TVoholic.com: Full episode reviews of your favorite TV shows & news about television

The Big Bang Theory: The Loobenfeld Decay

By fred | March 25, 2008

(S01E10) I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again : if it’s a very common thing for TV shows to (try to) portray geeks and nerds, and only fail completely at it, either having them to end up way too “cool”, morph away for “nerdism” very quickly, reducing them to some stupid clichés and stereotypes, or a mix of all this at once, one thing this show managed to do is to make it work somehow.

And if the writing has to be with it, of course, I’m pretty sure that it’s also largely due to Jim Parsons and his interpretation of Sheldon, because he can make quite old jokes work, and even as predictable as things get, he will make you laugh in the end.

I’ve always said that he is the center of everything funny on this show, and this might be the very reason why this episode was so good : Sheldon was the center of it all. After a very hilarious chat between him and Leonard wondering what could be the motives for Skynet to create a petite hot killer robot – and by the way, rumors are very strong that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be/as been renewed for a second season, for fans of the Glaubot can be happy, she probably will go to the prom – after that, it all came down to Sheldon and his social aptitudes, or lack of.

Which led to somewhat predictable development, like Sheldon asking whether or not hurting Penny’s feelings is a relevant factor or him being uncomfortable with the lie Leonard used, since he then for some reason stopped considering Penny like way less smart than he is, and suddenly felt she could be as curious as he was as to find out more about that symposium they’re (supposedly) attending, and so find out that they lied.

But never mind that, or him putting in motion another lie of his own and the way it was played out – with Penny revealing the first lie only to be fooled by the second one Sheldon came up with, or that Sheldon would go as far as to hire his research assistant to play that drug addict cousin he made up, or the fact that he would not follow Sheldon’s instruction and go his own way leading to an argument with the two of them forgetting completely that he was supposed to be in character, to be Sheldon’s cousin and not his research assistant, all that while Penny is standing right there next to them in the same room, of course.

Forget about all of this, because once again Sheldon has this great thing for him : he is funny. Sure, the whole plot wasn’t really ever surprising, but it doesn’t matter because this is not Lost, we’re not in here for the secret and the mysteries, we’re here to have a good time and laugh all along the way, and the writing was strong enough and held was another excellent performance from Parsons, and once again the laughs were there !

And throw in a few great lines like “if cats could sing, they’d hate it too” or some funny references to Star Wars, and you got yourself a pretty good and very funny half-hour for sure.

This show might not be creating anything new or be trying to develop a new concept that’s never been done before in sitcoms, it’s not reinventing the wheel, but at least it succeeds brilliantly at one things recent newcomers like Carpoolers, Unhitched, Miss Guided or other The Return Of Jezebel James have sadly all failed : it makes us laugh !

Posted in Reviews
Shows: The Big Bang Theory