"The Big Bang Theory" - September 22, 2008 episode - season premiere

This show provided some much-needed laughter tonight.

Leonard's and Penny's first date ends with Leonard reiterating all the arguments against Pinkberry serving frozen yogurt, including the non-relevance of the company name itself, all apparently predicated by Penny having some and asking Leonard if he wanted any. At the end of the date, they kiss, but Leonard notices a mounted camera following their movements, so he suggests going into Penny's apartment, but she says she wants to take things slowly, so Leonard agrees. He then goes into his own apartment to confront the voyeurs - Howard and Raj. Leonard insists that the date went well while Howard and Raj detail all the reasons that it didn't, and even Sheldon agrees that the signs don't look good.

The next day, Sheldon is in the laundry room with a too-frickin'-funny shirt-folding device (I actually poked around the net and looked for one, but everything I came up with was some kind of cardboard contraption, so I'm wondering if they just made that up.) when Penny comes in to do her non-sorted laundry, and she ends up talking to Sheldon about Leonard, much to Sheldon's dismay. Penny is worried that since she isn't a brainiac (just like French people who get PhD's in literature), that Leonard will get easily bored with her. She admits to Sheldon that she lied to Leonard about having graduated from a community college, and she then tells Sheldon to promise that he won't tell Leonard. Not being forewarned about an expectation to keep a secret sends Sheldon into a tizzy, so much so that he even attempts to tell a word-play joke on the dual meaning of the word "tick". Sheldon is apparently terrible at keeping secrets and his demeanour apparently shows it, as evidenced when he next behaves oddly around Leonard when Penny is also there. He tries to get Penny to let him off the hook, but she refuses, so he only has one recourse.

Sheldon returns to the apartment and announces to Leonard that he's moving out, rebuffing Leonard's attempts to find out why. When Raj and Howard come in and hear the news, Raj asks Leonard what he did, and Raj and Howard list a whole bunch of things which apparently make Sheldon mad, including pronouncing the "t" in "often". Sheldon says that he'll stay with friends for the time being, and the first victim is Raj, who Sheldon insults when they disagree on an Indian actress. Raj summarily dumps Sheldon at Howard's, with Howard likening Sheldon to a flaming bag of crap. Howard lets Sheldon sleep on an air mattress in his room, which Sheldon passive-aggressively complains about until Howard agrees to let him have the bed itself. It was funny when Sheldon first started complaining about the air mattress, and Howard asked if he wouldn't prefer a park bench, but Sheldon completely missed the implication and wondered how they would get a park bench into Howard's bedroom. But Sheldon apparently can't sleep and just keeps babbling about different things, including his preferred order of women who have played Catwoman, prompted by a picture/poster of Halle Berry that Howard apparently has up on his wall. Howard implores Sheldon to go to sleep, and Sheldon responds with "I'm counting Catwomen." He then proceeds to put in order his preference of the different characters in X-Men, which apparently becomes the final straw. Meanwhile, Howard's mother is scolding them for rough-housing and that if they don't stop, she won't let them have any more sleep-overs, to which Howard complains that he's 27 years old, furthering the running joke about him still living with his mother and behaving and being treated like a child.

Howard dumps Sheldon back at Leonard's but Sheldon is behaving oddly. Howard says he gave him some warm milk laced with his mother's valium, but that still didn't put Sheldon to sleep. Under the influence of the valium, Sheldon ends up telling Leonard what Penny's secret is, and Leonard is relieved to hear that he hasn't done anything wrong, but rather, that it's a hang-up of Penny's.

The next day, Leonard goes to remedy that situation. He tells Penny that Sheldon revealed her secret but only because of the valium, and he says he knows the perfect solution - and he hands her a course catalog for Pasadena City College. She asks if she needs to have some fancy degree to date him, and he continues the bashing of community colleges (which, yeah, ok, I'll admit, I'm generally on board with) by saying it's not a fancy degree, it's just a community college degree. When he backpedals and says that she doesn't have to have a degree to date him, she says that then it's ok for her to be not smart, and he says yes. Wrong answer, and she shuts the door.


The creator of the show is still doing the "do whatever you want" card right after the show ends, and this one was about women and had all kinds of funny pontifications, but my favorite was holding up Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat" as the epitome of what women should strive for. I do agree with him that it was a terrific movie, and Kathleen Turner was smokin' in it. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it. It's a good noir re-do.