TBBT 6x21: The Closure Alternative

Upset over the cancellation of Alphas, Sheldon begins a campaign to antagonize the SyFy network until they can offer him some kind of closure. When pretending to be a cowboy and impersonating the VP of Programming don't work, Amy suggests he seek physical comfort.

You can cut the sexual tension with a knife.

When that fails to get her any action, she offers to use behavioural neuroscience to train him to no longer require closure. She erases a game of tic-tac-toe before they can finish, stops singing the national anthem before the end, makes Sheldon set up a bunch of dominoes and put them away without knocking them over, stops him from popping a Jack-in-the-box, and prevents him from blowing out the last candle on a cake so his wish won't come true.

Which is good for her, because he wished she was dead.

It seems to work, and as she leaves the apartment to go home, he sends her off with a half-finished sentence. But it was all a ruse, and as soon as she's gone, he completes all the things she made him stop in the middle of. Then, he calls every Bruce Miller he can find until he gets to the one who was an Executive Producer on Alphas and can find out how they planned to resolve the cliffhanger. It stinks.

Meanwhile, as Wolowitz installs a security camera in Raj's apartment so he can watch his dog while he's at work, Raj discovers that Lucy's been writing a blog about their relationship and she called him feminine. He's a little upset and wants to talk to her about it, but instead, Howard convinces him to use her blog to his advantage. Now that he knows what she thinks of him, he can use that knowledge to get her pants off... or the key to her heart. One or the other.

When Lucy comes over for dinner later, Raj butches up by wearing a hockey jersey and acting like a tough guy. It's sort of off-putting, though, and she decides she's going to leave. Before she can go, he stops her and tells her that he found her blog, and that's why he was acting strangely. She explains that she didn't mean feminine in a bad way, but in the sense that he was sweet and thoughtful. That satisfies him, and they go back to eating their half-frozen burritos.

Because ain't no wrapper gonna tell him what to do.

Elsewhere, after enduring Sheldon's Alphas insanity, Leonard decides that he and Penny should try to find a TV show that they can watch together. After some thought, he settles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, in his zeal he goes across the hall at 6:30 in the morning to tell her about it and she slams the door in his face.

At a more reasonable hour, he manages to get her to watch an episode with him. She says it was cute, but her response is far less than the glowing enthusiasm he'd hoped for. Nevertheless, she agrees to watch another one because a show about a high school where there are guys with messed up teeth who only come out at night reminds her of her high school. Only they had meth heads instead of vampires. Later, she watches yet another episode with Bernadette and explains to her that she's bummed out because all the others get really psyched about so many things, and she just doesn't. But when she has dinner with Leonard later, she realizes that she's passionate about him and her friends and the rest of her life, and she's going to try to be more enthusiastic about those things. She still won't get dressed up and go to Comic Con with him, though.

What I Liked
-Sheldon recognizes that Heroes gradually decreased in quality until we were glad it was over. It ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, too, but by the end it was so bad that no one gave a crap.
-Raj always thought his white guy name would be 'Gavin'. Yep, that's a white guy name all right.
-Leonard correctly points out that Penny grew up on a farm, so she should be fine with getting up early. Yeah, geez, farm girls should get up before the sun rises.
-Sheldon calls neuroscience 'a goofy game for diaper babies'. Yeah, screw your interdisciplinary science! Pick a branch and stick with it.

What I Hated
-Sheldon's post-dominoes floorgasm.

That was unnecessary.

Final Thoughts
As ridiculous as this show can sometimes be, this episode was actually relatable. My girlfriend also isn't quite as big a dork as I am, and we don't necessarily have the same taste in TV shows. But now she's totally into Game of Thrones, so it worked out okay.

It really seemed like the plots were a bit underdeveloped this week. They were more a series of jokes than anything else. Heck, Lucy bails on dinner in under a minute. I think that's where this show fails. It's really funny (this episode got the highest number of laughs since whenever it was I finally got around to making the Laugh-o-Meter), but it doesn't have a lot of depth, which is why I can't give it really high ratings. Making me laugh is good, but to be truly great, a TV show has to make me think, too. Or have kick-ass explosions and chicks in bikinis. One or the other.