7.17 The Friendship Turbulence

[Trust No One]

O JESUS PENNY YOU SAD BASTARD!

Criminy! Who the devil ARE these people we watch every week.....They've all morphed into a clutch of unremittingly awful, mean-spirited lickspittals....Or were they always, and we were just distracted by the brilliance of Vintage Sheldon?

Who in reality sits around every evening with all their (embittered, jealous) "friends" in a little technicolour psychological clusterfuck, where you rake each other's dreams over the coals for the brief warmth the flare up brings that serves in lieu of any love in your godawful contrived relationships….NOT RHETORICAL. Does anyone?

Psychological clusterfuck/Contrived godawful relationship is probably just the basic structure of a Sitcom, in which event I don’t think people like us (er, cranky "intellectuals", artists, and other unfortunate species) should be watching the damn things at all (why are we again?). But wasn’t this show DIFFERENT in the beginning? (It was, it bloody was!)

And if this is not Reality but Art, then what is illuminating about it? Or redeeming, honourable, provoking, memorable?
I suppose it’s meant to be Entertainment, but it’s a very nasty kind, and I’d feel less morally dubious cheering on a leper kicking contest than barracking for this group of flaky little-minded backstabbers….

Sheldon you prize eejit....What is he, just a vending machine of various forms of malice now?

Airplane scene garners two Penny Blossoms from Gripe (I’d be happy if the whole show was just Howard and Sheldon from now on), but the rest of the spite, faux-caring and unremitting tedium of sex jokes garners a feckin avalanche of Dirty Socks. So I'm conflicted.

I'm going to go away and sit in the corner for a while.
Putting myself in Time Out for watching this bloody thing...
Also I’m evidently a trifle cranky.

And on that note, here’s a pudding cranky. O ha ha! Perhaps I should write for television...
No.

MG, you must skip the next episode. It is soo liberating. I did not see the episode, but it seems like another tease with Sheldon and Howard looking like friends and things go wrong at the end. I'm sorry Howard still comes off like a little sneak to me.

[Jislane35]

MG, you must skip the next episode. It is soo liberating. I did not see the episode, but it seems like another tease with Sheldon and Howard looking like friends and things go wrong at the end.

Have you read my review over the episode Ses? Lol. The sub plot wasn't so bad but Sheldon catching Mary in the act with a random man was garbage to me.

[taffinabean]

Have you read my review over the episode Ses? Lol. The sub plot wasn't so bad but Sheldon catching Mary in the act with a random man was garbage to me.

Garbage and is just a replay of Howard knocking on the door when his mom was inside having sex.
Same with the lame joke Amy told about going to the ob/gyn to get felt up or attention. The writers had her saying basically the same line in a past season.

This show is bad sex jokes, and now Mary is dragged into the sludge. They have nothing left.

[Tuesday Pajamas]

I haven't seen the episode yet, any good quote to use for the highlights page?

And those who watched it, don't forget to vote folks. It will be interesting to do a Shenny HQ list of best to worse this season - during the hiatus.

[FranEssi]

When watching the show these days, I keep looking at this dumb, childish, hyperactive man-boy on my screen and try to figure out who he is. I know he is not Sheldon. He can't be. He just doesn't look like or act like Sheldon anymore. Why is Jim Parsons playing him like this? Has he been told to do it this way? Or is this a deliberate acting choice by Jim himself? It's strange, and baffling.

I may be wrong about this, but after watching this episode, I got the feeling that this might have been damage control for 7X13. In S7XE13 they made Leonard too douchey towards Penny and her decision to quit the Cheesecake Factory, while Sheldon was very supportive and called them 'dreamers'. Leonard's lack of support and Sheldon's understanding of Penny and of her dream got a lot of reaction and coverage not just in the fandom but in the media as well. If I am not mistaken, some websites wrote about it.

So in this episode, they had Sheldon make fun of Penny's failed acting career and had Leonard be more supportive. Yes, he did make some douchey comments at first, but in the end he was like why don't you take the role and here is a car to take you to auditions, which I think is supposed to show he is supportive of Penny and her acting career now.

If all that was not enough, they had to destroy and get rid of Penny's old car when Sheldon was in it with her.

Call me paranoid, but I do feel this episode was yet another effort to play down the depth of Sheldon and Penny's friendship.

[Jislane35]

When watching the show these days, I keep looking at this dumb, childish, hyperactive man-boy on my screen and try to figure out who he is. I know he is not Sheldon. He can't be. He just doesn't look like or act like Sheldon anymore. Why is Jim Parsons playing him like this? Has he been told to do it this way? Or is this an acting choice by himself? It's strange, and baffling.

I may be wrong about this, but after watching this episode, I got the feeling that this might have been damage control for 7X13. In S7XE13 they made Leonard too douchey towards Penny and her decision to quit the Cheesecake Factory, while Sheldon was very supportive and called them 'dreamers'. Leonard's lack of support and Sheldon's understanding of Penny and of her dream got a lot of reaction and coverage not just in the fandom but in the media as well. If I am not mistaken, some websites wrote about it.

So in this episode, they had Sheldon make fun of Penny's failed acting career and had Leonard be more supportive. Yes, he did make some douchey comments at first, but in the end he was like why don't you take the role and here is a car to take you to auditions, which I think is supposed to show he is supportive of Penny and her acting career now.

If all that was not enough, they had to do destroy and get rid of Penny's old car when Sheldon was in it with her.

Call me paranoid, but I do feel this episode was yet another effort to play down the depth of Sheldon and Penny's friendship.

Just how offensive were Sheldon's comments about Penny's career? We're they just as bad as Leonard's?

[FranEssi]

No, not as bad as Leonard's, but at the beginning of the episode he did say, "Let's make fun of Penny's failed acting career", or something to that effect.

[Jislane35]

No, not as bad as Leonard's, but at the beginning of the episode he did say, "Let's make fun of Penny's failed acting career", or something to that effect.

I'm not gonna lie he's got a point about Penny's failed acting career which is more than true but we all know that he should seriously start learning to keep his comments to himself. Even though Penny isn't choosing the best auditions for herself to be taken seriously as a starlet at least she was trying...in a way. I think the writers noticed how awful they wrote Leonard a few episodes ago and decided to fix it up by having him convince her to go to that Serial Apist audition (please tell me it wasn't the same one she was talking about in the beginning of the episode) she signed up for as well as getting her that ugly used car as well. I'm pretty excited to know on whether or not Evil Wheaton will cause yet another fight between Lenny like he did once in earlier seasons by making Penny paranoid about hurting Leonard after not telling him ILY back to him.

[queenoftheDales]

When watching the show these days, I keep looking at this dumb, childish, hyperactive man-boy on my screen and try to figure out who he is. I know he is not Sheldon. He can't be. He just doesn't look like or act like Sheldon anymore. Why is Jim Parsons playing him like this? Has he been told to do it this way? Or is this an acting choice by himself? It's strange, and baffling.

I may be wrong about this, but after watching this episode, I got the feeling that this might have been damage control for 7X13. In S7XE13 they made Leonard too douchey towards Penny and her decision to quit the Cheesecake Factory, while Sheldon was very supportive and called them 'dreamers'. Leonard's lack of support and Sheldon's understanding of Penny and of her dream got a lot of reaction and coverage not just in the fandom but in the media as well. If I am not mistaken, some websites wrote about it.

So in this episode, they had Sheldon make fun of Penny's failed acting career and had Leonard be more supportive. Yes, he did make some douchey comments at first, but in the end he was like why don't you take the role and here is a car to take you to auditions, which I think is supposed to show he is supportive of Penny and her acting career now.

If all that was not enough, they had to do destroy and get rid of Penny's old car when Sheldon was in it with her.

Call me paranoid, but I do feel this episode was yet another effort to play down the depth of Sheldon and Penny's friendship.

You hit the nail on the head here. I think it was forgotten that it was Sheldon that started the conversation of Penny's career. This is not the real Sheldon. AT ALL.

It HAS to be damage control for the "Dreamers" scene. That moment made Leonard look like a crap boyfriend and Sheldon the supportive friend that gave Penny what she needed. There were articles on how Sheldon was the kind of man Penny should have. Oops, I bet tptb wasn't trying to go for that reaction. So now, in order to set this new Big Bang universe back on its crooked axis, Sheldon has to be the asshole and Leonard saves the day with a faux touching moment.

I doubt JP is playing Sheldon like this on purpose, even he can only do so much with the crappy script they give him.

---

God and Raj, what are they gonna do with the guy? How long can they drag out the lonely, horny jokes? Ugh, i was over it forever ago.

[Tuesday Pajamas]

I gave this

The only reason I didn't give it three was I thought the Howard/Sheldon hand holding was rather cool.

The insult Howard was supposed to have made about Sheldon 10 years ago calling him "Pee Wee Herman" is an observation Sheldon fans are making about the character NOW. I convinced the writers are sourcing the fans for material to counterpoint what they complain about.

This Leonard and Penny scenes were painful to watch, it's the same argument over and over with them. Leonard buying Penny a car was a nice gesture but still no laughs.

The Raj and Amy scenes had so much wasted potential and could have been hilarious but the writers have made Amy TOO NORMAl. Raj wasn't funny and Amy neither was she, so what was the bleedin point? Imagine if Amy had been quirky like season 4 and was giving Raj all the WRONG advise and he was believing it. It could have been soooo funny. They just don't care about humour anymore, they are too busy trying to make Amy relatable.