Episode 23 - The Monopolar Expedition
3 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: Sheldon is awarded a grant to go to the North Pole and search for slow moving monopoles. He offers to take the guys with him as his team and they can’t resist the opportunity. Penny seems surprisingly upset about Leonard leaving but hides it from him.
The Good: The Leonard and Penny relationship has been on the back burner all season and so this low key acknowledgement of her feelings felt appropriate. The show is probably going to be around for years to come so the producers are in no hurry to change the dynamics of the group yet.
Meanwhile Sheldon stands tall and carries the comedy once more. His ignorance of other people’s emotions is exploited nicely as he visits the head of the university in the middle of the night to demand answers. “That entire family is fascinated by what time it is and whether people know it.”
It’s entirely plausible that Sheldon wouldn’t want to learn to interact with a new team of people and so recruits his friends to work for him. And it makes perfect sense for them to put aside their irritation with Sheldon to be a part of something important. The Sheldon training regiment inside the freezer at the Cheesecake Factory was a really fun scene (see Comic Highlight). Sheldon just is a classic sit com creation. He is so consistently oblivious to how his behaviour appears to other people.
We even get a hint of Sheldon’s character growing as he learns how to play practical jokes on Leonard. Penny’s decision to knock back on her door saying Sheldon was a nice addition to that running gag.
The Bad: Much of what I don’t like about The Big Bang Theory is not what they include but what they don’t. It may be unfair in a way to analyse what a show could do to be better, instead of focusing on what they have produced. However when the show ignores such obvious ideas that practically every other sit com uses I think it is fair game to bring in.
Penny doesn’t get much to do in this episode and as ever it is a reflection of the misplaced priorities of the writers. We get a whole scene with Raj and Howard’s parents arguing over cell phone and lap top. It’s such basic humour: the overbearing Jewish and Indian parents, the embarrassed sons acting like children. It doesn’t add anything new to the story or to Raj and Howard’s characters. And they are jokes which have been done a thousand times on television.
Instead of that scene we could have been exploring how Leonard and Penny feel about each other and why. Again there are so many simple things which the show could do to help build their relationship up as a more realistic entity. We should see Penny popping by to tell Leonard about her day. She moved to LA alone and so it would be natural for him to become her sounding board about her annoying boss or the latest gossip from the other waiters and waitresses. You could throw in that she watches Battlestar Galactica or just some movies with the guys and likes different parts of them than the guys do. Any of that could give us a sense of why Leonard is an important part of her life, without it this feels a touch contrived.
The scene where Leonard comes to seek Sheldon’s advice about Penny was very disappointing. In season one’s finale, Penny sought Sheldon’s advice and obliviously he was able to help her. Here though we have an opportunity for some kind of growth for Sheldon and Leonard’s friendship. But instead Sheldon makes a clever and rather cruel joke about Leonard’s chances with Penny. It seemed far too aware of Sheldon to pull off the “prank” and it torpedoed any chance of seeing any character growth.
In general this show is just too content doing the same thing over and over, rather like Sheldon. The great thing about sit coms is that once you establish a set of characters, you can put them in new and interesting situations and the humour flows easily from the audience understanding how the characters will behave once faced with new stimuli. But here once the guys reach the north pole they have simply recreated their living room and are back to eating Thai food. Yes it is consistent characterisation to see the guys so comfortable and sheltered in their new surroundings. But without any growth these characters will grow tired and stale.
I for one am growing very tired of the guys wanting to “kill” Sheldon. Such irritation loses its humour quickly. The more Sheldon annoys them, the weaker they appear for not doing something about it.
Comic Highlight: Sheldon giving instructions to each of the guys in the freezer. Sheldon’s complete conviction in the seriousness of what he is doing is very funny. In order to prepare them for arctic conditions he has Howard playing operation and Leonard doing maths on a watch calculator. For Raj: “You will be painting sideburns and a Van Dyke on a six-inch figurine of Legolas the Elf. Now remember a Van Dyk is a goatee without a moustache.” That attention to detail amuses me.
In Conclusion: This episode sums up the whole of season two of the show. It’s too reliant on Sheldon, not focussed on character development and too static for my tastes. On the flip side it is also funny, consistent and showcases a genuinely strong comic character.
This season has made me pessimistic about the chances of this show ever becoming more than Two and a Half Men with more geekery and less sex. But this season has also made me laugh. For now I’ll take that as a good sign.
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