In NFL football, when a team takes a scheduled week off from the season, it’s called a bye week. I know this because my boyfriend, a diehard Denver Broncos fan, was yelling at the TV calmly explaining to me this past Sunday that the rather lackluster performance of his beloved, and heretofore undefeated, team against the Baltimore Ravens was due in large part to the fact the Broncos took five days off during their bye week, derailing their machine-like momentum and causing them to play like, well, I can’t really reprint what he said next on a family website. But you get the idea: Bye weeks = Serious trouble.
I kept thinking about all this during last night’s Big Bang Theory, which was both about a boyfriend’s struggle to understand the cult of the pigskin (ahem), and the show’s first new episode back after its bye week, i.e. last week’s repeat episode. And much like the Broncos last Sunday, the Big Bang team only managed to hit a single last week instead of their usual string of three-point-nothin’-but-net shots from the double-fault wicket posts. Or, um, something. After two episodes of solid jokes about Penny and Leonard’s odd-couple relationship, it was like the writers were back at square one with these two, scratching their noggins over how to make them interesting — something they all but conceded in the cold open, when Sheldon admitted to drifting off during Penny and Leonard’s talk about watching football and kite fighting on each other’s respective Saturday afternoons.
But it’s too easy just to blame Pennard; this episode’s lameitude was systemic. I’m sorry, but whether it’s on Community, The Big Bang Theory, or a parody of the climax of Mary Poppins, kites just aren’t that funny. They’re too innocent and fun to be objects of ridicule, even with an actor as committed to embracing the silly as Jim Parsons. (“Ouch! String burn, string burn!”) So I couldn’t really care all that much that Raj lost his Batang Fighting Kite to Howard’s libido — so much for Howard’s budding relationship with that mother-suffering shiksa from the last episode, by the way. Even Howard and Raj’s we’re-best-friends-who-might-as-well-be-a-romantic-couple episode-long spat felt like warmed-over Friends-second-season to me. OK, I admit, Howard’s make-up gift of a Hello Kitty kite was funny, but that’s clearly the exception that proves the rule.
Even Sheldon had a hard time bringing the big funny. An expert on the rules of football thanks to his Texas upbringing, our favorite know-it-all took it upon himself to teach Leonard about football, so he’d be better equipped to watch the Nebraska game with Penny’s friends the following week. This produced some understandable shock among the guys (Howard: “Sheldon knows football? I mean, Quiddich, sure, but football?!”), but Leonard was still doomed, since all Sheldon did was fill him up with amusingly textbook definitions of the game, which he dutifully spat out to Penny’s clear frustration.
Save Sheldon’s promise to take Leonard “outside and teach you how to shoot close enough to a raccoon that it craps itself,” however, all of it was rather meh for me. For one, we never actually got to see Sheldon teaching Leonard the game — one could only imagine the elaborate educational mechanisms Sheldon could have employed. For another, practically none of Penny’s friends were allowed to, you know, talk, spoiling a golden opportunity to teach us something, anything new about Big Bang’s only female character. Basically, all Kaley Cuoco was given to do was squeeze the comedy out of the line “So, yeah, anyway, that’s my boyfriend — he is really smart,” and to her credit, squeeze she did. Side note: This scene also employed one of my biggest sitcom pet peeves, when two characters have a “private” conversation that in the real world would be audible to everyone else in the room, whether they were distracted by a football game or not. I would’ve kissed the TV had one of those Cornhuskers turned to Leonard and said, “You know, mimesis — as opposed to diegesis, as first posited by Plato.” Who’s with me?
Best exchange:
Leonard, in a giant football jersey: What’s wrong with a football jersey?
Sheldon: Nothing. That, however, appears to be a football cocktail dress.
Geekiest real-world prop: The Cylon toaster, which Sheldon apparently purchased on eBay, since it was only available at Comic-Con 2009, which we all know Sheldon missed while up in the north pole.
Keenest observation about American football: After two hours of watching football with Leonard, Raj concludes that “American men love drinking beer, pee too often, and have trouble getting erections.”
Leg-cross-inducing factoid about American history: Ben Franklin invented the flexible urinary catheter, which paints a picture of our founding fathers I’d rather not have in my head.
So were you as down on “The Cornhusker Vortex” as I was, Big Bang theorists? Can you make a credible case for why kites are indeed funny? What would you most like to know about Penny (like, for instance, her last name)? And how many football viewing parties have you been to where practically everyone stood up to watch (at least) the first half of the game?
Comments (1-30) of 76 Add your comment
Even on it’s lamest episode, Big Bang will out shine any other comedy. And I didn’t think it was that lame at all! Sheldon was his usual hilarious self and that’s the best part! Personally I would have loved to see him teaching leonard the football…but other than that, I laughed lots and had fun.
As a native Texan I literally LOLed HARD at Sheldon’s reasoning of why he knows so much about football AND chicken-frying meats. It’s funny because it’s true.
Oh yes, as a Texan, the chicken-frying meats bit was hilarious.
I enjoyed this episode perhaps because I am from Florida where you are fed football along with your mother’s milk (just like Sheldon’s Texas). Also, I love chicken-fried anything. Also, I have NEVER been able to get a kite afloat and the thought of having kite battles just floored me. I do agree though if Penny’s friends had been able to join in the conversation it would have been much funnier. Sheldon could have outjocked the jocks and one or two of the jocks could have outnerded the nerd.
I was happy that they held true to Sheldon being from Texas and having no other choice but to know a lil’ somethin’ about football. Other than that, the toaster and Raj’s conclusions were the only things that got me this week.
It’s OK — I agree w/Brynna, even on a bad week, its still pretty good.
I thought it had funny moments, but was not a standout episode. Much like your pet peeves about private conversations, it bothers me that Penny has all these “friends” in California who also happen to be Nebraska fans. I mean seriously, does everyone at the Cheesecake factory love Nebraska football or did Penny go to some random meeting for Nebraska fans after discovering it online and befriend all these people. It would have felt more authentic had everyone not been wearing Nebraska gear. It’s just not plausible that our cornhusker transplant managed to find so many other Nebraska fans,and befriend them to the point where they come to her apartment to watch the game.
Actually, there is a huge contingent of “Californians for Nebraska”.
Very true! My brother has lived all over the country and has always managed to find a “Husker bar” wherever he went. The biggest following he found was in California.
Oh…and as a Nebraskan for Nebraska
I must add Go Big Red!!!
As a diehard Husker, the only thing I didn’t find plausible was the fact that all those Nebraska fans didn’t tell Sheldon and Leonard to shut up while the game was on and tolerated it when Sheldon walked IN FRONT OF the tv!
She’s hot. That would be enough for me.
It would be fun to see Sheldon interact with more non-geniuses. I like watching him figure out social interactions.
They should do this with all the characters. The episode where Sheldon was doing the employees of Best Buy’s job was pretty funny.
Bye weeks do not always equal serious trouble. It’s more common that teams use the extra time to tweak any small issues with their teams. The Ravens also had a bye-week, and tightened up shop. I think it’s more likely that the Broncos slept on a very talented Ravens team that had just lost three straight to slightly more talented teams.
gotta love Ray Rice from Rutgers, New Jersey!
i went to high school w/ him (NEW RO!!!). he’s a cool kid. makes me wish i actually saw/went to a game during high school, lol (but i don’t know anything about football).
Sorry, can’t agree with your assessment. I found this episode LOL funny on multiple occasions. I loved Raj’s frustration with Howard. Raj is quickly becoming my favorite character. I also liked the humor in the situation of Sheldon having been subjected to years of a sport like football. Best line: “…week in and week out, from the time I was five until I went off for college. Longest seven years of my life.”
I don’t know why, but the way he said “What a douche!” both times had me laughing out loud.
That was the besty line! I could not stop laughing
@ Beth R. OMG – I missed that line. LOL! Thanks!
I disagree, I thought this episode was pretty funny! The kite battle was unique to these guys, Leonard in that over-sized jersey, Sheldon’s knowledge of football and the interaction between Wallowitz and Raj (when Wallowitz ditches Raj for a pretty girl). LOL!!
i have tried to watch this show but can never get through it due to the obnoxious laugh track. is it really needed? the office and modern family don’t have a laugh track and are two of the funniest shows. i give up on this one.
Good grief, are you anti-laughtrack whiners still here? Get over it. The laughtrack has been a staple of television pretty much since its inception. If that’s all it takes to turn you off a quality show, perhaps you should just avoid TV all together.
Agree with Isembard. How about this: put it on mute and read the closed captions. Those other shows are completely different.
How many times must it be said that the show does *NOT* use a laugh track? It’s a studio audience, who often-times must be told to tone down the laughter so that the actors can be heard. Modern Family and 30 Rock don’t use a laugh track because they’re not filmed in front of a studio audience.
I loved this episode.
Raj and Howard really need to be together.
they were together, well…actually the four of them were together while they were in the pole.
Missed Monday’s episode and CBS only shows brief clips on the website so I’ll have to wait for reruns… but at it’s worst… Big Bang Theory is the best comedy on TV. And the comparison to a football bye week is ludicrous.
Um, you have the internet ,obviously. Why in the world would you wait for a rerun? Just go to sidereel.com. It’s free, easy, and legal. You can find pretty much every show you want:)
Actually, I kinda agree. I laughed the hardest at that Cylon toaster and the Cylon faces it made on the bread. Which the writers obviously can’t take credit for.
however, I was totally waiting for the line “frakkin’ toaster”… which never came..
Does anyone know what happened to last week’s episode? My tivo said it was going to be about Howard and his mom-hating date/potential gf, then it was a rerun, and now this ep where he’s chasing girls again. Hope it isn’t gone for good.
And yeah, this wasn’t the best epsisode ever, but I loved Sheldon’s forced knowledge of football. I’m from Oklahoma (who was, I’m sure, beating the Huskers in the game on the program) and you pretty much have the game forced upon you, like it or not. I much prefer the chicken-fried meats.
I thought the episode was hilarious with a lot of clever one-liners and great Howard/Raj acting. “Kite fighting” is actually a huge event in India celebrated every January when people gather on their rooftops and battle to use the points of their kites to cut the strings of other kites in the sky… THEN, after the fallen kite trickles down, they race to snatch it. Kite = “Patang” in Hindi. GREAT writing… wish there was a little more explanation of the history of the kite fighting though
we have our clarification on the whole kite scene but you are right, they should have mention something like that so people would catch the drift, sometimes the writers put stuff that is not well known and that’s why sometimes is not found funny by people who don’t know that stuff.
Also being from Texas, as soon as Sheldon stated his first football fact, I turned to the wife (German) and said “he’s from Texas, of course he’ll know football”. I did have one correction, we do play the “other” type of football (better known to us as soccer) in Texas…that’s for little kids to play until they’re big enough to hit each other in US-style football…
Pretty addicted to this show, but I think Adam hit it on the head: not that great or original. Still, any quality time with the gang makes me happy, and I don’t expect them to hit it out of the ballpark every single time.
KITES HO!
for me this was the type of episode I actually enjoy. Penny was a side character & the guys interaction did not center on her or the “relationship.” I also thought it very funny to find Shelton an expert on football & then his interaction with Lenoard at Penny’s party was perfect.
I thought they missed an incredible opportunity by not having Sheldon walk in on the football party and start spouting football knowledge that impressed Penny’s friends, like calling the plays before they were run.
One of the best parts of last season was the writers hinting that Sheldon and Penny somehow strangely “get” each other in a way Penny and Leonard never will (like Penny Blossoms). A scene where all of Penny’s football friends start bonding with Sheldon would have been priceless. I guess they’ve jettisoned that angle for the Penny-Leonard relationship. Too bad.
I was thinking that exact same thing! As soon as Sheldon walked into Penny’s apartment, I thought “Let that football knowldge fly!”
Maybe its just a Texas thing, but I laughed so hard I almost wet myself last night listening to Sheldon talk about growing up. Football and chicken-fried meats…..as Texas as it gets. Raj and Howard were funny, as always. Leonard and Penny – I still say it was a horrible idea to put them together as a couple. It just does not work.
why do you take a job writing up a show you clearly don’t like. Was it assigned, it which case fake it dillweed. Big Bang is one of the funniest shows on TV. have you ever heard of subtle humor?
you want to know what show really blows…………..two and a half men. Charlie is so over the top. The episode last night was horrific.
I’ve only watched the last three episodes, so I guess I’m still in the infatuation phase…I thought the show was hilarious and am just sorry I haven’t made time for it before now! I have a lot of DVD-watching to do!
all that football in Texas explains a lot. head injuries and dementia galore, that’s probably what’s wrong with Rick Perry and his merry band of legislators.
I also love how Leonard got his NFL and college rules mixed up. In a college game there isn’t a “red flag” to throw for a challenge, it’s by booth review only. It’s only in the NFL where the coach can challenge a call by throwing a red flag. I did feel kind of bad for him though, he really did stick out like a sore thumb with all of those frat boys around him.
Nope. I loved this episode. It’s great when we see Sheldon break out of his norm and reveal knowledge about things no one would expect. And it’s nice to see him represent as a Texan.
I love this show and wonder where the heck they get Howard’s outfits!
It was decent. no sitcom ever hit out of the park every week. Can’t wait untill wolowitz and Katee are in the hot tub
I totally agree with the recap. I am a big fan but this episode falls flat. What I really hate is the stereotypical geeks don’t like football garbage. Ummmm I know lots of genius/geeks who love football and baseball. They just don’t play them (except for video game versions). I also don’t like the way they’re making Sheldon sound more and more like a robot/vulcan. There’s got to be a better way to get comedy out of him.