Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Howard and Penny are the core of the show. Although Penny is still a bit of an outsider when it comes to the heavy duty geeky goings-on, she’s still part of the gang. True, there are peripheral female characters, perhaps to the point of being tertiary friends; but the core group functions around Sheldon for the most part. He’s the one who sets the roommate rules; he’s the one who needs to be the center of attention and the Man in Charge. What if …?
What if Amy Farrah Fowler is right? What if Leonard is the nucleus of the group?
Since Leonard is dating Priya (yeah, let’s see how long that lasts) and Raj is so over-protective, the sands of time are shifting for the boys. All of a sudden, Priya is cooking and they’re gathering over at Raj’s apartment. Oh my. That throws Sheldon’s whole world askew.
While Priya tends to think of Sheldon as “quirky,” I’d almost say the character has at least a touch of Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s so set in his routines, has definite interests yet tends to ignore anything he has no interest in, he’s socially inept. Heck, I don’t think he likes people touching him.
So, when the regular Thursday night pizza evening with the boys moves to Tex-Mex over at Raj’s, it throws Sheldon into a tizzy. He thinks friends might be interchangeable, so he gathers a new group at his apartment — Stuart, Barry Kripke (ick) and Zack. Oh, he tweeted LeVar Burton and invited him, too.
It’s an utter flop, of course. They don’t want to play vintage video games. They want to talk about sex flings, get drunk and play with Bawwy’s Barry’s karaoke machine. Stuart came mainly because he was promised a shower. His living situation at the comics store doesn’t include one. Barry came because Sheldon told him there would be a waffel, er … waffle, er … raffle. Me? I’d kind of like a waffle, but I digress.
The side story really wasn’t all that much tonight — Bernadette, Amy and Penny getting ready for a girls night out. Once again, Mayim Bialik stole the scenes with her deadpan yet highly risque lines. I’m not sure I really needed to know that her electric toothbrush is named Gerard. But now that I know, I’d like to know who this Gerard character is that it was named after! There’s got to be a story in that.
In the end, this was almost like an old time fairy tale with a moral. That moral could even be something so schmaltzy as “Make new friends, keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold.”
Knock, knock, knock … all my friends
Knock, knock, knock … all my friends
Knock, knock, knock … all my friends
Sheldon caved in and escaped from his “new friends” to Raj’s apartment. But, before he got there, his real friends realized how much a part of their pal scenery he really is. Isn’t that touching?
Oh. And LeVar Burton showed up at Sheldon’s party only to run away from drunken strange men singing “I’m Walking On Sunshine.”
Other than the moral of the story, this was a rather simplistic fun romp of an episode. It didn’t really rate any guffaws here, but I snickered some. How about you?
Clacked by Jackie Schnoop 
on Feb 24, 2011 @ 21:25 EST5EDT
