Episode 15 - The Maternal Capacitance
23 January 2012
Review
Synopsis: Leonard’s mother comes to visit. She is a cold, analytical neuroscientist. She drives Penny and Leonard to drink with her psychoanalysis while Sheldon loves her. Leonard ruins his chance to sleep with Penny because his mother is in his head.
The Good: Psychoanalysis is an ideal sitcom plotline. It reveals embarrassing realities about characters in a succinct and easy to grasp manner (see Friends 113 or Frasier 809). It also tests a show’s understanding of its own characters and gives us a chance to see how much thought the writers have put into their characters behaviour. The Big Bang Theory emerges from this examination unchanged as usual. On the one hand they do a good job of bringing forth some truths about the characters personalities and manage to make them funny. But on the other hand there is a lack of depth which is the show’s undoing (see The Bad).
The interesting but unexplored idea which emerges is that Sheldon and Leonard emerged in opposite directions from their upbringings. Sheldon was in a warm but repressive religious household but has become as cold and logical as Leonard’s mother. Meanwhile in that cold, affectionless environment Leonard grew to want to be normal and seek the love he feels he missed out on. Leonard’s relationship with his mother is consistent with what we know about him so far (see 117 for example). And even though it’s a ridiculous exaggeration, Leonard manages to make his “hug machine” sound like a poignant childhood memory. His subservient relationship with Sheldon and his puppy dog behaviour around Penny are clearer to understand now.
And though it isn’t stated, we know Sheldon enjoys having a compliant and pleasant roommate to live with. Sheldon’s attraction to Leonard’s mother is a rich source of humour as you would expect (see Comic Highlight). The writers really are onto a winner with their ultra logical dialogue and Christine Baranski is a veteran sit com actress (Cybill, Frasier, Third Rock from the Sun and so on) who manages to pull off lines like “Your unwillingness to accept empirical evidence suggests an attempt at flattery.” Even better is seeing them genuinely amused, “You see right through me” says Sheldon “Only when you’re in a CAT scanner” she quips as they both snort with mirth.
Her analysis of Raj and Howard as having an “ersatz homosexual marriage” to compensate for their fear of women is both funny and revealing. It’s usually fun to see Leonard turn the tables “You brought your husband to work, you know the rules!” he taunts.
Of course the big plot development is Leonard and Penny seeking comfort in one another’s arms. Leonard is endlessly endearing in his happiness with the situation “You shhh, I’m happy, I wanna talk about it!” His foolish use of his mother’s psychoanalysis is a logical way to put another obstacle in front of their inevitable relationship. Penny’s drunken giggle is really funny too.
It was nice to see Leonard’s mother contemplate the broken elevator. Doesn’t someone want to fix it?
The Bad: But Leonard’s affection for Penny doesn’t feel very real anymore. In season one his genuine interest in her drove the emotional core of the show. Now when he was so close to sleeping with her he just looks a bit disappointed and makes a joke out of it. The next day he doesn’t want to talk about it. It all implies that he doesn’t really have feelings for her anymore, but just wanted to have sex because she is hot. That’s not exactly going to get people motivated to invest in Leonard as a lovable lead character and I don’t think the writers really intended it to come out that way.
As ever they are more focussed on squeezing humour out of every scene, rather than giving key scenes an emotional impact. Sheldon’s “seduction” of Dr Hofstadter (he is actually convincing her to sing with him) is really obvious comedy. Unless the idea of Sheldon having sex is the most hilarious thing to you, the scene is wasted with its transparency. That scene could instead have gone to driving home some deeper point about Penny or Leonard or their relationship.
We now know that Penny seeks her father’s approval and love and that perhaps acting is a manifestation of her need for the approval of others. That’s quite a detailed character sketch, reminiscent of the detailed portrayal of Monica Geller (in that Friends episode 113). Of course in Monica’s case we had seen her at work, we had seen her on dates with men and we had seen her interacting with her parents. Where as we have never seen Penny act, we have never seen her alone on a date and we have never seen her parents. The point is that we don’t have a picture of her life because the show never leaves Leonard or Sheldon as the true narrative focus. Penny is poorly characterised because we only ever see her in relation to the other guys. There is so much detail to be explored which could make us as viewers care more about her.
Ditto Raj and Howard of course. Their fear of women is practically all we know about them beyond clumsy attempts to make jokes about their work (204, 208).
Leonard’s mother telling him how to seduce Penny felt very out of place. She doesn’t seem to be interested in any behaviour which doesn’t advance her own priorities. She even states categorically that she only has sex for procreation, so this off hand comment seemed entirely inappropriate.
Comic Highlight: The scene where Sheldon and Mrs Hofstadter get to know one another. After her desperately specific tea requests are not met by Leonard, Sheldon confides in her sternly “I have the same problem with him.” The conversation moves to Leonard’s conception and Sheldon of course says “I would very much like to read about your sex life” with appropriate seriousness.
In Conclusion: Yet another consistent episode of comedy. You can’t help but laugh at the carefully crafted dialogue and attention to detail. But I can’t help but wonder what this show would be capable of with more characterisation.
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