05-31-2015, 02:36 AM
Quote:Howard living at home with his mother until (let's say) thirty! And then expecting his substitute to cook,wash and clean for him, grow a pair!
That's New!Howard. We didn't start hearing about "Howard can't cut his own pancakes or his own meat" until S5. Prior to that, he was whipping up some supposedly-erotic scrambled eggs for Lenny. The difference is quite abrupt and noticeable. While I doubt Old!Howard would be super-keen on housework, either, (most people aren't ) he wouldn't be as helpless and lazy as New!Howard. The natural direction to take with this character would be to watch him become more independent, not less. Old!Howard enjoys being spoiled by his mother to some degree, I'm sure, but he pays for it through putting up with her eccentricities and demands.
It would've been cute to watch Howard learning how to manage his own place. There'd be a learning curve, I'm sure, but I don't believe he'd just sit there passively and wait for the nearest person with ovaries to tie his shoes for him. He's industrious and enterprising. He'd be programming little robots to do things for him, with amusingly mixed results...
He's obviously so precise and fussy about his clothes and hair, I could see him becoming equally precise and fussy about his surroundings. It might've been funny if he and Raj or one of the other guys were roomies and they each had a different way of doing things and this caused some mild friction and they had to have a Roommate Agreement of their own. (What if Sheldon went off with Penny or went off on a work-related trip and Leonard had to live with Howard and/or Raj, and he realized that living with Sheldon really wasn't so bad? IDK, that might've been a funny storyline.)
"Howard looking for a new Mommy-figure" is a retcon. He didn't behave that way with any of the women prior to B. We didn't see him expecting Leslie or Stephanie or Christie to attend to his needs. (And while he's sexually forward, he doesn't have a sense of entitlement, sexually. He seemed very *grateful* to those girls for showing him some attention and affection, which is kinda poignant.)
What did he do at MIT? Probably ate ramen a lot of the time, but so what?
ETA: Simon Pegg's recent movie "Hector and the Search for Happiness" was kinda disappointing. Message of "give up your childhood dreams in order to be a functional adult", similar to what we've discussed here.
ETA 2: and just for the sake of argument, if someone *is* reluctant to take responsibility for some task or other, the solution is not to scream, threaten, manipulate, or use bribes, rewards, or punishments. Getting angry only escalates the situation. If someone says "I don't know how to do that", a better approach is to say "Let me show you how, then." And if they still won't do it...well, why are you continuing to associate yourself with that person? That dynamic will not make for a good friendship or partnership, and it will only get worse, not better. You can't change people, you can only give them a chance, and if they show themselves to be incompatible with you and your needs, you move on. Most sensible people are not going to stay with someone whom they find intensely annoying and inflexible, except in sitcom-land.