In my two reviews (found HERE and HERE) for The Big Bang Theory, I've been pretty critical of the show and the down season I believe it's had.
While many of my frustrations of Season 4 persist, I thought "The Weekend Vortex" did some nice things with Sheldon, while also re-affirming why I've always liked this show.
As the show got more and more popular, it seemed to get less and less nerdy/geeky to draw a more diverse audience to the show. Which is understandable, but at the same time disappointing because it changed the tenor of the show a little bit.
This week's episode was a throwback of sorts with the guys all hanging out, playing games, talking about Star Wars, making stupid jokes and burning on one another. I always found the show more amusing when they were pathetic geeks who were perpetually alone and couldn't even dream about having a girlfriend that wasn't Leslie Winkle (and judging by Raj's freak-out at the end of the episode, it appears that he longs for those days, too).
But now that Leonard, Sheldon and Howard are involved with women on the show (to varying degrees), it's interesting and important to the show to see how those stories are dealt with. At this point, it's just essentially same old, same old regarding Leonard and Penny and Howard and Bernadette, but it's good to see Sheldon's character evolving a bit.
Who knew that it would take a weekend of video games, junk food and sleeping bags to turn Sheldon into a real man?
I enjoyed him trying to wiggle out of the relationship agreement so he could ditch Amy -- it was like watching a normal human being be a douche to his girlfriend. He's still Sheldon, but he's starting to evolve -- be it ever so slowly -- into a typical dude. And as the older Sheldon probably never would have realized that he was acting like an ass or just not care, he seemed genuinely sorry afterwards.
Just an overall entertaining episode that demonstrates the best of what this show has to offer.
NOTABLE QUOTABLE:
LEONARD: "Clear your weekend, starting Saturday morning. Starwars marathon."
SHELDON: "Movies or videogames? Or boardgames? Or trading card games? Or legos? Or dress-up? Or comic books? Or dramatic readings of novelizations? Yes to all!"
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:
--It took me over 100 episodes to fully realize how much taller Sheldon is over everyone else on this show.It's crazy.
--Why did I laugh EVERY TIME that the "whip app" was used? I gotta download that shit.
--I enjoyed Raj's rant at the end, but it reminds me of why I don't like his character: he reminds me of me. This is not a compliment to myself.
SCORE: 84 out of 100
