Episode 17 - The Terminator Decoupling
3 September 2009
Review
Synopsis: The four guys head to San Francisco on the train for a conference. Sheldon forgets his flash drive and has to call Penny for help retrieving it. Meanwhile Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) is on the same train and Raj and Howard try to hit on her.
The Good: The train setting is a nice change of pace for the show. The settings are usually a bit antiseptic and plain. So a train car full of other people at least gives a new dynamic to the familiar dialogue.
And if you are familiar with The Big Bang Theory then it is no surprise that much of the dialogue is well written and performed with style. Sheldon’s deep sensitivity about his relationship with his Grandma is a nice touch. It fits with his often childish behaviour (see the previous episode and his couch seat) and shows us one of the few things which can make him display real emotions. The creative writing of Sheldon is good as he lurches off into a tangent about how cunning it would be to make actual terminators look like the actors who played them in movies thus lulling the population into a false sense of security. Sheldon also steals the comic highlight (see below) when he chats up real life physicist George Smoot.
Elsewhere both Raj and Howard are in good form as they plot to hit on Summer Glau. “Have you seen Slumdog Millionaire?” Raj asks her “It’s loosely based on my life.” Seeing Raj all cocky with a woman is such a contrast to his normal behaviour that most lines come off well “You got me!” he admits but follows up smoothly with “Now what are you going to do with me?” Howard on the other hand is working on the perfect line. “I need to come up with something that’s funny, smart and delicately suggests that my sexual endowment is disproportionate to my physical stature.” Howard’s creepy persistence is amusingly honest as he tries to turn negatives into positives "I have eleven hours with her in a confined space. Unless she's willing to jump off a moving train, tuck and roll down the side of a hill, she will eventually succumb to the acquired taste that is Howard Wollowitz." It was nice continuity to bring up Howard’s liaison with Leslie Winkle (from the previous episode).
Both actors inhabit their roles really well. Penny is fine in her Sheldon-baiting role too – “What up Moon Pie?” she asks after reading one of his Grandmother’s letters.
The Bad: The Big Bang Theory has strong ratings. It could be here for some time, so I hope I won’t be writing the same thing for the next six years. But…there is no attempt to grow any of these characters. Even if you don’t care about character development, humour can be improved by characters changing. Raj can’t talk to women, Howard creeps them out, Leonard is a likeable doormat, Sheldon an anal irritant and Penny a pleasant slacker. Those character sketches remain mundanely consistent and mean that as well crafted as the jokes can be, they hit the same notes over and over. The Big Bang Theory is in danger of becoming like a good song that you play too often so it loses its freshness and starts to irritate.
Howard hasn’t learnt anything in the past two years and just blunders on making Summer feel very awkward. Raj doesn’t see anything significant in proof that his shyness isn’t really related to alcohol. He simply retreats in fear and goes back to being mute. Penny mentions yet another acting gig but we get no sense of whether it is good or bad for her career. It’s simply written in as another “Penny’s acting career sucks” joke. And of course we get all the usual Sheldon related downers. It becomes tiring to hear Leonard moaning and whining about Sheldon. And as for George Smoot asking if he was on crack. Well that’s the laziest type of sit com writing there is. Sheldon’s strange behaviour can be really funny but when he is simply ridiculed for being different the humour just isn’t there. It feels stale and negative.
There’s just a lingering wariness about this show right now. At this rate we could get Leonard and Penny finally becoming a couple in season five, Sheldon’s first girlfriend in season seven and Raj finally talking to women sober as the big twist in season nine. The show is good enough to run and run and if it becomes a younger version of Two and a Half Men that will be a sad waste of talent. I hope the writers realise that they can make just as many good jokes if Raj overcomes his problems, if Howard gets a girlfriend and if Leonard stands up for himself once in a while.
Comic Highlight: Sheldon’s wonderfully self centred pitch to George Smoot was delivered superbly “So I’m thinking you won the Nobel Prize what three years ago, so you must deal with a whole lot of what has Smoot done lately? My thought is we continue my research as a team, you know Cooper-Smoot – alphabetical – and when we win the Nobel Prize, you’ll be back on top.”
In Conclusion: A nice plug for the Sarah Connor Chronicles provides the guys with an enjoyable new setting to deliver the same old jokes.
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