What’s with the television scheduling these days? I understand the fall season/winter season debacle. What I don’t understand is why most of my favorite shows can’t be depended upon to have new episodes for more than a few weeks in a row. Yes, I’m including The Big Bang Theory in there. It was great to have a new episode tonight. But let’s keep count of how many weeks in a row we’re going to get them!
Not only was it new material, but the two stories within focused on Sheldon and Raj separately. I’ve made it no secret that I adore Jim Parsons and that Sheldon’s my favorite character on the show. But, second to Sheldon, I like to see Raj get some airtime. I wasn’t disappointed.
During the teaching Titanic of Sheldon, all I could think of was a class I took in college on atmospheric sciences with the most boring professor in the world. At least Sheldon’s clothes, his latest almost Pee-Wee Herman slicked hairdo and general social naivety makes scientific mumbo-jumbo better than a Ben Stein monotone does. The students actually had Twitter fodder with which to mock Sheldon!
I personally got a kick out of Amy Farrah Fowler’s video chat attempt to cheer Sheldon up after the biting Tweets of the students. But it didn’t make him feel better. However, he took to her advice about acting lessons. Poor Penny, once again noted to be a freeloader, was dealt a much worse hand having Sheldon as a student than Sheldon had with his students. He did get into the role, though — showing more of the reason Sheldon is the way he is today.
Then there’s Raj and his closeted gay in denial self. Once again, he made a gay reference (with Howard nearby, of course). He likened Sheldon saying how much he hated teaching yet being in a funk because he didn’t do it well to accidentally walking into a gay bar, then getting upset that no one hit on him. Er, his friend.
When Bernadette told him he was a cutie to make him feel better, that was enough to set him off into numerous fantasies. All of the fantasies having to do with something happening to Howard and both Howard and Bernadette wanting Raj to take care of Bernadette … sexually!
The fantasy scenarios made it possible for Raj to not only speak to a pretty girl (Bernadette), but to smooch. Although it was all fantasy, it was nice not to see the drunk act for a while. I’m not as sure about the dancing! I fell for the first fantasy. The second one had me thinking … “Well, Leonard is witnessing this.” Wham, fantasy. When it got to Bollywood, they couldn’t fool me again! After all, I know who shot JR.
Clacked by Jackie Schnoop 
on Feb 03, 2011 @ 21:37 EST5EDT
Did anyone else question how Raj is able to talk to Bernadette, even when he’s not dreaming (particularly, when she first says that he’s “hot”)? Granted, I missed an episode or two in the last month, but I haven’t seen anything online about him being able to talk to girls.
He had a bottle of beer with him. It was partially obscured by the napkin holder or something.
I honestly thought something about this episode was off. First of all, no one who goes to Caltech calls it “the university”. Secondly, Darth Vader was vehemently against the construction of the Death Star. At least the board work for topological insulators was somewhat relevant. On a less anal-retentive note, the show felt like it suffered from a lack of any full group interaction. We literally could have split up the show into Raj’s story and Sheldon’s story without having any loss; that seems like lazy writing to me.