Wolowitz returns from space. He manages to survive the descent with a moderate amount of screaming, and they don't explicitly say that he pooped himself, so I'm going to assume that he didn't. When he arrives at the airport, Bernadette's the only one there to greet him because he left right after their wedding, and they didn't have any time for matrimonial sexing.
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| Aw, yeah. |
Unfortunately, Bernie is sick, and the antihistamine she takes makes her fall asleep. With no wife to give him a proper welcome, he heads over to his mother's place. She wasn't expecting to see him until the next day, though, and she is otherwise occupied, having relations with Howard's dentist. Unable to clear that image from his mind, Wolowitz heads over to Raj's place, where he finds that Stuart has horned in on his best friend. In fact, Stuart is now living with Raj, and they're going to the Sound of Music Sing Along. Not wanting to be a third wheel, Howard then heads over to Sheldon and Leonard's place, where the B-plot has been taking place. Everyone there is otherwise occupied, so he heads out to a diner where he at last receives a little recognition.
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| And a free piece of cheesecake. |
Over in B-plot land, it's the sitcom standard Boys vs. Girls game night. It begins with Pictionary, and when the boys lose due to Sheldon's inability to draw a decent picture or make a rational guess, game night gets rough. There's glasses-free Where's Waldo, dizzy math, and wrestling, all of which the guys lose because this is a standard sitcom trope. The boys don't always have to get skunked, but that seems to be the way it's written most often. They pretty much always lose, though. In any male vs. female competition, the females have about a 90% chance of victory, regardless of matter under contention. It can be sports, board games, trivia, cooking, or even arm wrestling, and the guys will lose. On the off-chance that the guys win, the women get super pissy about it, and it's up to the guys to apologize for being chauvinists or whatever. It's been happening since at least the 1980s, and quite frankly it's gotten a bit dull. Anyway, it all ends with a pie-eating contest.
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| Which actually seemed to be more of a pie face-rubbing contest. |
What I Liked
-They found a realistic way to keep Stuart around. Sheldon's on his side because he gets a discount at the comic book shop, and he's basically Raj's live-in boyfriend. I'm 50-50 on whether or not they'll add in a little gayness for shock value.
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| I'm tempted to make a Coffee and Cream joke, but I won't. |
What I Hated
-People are waiting for Howie Mandel at the airport. I know America's Got Talent is a big deal, but does he really get mobbed everywhere? If this is true to life, I hate it even more.
-The whole B-plot has been done dozens of times before. The guys lose and get a bit upset. Ha.
-The A-plot wasn't exactly new stuff, either. The sad sack expects a warm welcome, but instead gets nothing. I can't even count the number of times I've seen that one before.
Final Thoughts
They must be running short on ideas if they're going to the standard sitcom trope well with such regularity.
I must be getting easier to please as I get older, because I still somehow managed to get 21 laughs out of this despite it falling back on overdone plots. What I said before about this show seems to be true: It's a pretty standard multi-camera sitcom, and it does a lot of standard sitcom stuff, but it does it very, very well.
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