8.03 The First Pitch Insufficiency (Sept 29)

[Toad]

[Louise]

OMG, how many times are they going to use the word "Insufficiency"?
The episode titles are getting sooo repetitive. I swear they've used "catalyst" and "vortex" four or five times. I actually bothered to add this up, once. I might go to the Wiki and do it again...

Howard is adorable; who is that wraith hovering over his shoulder? Somebody please Photoshop her out. Let me guess; she knows how to play baseball and he doesn't. Of course. Because she's better than him at everything and he's a child and she's his mother/teacher.

I imagine the guys would do fine at some non-contact sports; they prob. have good hand-eye coordination from video games. And paintball isn't a sedentary thing....

---

All better:




The original had some kind of a blotch in the corner; it's gone now

---

You're welcome:

[Idle Miscreant]

Well that's just the S/A relationship in a horrible little nutshell, isn't it...
I feel like there's a variation of this scene in every episode of the past two years. It's like a piece of music that returns relentlessly to the tonic, and the tonic is a trepidatious, mildly guilty Sheldon and an angry, impatient AFF.



It's exhausting.

What's the point of a girlfriend if she's more exasperated with you than everyone else combined? They had ONE year where they were depicted on the same wavelength, and that was three years ago. When they were friends. The concept that 'growth' means sanding off the eccentricities of your character until you're no longer exasperating to your girlfriend gives me a dead, cold feeling in my heart...

And mother of god what is he wearing in that elevator picture? He looks like a washed-out, washed-up stationary salesman, or an underpaid, under-imaginative accountant on his day off.
What the fuck has happened to his self-expression? Has his 'self' become BEIGE?

[Louise]

I glanced at the TR. It's not as bad as I thought, but still...

OF COURSE B. is better at baseball than H. Of course she is.

She's more masculine, too, apparently. Because that's what 4'11" microbiologists are known for; being rough and ready She's better than him at everything, apparently.


See, this is what irritates me even when there's nothing actively unpleasant happening with the ships: the women look down on the men. They have a sort of benign contempt for them, like they're cute little puppies who pissed on the floor. The men are incompetent, the women are capable.

I suppose you could get some good-natured humor out of the guys' lack of athletic ability if it was handled in a "laughing with, not at" type of way. That could be cute and funny. That's sort of what they did with H&R attempting to wrestle in "Alien Parasite", and that was funny. But I can't take any more of the all-knowing woman and the incompetent man...

H/B has two modes: cloyingly sweet, and verbally abusive. I still have trouble accepting the idea that she's an actual character and they're married. This is a character who should've lasted for two or three episodes, tops.

Also, is there anyone left on planet Earth who actually thinks Harry Potter is an obscure nerd-reference? That is one of the top-selling books of ALL TIME, with 100 million copies sold. Methinks somebody besides hardcore nerds has read it...

Now I just want to watch Raj teach Howard to play cricket, or something...

I am in a state today, you guys...

[SpaceAnJL]

It would be funnier if it were revealed that some of the guys were good at certain sports. Sheldon's knowledge of football was a brilliant scene, him having excellent hand-eye coordination and not actually caring about it would have worked. Raj being good at cricket would certainly work. The devolution of the guys as physically competent is ongoing, they used to go paint balling.

I also loathe this gender divide going on, Wise Woman, Idiot Man-Child. It's offensive all round. Especially since at least one of the women was originally canonically established as even more socially inept and bizarre than the guys ever were.

(Though - B is a cop's daughter, the idea that she's physically capable could be played for laughs. Her beating the crap out of some guy twice her size could be funny, as long as it wasn't Overbearing Mommy taking care of her Little Boy.)

[Louise]

It would be funnier if it were revealed that some of the guys were good at certain sports.

Yes, it would be funny if they were unexpectedly good at various random skills...


Didn't Howard have a crossbow? (He was going to shoot Sheldon with it, but still...)

I'd expect that the guys would be interested in skills that are featured in fantasy novels, like archery and fencing and swordplay. That's in keeping with guys who like LOTR...

And yeah, I'll buy that the guys are kind of clumsy and awkward, but doesn't paintball at least involve...running? And aiming? And doesn't their work require a lot of manual dexterity? A careful touch and a keen eye?

I know I'm always ranting about B, but she's simply not a real character, to me. Like I said, she reminds me very much of all those one-episode girlfriends from Seinfeld whose only trait was their annoying quirkiness. She's a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, and even that is more analysis than the character warrants. She's a non-character.

I have no particular fondness for Leslie, but she left more of an impression in 8 appearances than B has in five seasons...

ETA: lol, now I'm imagining Howard shooting pigeons off the roof with his crossbow and his mother freaking out and having a conniption

[Tuesday Pajamas]

And mother of god what is he wearing in that elevator picture?

What in hells name is he wearing in ALL the pictures? He looks like a TWIT! Where's his personality? and the second one he looks too sharp for Sheldon. And just look at the face on that so-called girlfriend of him. She HATES him. Ugh!!!

[SpaceAnJL]

That's a hideously unflattering stance in that first picture. Graceless, miserable lump.

Anyway. Yeah, Sheldon has now morphed into AnyGuy. There's nothing in those pictures to mark any of them out as anything other than ordinary suburban couples. Leonard is gradually losing the layers and getting stuff that fits him, even if the colours are hideous.

Sheldon was the one who has a crossbow in his closet. That's canon. And he's far more likely to be picking off pigeons than making friends with them. (I still think that was a bizarrely crap effort at emulating Tesla.) I got the impression that Sheldon had been taken shooting as a child, 'close enough to a raccoon that it craps itself'.

I absolutely agree that they'd be all up in archery and swordplay, even if they turned out to be useless at it. (Why I wrote TPP) Howard dressed up as Robin Hood, I can see him liking the whole swashbuckling Hollywood thing. And the lightsabers - get any bunch of blokes together with lightsabers, and they run about making whoosh noises and reverting to age six. (Sometimes, their wives join in. Particularly those who fenced sabre at university.) But if the show ever does that, it will be another sick-making cosplay with useless damsels - Penny used to do Junior Rodeo, she should be getting her Warrior Princess on, not sitting around like a wet lettuce with Shrieky and Droopy, waiting for the rest of the dwarves to turn up.

[Tuesday Pajamas]

I really want to see Sheldon and Penny in the same shot (without the others) but so far TPTB have not allowed this. Want to see how great they are going to look together with Penny's style change. They are going to look HOT!

[lewstonewar]

The husband messes up and the wife cleans it up has been a trope of sitcoms since radio. It was so heavily trod that Bewitched was considered a reversal of that trope. But it doesn't come across as funny though, I remember watching the early b/w episodes of that show as a child fearing for Samantha because Darren #1 always looked ready to hit her. In the color years, Darren #1 mellowed and Darren #2 was super laidback and tension of the show shifted to man and wife united against outside forces such as extended family, work and neighbors. That's growth.