The rest of Season Grate (Eps 8.07-8.15 and 8.17)

[Idle Miscreant]

Fringe little group who are sufficiently nettled to carp about it on a forum of course. There are masses of Nostalgics and Sheldon fans who merely ceased watching when they threw Sheldon's character out the window, and the focus of the show "changed from individual development to couples dynamics". You meet them everywhere on the net. There's two more in this goddamn house. They stopped watching in Season 5, still love the re-runs, and are consequently happier and less filled with spleen. We're just late to the strop and thus getting it out of our system in one great white-hot lump of rage, rather than a gentle low-key grumble. Hopefully soon we'll even be able to ignore the Taping Reports, and just enjoy S1-4. Even the occasional later episode perhaps! (I thought the Scavenger Vortex, Monster Isolation, Proton etc was excellent, among a few others.)

But yes the normal, less "obsessional" viewers are certainly getting uppity. The most common complaints I see are;

1) Don't like New Romantic Sheldon. He's not funny/makes me cringe/is unrecognisable.
2) Stop already with the relationship drama and get back to geekery.
3) The show was better without the girlfriends, when they focused on the characters' friendships.

Anyroad, IT'S...CAPTION TIME! If it wasn't all ultimately intended merely to shunt Sheldon away from science and closer to the bedroom, I'd almost be tempted to watch this episode. It looks Vintagey. But FOOL ME ONCE etc.

And I'll say again, that the enforced absence of Sheldon & Penny scenes has been particularly heartbreaking to early season fans. Sheldon and Penny made the show. Their scenes are the ones remembered by the man in the street, and it was an unusual and startling relationship. Comedy-wise, Penny plays off Sheldon better than anyone. It is a waste of her character for her to just be a "wife" to another straight man, given that Penny's a straight man herself.
Why have these scenes been effectively banished? This episode contains only the second S/P scene of the entire season.
Again, these are the same writers of the marvelous early seasons. Some directive from above has demanded these artistically fatal changes...
I shall wreak my rewenge one day, mark!