02-28-2015, 12:01 AM
Beautifully worded review, wellplayedpenny! I've read it many times already and will no doubt read it many more times. 
But I'm struggling with this one, folks. Quite frankly I'm baffled. Sheldon and Penny, in my opinion the lifeblood of the show, have essentially been sidelined for several seasons now while this Romantic Couples Only agenda has been aggressively pursued. So why, why now, plunk the characters into this very meaty heartfelt plot, exposing vulnerabilities and intimacies (and wonderfully acted by Jim and Kaley by the way), just to step in at the last and qualify it all as a brother/sister relationship?
Move along! Nothing to see here, people. No attraction. Nope. They've been SIBLING-ZONED.
Maybe I'm too hung up on that part. But it was brusque and jarring and I could literally see the puppet strings glinting in the light. It was completely unnecessary too. Lenny and Shamy are clearly endgame. I get that. I don't need it spelled out for me, thank you very much. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't have been averse to a closer relationship being explored, but Shenny exists, for me anyway, as a dazzling "what if", a coming together of two vastly different worlds and all the undiluted exasperation, perplexity, honesty and HUMANITY that entails.
And, no, I don't get that from Lenny and Shamy AT ALL. Sorry, canons, I just don't. I simply can't get past the 100 little skeevy manipulations and the forced attraction, all slicked over with a cringe-inducing mawkishness. Turtles and sex paintings? PLEASE!! Give me warfare, dammit!
Was the spectre of a hypothetical Sheldon and Penny alignment really THAT much of an impediment, THAT threatening? For Pete's sake they've maybe had a total of 4 minutes combined screen time so far this season (not counting the stare-a-thon). Honestly I think I would have preferred if they, the writers, had simply gone on pretending there's no elephant in the room instead of stepping into the narrative and hamfistedly wiping away 8 years worth of subtext.
Oh, that's right, there is no subtext. Never was. I keep forgetting. Grrr.
But I'm struggling with this one, folks. Quite frankly I'm baffled. Sheldon and Penny, in my opinion the lifeblood of the show, have essentially been sidelined for several seasons now while this Romantic Couples Only agenda has been aggressively pursued. So why, why now, plunk the characters into this very meaty heartfelt plot, exposing vulnerabilities and intimacies (and wonderfully acted by Jim and Kaley by the way), just to step in at the last and qualify it all as a brother/sister relationship?
Move along! Nothing to see here, people. No attraction. Nope. They've been SIBLING-ZONED.
Maybe I'm too hung up on that part. But it was brusque and jarring and I could literally see the puppet strings glinting in the light. It was completely unnecessary too. Lenny and Shamy are clearly endgame. I get that. I don't need it spelled out for me, thank you very much. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't have been averse to a closer relationship being explored, but Shenny exists, for me anyway, as a dazzling "what if", a coming together of two vastly different worlds and all the undiluted exasperation, perplexity, honesty and HUMANITY that entails.
And, no, I don't get that from Lenny and Shamy AT ALL. Sorry, canons, I just don't. I simply can't get past the 100 little skeevy manipulations and the forced attraction, all slicked over with a cringe-inducing mawkishness. Turtles and sex paintings? PLEASE!! Give me warfare, dammit!
Was the spectre of a hypothetical Sheldon and Penny alignment really THAT much of an impediment, THAT threatening? For Pete's sake they've maybe had a total of 4 minutes combined screen time so far this season (not counting the stare-a-thon). Honestly I think I would have preferred if they, the writers, had simply gone on pretending there's no elephant in the room instead of stepping into the narrative and hamfistedly wiping away 8 years worth of subtext.
Oh, that's right, there is no subtext. Never was. I keep forgetting. Grrr.
OH PLEASE...