Plot: Episode 1 – “The Locomotion Interruption:” Sheldon (Jim Parsons) gets robbed while traveling across the country, and calls Leonard (Johnny Galecki) for help. Leonard brings Amy (Mayim Balik), which forces Sheldon to confront their intimacy. Howard (Simon Helberg) is trying to accept Stuart( Kevin Sussman)’s friendship with his mother. Bernadette(Melissa Rauch) helps Penny (Kaley Cuoco) get a job. Episode 2 – “The Junior Professor Solution:” Amy takes advantage of the tension that arises between Bernadette and Penny. Howard decides to go back for his doctorate, and signs up for a class taught by Sheldon.
Throughout the last season of The Big Bang Theory, there were times that I sat down to watch the show, and I thought “Why am I still tuning into this?” This was hard to admit at first, as this show was one of the few sitcoms that created memories for me and my family. But I can’t lie to myself or anyone else anymore — there hasn’t been one moment or episode that has really stuck with me over the last few seasons.
It took me a while to figure out why I lost interest but I think it was just hard to accept that it just stopped being funny. I remember watching the final scene of the Season 1 finale, and laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. Now, I go by each week barely laughing at all. What the hell happened to this show?
Going into this two-part season premiere, I really hoped Chuck Lorre and the gang would prove me wrong. I hoped I’d laugh a lot at and I hoped these new plot changes would reel me back in. But instead, I spent the majority of the time fighting to get through the hour.
Let’s start from the first episode, shall we? In this first part, Sheldon gets robbed while traveling around the country and calls Leonard for help. Now, if you’ve been watching the show or seen the repeats on syndication, this will be familiar to you. That’s because it was almost the same premise in “The Bozeman Reaction”, the thirteenth episode in Season 3. Remember the time when Sheldon got his bags stolen in the Bozeman train station? Yeah, me too.
In this episode, Howard signs up for a new class taught by Sheldon and Amy tries to take advantage of the tension between Bernadette and Penny. Though there weren’t any significant similarities in the plot between this and seasons past, there were definitely some resemblance in the humor. We get it, Amy didn’t have friends in high school, but now she fits in with the popular girls. Can we move on from this already? Not only that, but is Amy going to ever develop as a character? I mean all of these characters have been pretty flat lately, but she in particular has gone absolutely nowhere since the beginning of her relationship with Sheldon.
The worst part about all of this is that I know I’m expecting too much. As long as the cast is making a million per episode and it still brings in the same ratings, I’m not going to get back The Big Bang Theory I used to love. But is it wrong of me to still hope? I really do think the show has the potential to go back to being the greatness that it was, there just needs to be more development across the board. Despite how these two episodes went, I’m willing to wait and see if anything good will happen just a little while longer. How long that length of time will be is still to be determined.
Rating: 5/10
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As the Managing Editor, Lauren Stern is responsible for curating Pop-Break.com’s content. This includes managing the editorial staff, coordinating the content calendar, and assigning publishing dates and deadlines. She graduated Rutgers University with a degree in Journalism and Philosophy. She spends her free time searching for the best gluten-free food in the Tri-State area, playing with her dogs, and reading an insane amount of books. She tweets constantly about pop culture and social issues and hopes you follow her musings @laurenpstern.
