TBBT 6x20: The Tenure Turbulence

While the guys are eating lunch in the University cafeteria, Kripke comes in to inform them that the horrible smell coming from Prof. Tupperman's office was actually Prof. Tupperman. He's been dead for two weeks now, which means two things 1) They may never get the smell out of the carpet and 2) A tenured position is now available. Barry heads off to plant his nose in the tenure committee's collective butthole, but the three PhDs at the table decide that they'll apply, but they won't make fools of themselves trying to win the job. That lasts all of one day. Over three individual dinners, they decide the stability tenure offers is worth a little schmoozing.

Fancy meeting you here.

Leonard starts things off by accosting the head of HR at the gym. Unfortunately, he hasn't done any cardio work in quite some time, and he winds up in a heap on the floor while Kripke successfully works the elliptical machine beside Mrs. Davis. Since he can't talk to women, Raj sends her a 90-minute video explaining his genius, while Sheldon stops by her office to butter her up by giving her a DVD copy of Roots.

It may be a racially insensitive gift, but LeVar is awesome in it.

Their next step is to hobnob with the committee at Tupperman's memorial service. Sheldon brings Amy along so she can talk up his academic accomplishments and tell him which emotions he should be expressing. Leonard brings Penny along so she can show off her boobs.

Raj sees what she did there.

As the guys bicker about the ethics of using their ladies to advance their careers, Howard and Bernadette arrive. Since he only has a Masters, Wolowitz can't get tenure, and he encourages the guys to talk smack about each other's mothers because it's just so much fun to watch. Sheldon proves to be surprisingly good at it, even accidentally making a 'come across your mother' remark. But, seeing how their competitiveness is driving them apart, the three PhDs resolve to go home and let their work speak for itself... until Kripke shows up.

He's the master of schmoozing.

They can't let Barry win, so everyone goes into the memorial service, and despite their quirks, Mrs. Davis puts them all on the tenure short list. She's even willing to overlook Sheldon's accidental racism.

What I Liked
-Raj works out some daddy issues over dinner.

No one else can ride my bejewelled elephant, either.

-The video Raj makes shows him discovering the moon at the age of five. Truly, he was a prodigy.

What I Hated
-Kripke's speech impediment. Most of the time I can understand him, but he had a couple lines in this episode that were just unintelligible.

Final Thoughts
It's rare that they do an episode with a single plot, but the entirety of this one was devoted to the guys' quest for tenure. They didn't even do a little side plot about how Howard was jealous and resolved to get his doctorate or something like that. I find it really refreshing for a sitcom to devote enough time to really flesh out a plot, even if it's not the most interesting one in the world.

And it certainly wasn't the most interesting plot in the world. I think I've seen the 'the guys compete for something and wind up fighting' plot about a hundred times now. They didn't spend a whole lot of time on the fighting portion, but that's still not exactly a new spin on an old story. The episode still managed to deliver a good number of laughs, however they weren't really related to the plot, and some of them were a bit juvenile, so I can't give this a really high score.