I wasn’t really impressed at all with Dr. Stephanie Barnett, which I found to be a very poor character.
She wasn’t funny, and more importantly she didn’t really feel to me like an actual doctor. Sure, those guys are geeks and you could find it silly that they’d get to control the actual Mars rover, but they also have this side of them that you could see them being such smart geeks who made it, somehow. She, on the other hand, didn’t come across as a doctor to me, not even close, and to be honest I really hope that despite the way things ended, we won’t get to see more of her. I’m not against Leonard dating anyone, but it should be someone making things interesting when around, and she’s just not it.
Still some good and funny moments on this episode, mostly thanks to Sheldon – of course. The first and most obvious one being, evidently, the extension of the rock-paper-scissor game : “Scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitate lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and as it always has, rock crushes scissors.” Got it? I do wonder if he got it the first time, and how many times they had to try before all getting their hands with Spock-fingers right at the same time.
Sheldon also had a few other great lines :
* My favorite one maybe, about Lucas. “I am not going to watch the Clone Wars TV series until I’ve seen the Clone Wars movie. I prefer to let George Lucas disappoint me in the order he intended.” So true…
* “I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion.”
* And after explaining to Leonard why and how Howard was ignoring him and pretending he was dead, when Howard asked Sheldon to do the same after Stephanie entered the room, and Howard acknowledged it with a “oh if it isn’t Misses Dead-to-me“, he could only refuse to do so : “I’m sorry you violated the terms of your metaphor by acknowledging her existence, I’m out.“
What did you think about this episode ? Was Sheldon still the funniest of all ? Are you afraid this show would be “too much” Sheldon-centric, or wouldn’t you have it any other way ? And of course, what was your favorite line this week ??
Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Big Bang Theory
