9.09 The Platonic Permutation

[Tuesday Pajamas]

"Sheldon and Amy try hanging out as friends when they spend Thanksgiving together at the aquarium. Also, Wolowitz reluctantly agrees to volunteer at the soup kitchen with Bernadette, Raj and Emily, and Penny discovers that Leonard knows more about her than she thought. "

For those who are watching. The pictures and promos have been out a while so I thought I'd better start the thread as it airs tonight.

Photos here

Penny proves she doesn't give a toss about Leonard. Now THAT is funny.

Sneak peeks here 

[wellplayedpenny]

9.09 The Platonic Permutation

Alas, I think I've just been exposed to the episode formula for the next one and a half seasons: boring Shamy, boring Lenny and the other guys, an A, B, and C plot that has everything but original humour.

In reverse order, we have Howard, Bernadette, Raj and Emily help out at a soup kitchen for Thanksgiving. Howard is there only because he didn't want to spend Thanksgiving with Sheldon. While this might come across with Howard as the ass in a morality play where he gets to learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving, in reality this is only a vehicle for Elon Musk to appear, another person in a long line of Geek Heroes to come on the show and give it Geek Cred.

As for the Lenny, we have puzzling moment number, ah I lost count, where I don't understand why Penny hasn't kicked Leonard to the curb. In this instance, Leonard has read Penny's private journal. Does she go Junior Rodeo on him? No, she follows the new plan—the silent treatment and pouty look. She takes it and moves on.

Leonard offers another lame apology, it was a long time ago and it was an accident that he read it. Penny calls him out on this, wondering why he didn't stop reading it once he realized it was her journal. He had no excuse. There is no excuse for this violation of trust. But then again he did kiss another woman while they were going out and that had no repercussions. It's all a big joke. And nothing could make this plainer than by having Leonard try to make amends for his transgression by wearing Penny's nightie and wanting to be shamed on FB.

Penny is absolutely appalled. "No one wants to see this!" she says. "I don't want to see this!" And yet the way he goes on with his dancing and that incredibly huge grin says that he actually thinks this is a fair compromise for betraying her trust. They say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Penny and Leonard are so out of synch with each other that I doubt they're in the same galaxy much less solar system.

The Shamy plotline continues the tragedy of the death of Sheldon Cooper, the first part being his renunciation of Spock. In this instance, we have Sheldon and Amy spend a morning together as friends. It's interesting that we have them playing intellectual games with each other, rekindling the spirit of their having a relationship of the mind. The only problem with this is that I can't remember the last time they had one of these moments on-air so I found it rather confusing when Amy says that she "missed this". I guess I missed it, too.

At the end of the episode, Amy asks to be Sheldon's girlfriend but he declines, not because he isn't good at being her boyfriend but because he had difficulties getting over her. This, of course, leaves it to interpretation that he still isn't over her. His refusal to resume their relationship is meant to be the last hurdle that he has to hop himself. In this way, it is his decision to reclaim his woman, not Amy's pursuit or badgering.

I might have bought this if Shamy was actually portrayed the way this episode implied it actually was. What we got instead was a battle between a selfish ass and a demanding, sex-obsessed lump of sadness.

Love has never looked more pathetic. And if Lenny and Shamy are examples of 'true love' then I've never been more thankful that I'm single.

[A.D.A.]

The part before the journal is my reasoning why I can stomach Lenny more than Shamy - they are written to be quite funny every once in a while and I think KC and JG are good enough actors that I can laugh at them. In fact, just about all of these people deserve better scripts than this. I could also relate to Penny here because I can seriously barely remember my own birthday and probably only pull it off because it's on a distinctive day. Problem is, Lenny aren't the height of interesting, either, even when they don't annoy me. That's the problem when your only joke material is relationship problems. (The show also collided with my morals here once again... I'd have a much bigger problem with someone reading my diary. It's not equivalent with someone forgetting my birthday at all, which I think was what they were going for.)

I did appreciate that they at least made an attempt to tie Emily into some friendship dynamic, although I don't think it really worked. Did she even speak to her boyfriend? And where did the soup kitchen thing come from? Never seen any of them volunteer before. Instead of harping on Howard, could've had some jokes about people who only do charitable things on the big holidays...

And then Shamy, who are much easier to stomach as friends because until the fish game, it was still mostly Amy disapproving Sheldon's antics, something that always made me wonder why she was in the relationship in the first place. As WPP said, funny fishgames wasn't really what their relationship has been about for a while. If it was, maybe I would understand why people ship Shamy because that part was fun. Not fun enough to suddenly pull the plug on the break-up, though, I mean what? It's not like any of the issues Amy had were addressed. It just makes her seem pretty fickle. And then of course we had to end what I thought was a funny-ish lighthearted romcom episode (because it is a romcom these days, but not nearly often enough consistently funny) on a downer beat with a dramatic lingering shot of Amy. Oh God, I don't care.