Kaley Cuoco looked mighty fetching at last night’s Grammy Awards. She was a presenter and brought a little sexy to the evening. She had the second hardest working double sided tape in the house behind Beyonce. She and the black Nicole Miller grown received raves in various fashionista blogs. I completely forgot that she was standing next to some guy. Why did the guy even bother to show up? Just web search her name and enjoy the red carpet view.
“The Einstein Approximation” has Sheldon standing in the kitchen with his back to a white board covered in various formulas. He quickly turns back and forth to look at the whiteboard. His hair is messed up. He looks like he’s tweaking out with his twitch moves. Is Sheldon bound for Celebrity Cerebral Rehab with Dr. Drew? Penny watches the glance and run. He’s attempting to look at his work as a fleeting peripheral image to engage a different part of his brain. Penny suggests using her solution: coffee. Doesn’t she remember what happened the last time Sheldon became a java junky? He’s been up all night working on this. Sheldon runs around and looks at the white board. Leonard scolds Penny for not locking Sheldon in his crate since he’ll just run around the apartment all night. Sheldon uses his hands to make a fake telescope. Leonard thinks he’s looking for the alligator that bit off Sheldon’s hand. Sheldon immediately corrects him that Captain Hook’s hand was eaten by a crocodile. Don’t mock the man with bogus facts. Leonard suggests he have a fresh start. Sheldon grabs the white board, opens a window and tosses it outside. A car crash noise is heard. Sheldon picks up a new blank white board and returns to the easel.
There is nothing worse than trying to solve a problem that just won’t click. You do stupid and weird things for a fresh solution. Although watching Sheldon reminds me of those magic pictures that supposedly had secret images in them if you stared the right way. I never figured out how to make them work. Although mainly it was because I didn’t want to stand like an utter dork at the mall. Sheldon doesn’t have that dork issue.
Sheldon loudly works on the problem at the end of the table in the lunchroom. Howard and Leonard are at the opposite end. They keep away from the genius. Howard asks how long has Sheldon been stuck. Leonard replies that he’s been stuck “intellectually for 30 hours. Emotionally for 29 years.” Howard suggests they try rebooting him. Leonard thinks its a firmware issue. Raj joins them with the great news that its disco night at a roller rink. Immediately Leonard and Howard decide it’d be a great double date event. Raj feels upset that his entertainment suggestion has turned him into the fifth wheel. The attention turns to the uber-geek in the room. Sheldon is so focused he used butter as a stick of deodorant. Howard thinks he smells popcorn. Leonard hasn’t seen him this stuck since The Matrix Revolutions. Sheldon steals Raj’s lima beans to use a carbon atoms. He takes Leonard’s peas for electrons. Howard volunteers his corn. Sheldon is revolted. Leonard brings up getting dinner before the rollerskating. Howard wants to go to PF Changs. His mom has coupons. Leonard warns him not to bring his mom along. It wasn’t good the last time she tagged along. Raj is upset that his idea has been turned into a double date. He wishes they both fall at the rollerrink and break their coccyxes. Sheldon corrects him on the plural term. Raj takes back his lima beans.
Even though I live near a PF Changs, I’ve never received any coupons from them. However it turns out the Chinese restaurant chain has online printable coupons. You can sign up for their Warrior Card that gives you 10% off your total meal. Thanks to the internet, you can live like Howard’s mom. They have addictive lettuce wraps.
Penny and Bernadette walk up the stars in their disco roller skating outfits. They’re not sure what was more embarrassed about their dates: their skating or disco dancing. Penny thinks the biggest embarrassment was people seeing them all leave together. Howard and Leonard think they were hot stuff at the rink. They wear shimmering shirts that were stolen from Neil Diamond’s tour wardrobe. Leonard begs Penny not to mention he hurt his ass falling to Raj. He opens the apartment door and lets her enter first. She steps inside and goes down. So does Leonard. The floor is covered in marbles. Sheldon is upset because they’ve ruined everything. Penny thinks she hurts more because Leonard has been practicing hitting his ass all night. Bernadette asks Sheldon when was the last time he slept. He guesses three days. He doesn’t need sleep as he hunts down the “toad of truth.” Penny thinks it’s science jargon. Leonard declares it’s a crazy thing. Bernadette appeals to Sheldon’s scientific mind and mom issues by forcing him to brushing his teeth and go to bed. Leonard is amazed. She’s had experience with difficult kids since her mom ran an illegal daycare in the basement.
There’s a strange unknown sexual triangle tension arising between Penny, Bernadette and Sheldon. While Penny might be the softy for Sheldon, Bernadette has a tight connection on him. She knows how to crack the whip on him. Howard better watch out before he’s invited to Chicago to get the news on the Jerry Springer set about Sheldon having a “Spock in heat” moment with his girlfriend.
Penny and Leonard sleep in his bed. Penny wakes up to a diabolical laughter noise. Turns out it’s Leonard’s cellphone’s ringtone of The Joker. He won’t change it since he paid for it. He answers the phone and agrees to come down to a place. Penny asks what happened. Sheldon has escaped and is terrorizing the village. Leonard arrives at an arcade. The guard informs him that he didn’t call the cops because he understands the situation. His sister has a kid that’s special. The guard points Leonard toward the ball pit where Sheldon visualizing carbon atoms. He’s in a frenzy. He won’t get out. He plunges deep into the balls. Leonard wades in after him. Sheldon keeps popping up giving off Bazingas like Marco Polo. This is a simple piece of comedy that just works so well visually.
The Steve Holland who is a co-writer of this episode is not the Savage Steve Holland that made Better Off Dead. They are extremely two different people. Does The Big Bang‘s Steve Holland gets Savage Steve Holland’s mail? Reader Jim Ricker attended a screening of Better Off Dead hosted by Savage Steve Holland. Diane Franklin was there and let fans try on her famous sports jacket from the movie. The big treat was when Jim met Curtis Armstrong. He hung with Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. Hopefully in the near future they’ll have Curtis Armstrong make a guest star role since he was the coolest of the Nerds. He should play an academic advisor.
Leonard and Penny sleep in her bed. Sheldon knocks on their headboard. The duo wake up screaming. There’s no lock capable of stopping him. Sheldon has good news. He figured out the answer. Not the answer to the problem, but the answer to getting to the answer. Penny lets Leonard know that she can’t handle his roommate. They’re breaking up. She lays back in the bed as Sheldon sits down on the mattress. The answer rests in how Albert Einstein worked a lame job at the patent office. He is going to get a menial job to allow part of his brain to be occupied while the other focuses on the big problem. The couple attempt to go back to bed. Sheldon tells Penny that she snores.
Sheldon is at the employment agency. His counselor is the voice of Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith). He wants a good non-thinking job like her position. She’s not thrilled at that compliment. He mentions a job of pyramid builder, but she doesn’t have a menial job like that. She offers him a construction job. Since he has no clue about sheet rock, the job is dropped. His lack of a car narrows his choices. She asks him about his last job. He talks about the string theory business. She asks for a second and walks away from her desk. She screams for security.
Penny takes an order from a table at the Cheese Cake Factory. As she backs up, Sheldon almost runs into her. He’s the new bus boy. He tells her that he figured the three best mind numbing jobs are toll booth operator, Apple Store Genius and what Penny does. Since he hates touching money and devaluing genius, he came to her work. She wonders how he got hired so fast. Turns out he doesn’t need to get paid so he just put on an apron and started clearing tables. He’s getting ideas already while scrapping plates clean. Penny corrects him that she’s a waitress and not a busboy. Sheldon agrees and hands her the dirty plates. He heads to a table to take their order.
When Andy Kaufman was making Taxi, he was working as a busboy at a diner. He didn’t need the money. He wanted to observe people. Sometimes you do want a rather dumb job so you can trick your brain into thinking. One summer I worked for the Census. Amazing how much thinking you can accomplish when you job is double checking if people were filling in circles properly. I have to disagree with Sheldon’s list of mindnumbing jobs. My three are Classic Rock Radio Programmer, Parking Mall Designer and Editor that selects the model for the cover of O: Oprah’s Magazine. There’s very little brain activity required to be a genius in those positions.
Sheldon serves Howard, Raj and Leonard. He gets quizzed by Leonard about his special order burrito. Raj wonder how long this can last. Leonard mentions a professor that melted down and became a mobile dog groomer. Howard offers to chip in on a van for Sheldon. However Sheldon is afraid of dogs so it just won’t work. Penny arrives at their table ready to take her order. But it’s too late. They’re dining. She’s upset since Sheldon doesn’t work there. A crash of plates is heard. Sheldon has dropped his tray. He stares at the mess on the floor and has an epiphany about the problem. He needs to look at it in terms of waves. He walks away out when Penny stops him. She wants him to clean up the mess. Sheldon points out that he doesn’t work there.
Howard and Raj roller skate to Murray Head’s “One Night in Bangkok. They are really too into being dazzling great as they make those disco hand moves and spin each other around. Raj is in bliss. Howard looks like he’s about to puke. He wants his woman.
The final scene is more footage of Sheldon giving the bazingas while swimming in the ball pit. Jim Parsons is having a ball getting to play Flipper in human form. This footage shall be mandatory on any tributes to the smartness of The Bang.
Once more they’ve given us a completely Sheldon-centric episode and it works both comically and intellectually. I’ve known people in genius schools who go to such extremes in order to find that moment that unifies their theory. Nothing sane matters to them in pursuit of their toad of truth. You can smell when they are deep into their thesis project. The first sacrifice of genius is soap. They will go days without sleep since they know in bed they’ll only be kept away with their brain in overdrive. You fear that one moment they let down their guard and the answer flies through their noggin and out the window.
