and BAM! Howard Wolowitz

[SpaceAnJL]

Howard - even before the show confirmed it, I thought, his father left them when he was young, and he's had to be the man of the house ever since. There's a weird interdependent thing going on there, he and his mother complain and fight, but they'd be lost without the other one. You know that she boasts about her clever son, doing well at the university. He did leave home to go to MIT, but I think he moved back deliberately to take care of his mother, part filial obligation but part love, too. He's always struck me as the most grown up of the guys in certain ways, because for sure, he's the one that deals with bills and house repairs and actual real life situations. It's entirely possible that he hasn't got a doctorate because finances don't allow for it.

The H/B moved far too quickly, and turning B into a cheap copy of a cheap stereotype did everyone a disservice.