Tom Beasley reviews the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory’s middling ninth season. This week, the boys tried their hand at sport and the girls offered to help Stuart with a business problem…
This season of The Big Bang Theory is finally settling into its groove. The issue is that that’s not necessarily a good thing. This week’s episode was a fun one and packed in plenty of the show’s usual one-liners, but there was the nagging sense that the show has been scraping the barrel for just a little too long.
In the main storyline of ‘The Perspiration Implementation’, a fitness drive from Bernadette led their boys to seek out some exercise. They decided to take up an offer of fencing classes from the returning Barry Kripke, whose speech impediment stopped being even mildly amusing several seasons ago. The classes themselves were a great example of physical comedy, particularly when the boys exchanged in the frantic swordplay they had been wanting the whole time when their instructor’s back was turned. There was also some advancement of the relationship storyline, with Kripke expressing a desire to ask Amy out on a date. Sheldon, true to petty form, subsequently challenged Kripke to a future duel.
Meanwhile, the girls joined Stuart at the comic book store. He was looking to draw in more female customers to his business, given the increased enjoyment of comic books amongst women. This was definitely the weaker plot of the episode, focusing mainly on the incredibly seedy new incarnation of Stuart’s character, which makes him impossible to like even as the doofus loner of recent years. The female side of The Big Bang Theory‘s cast is really being underused thus far in this season and there’s a desperate need for them to come into their own. No one wants the programme to abandon its compelling relationship dynamics.
The Big Bang Theory really struggled this week in a moment that should have been a simple slam dunk for the writers – the first face-to-face meeting of Sheldon and Amy since their explosive break-up. Not afforded enough time in the script, the meeting of the two feels rather underwhelming, particularly coming minutes after Amy’s rejection of Kripke’s advances… and nude phone pictures. It’s clear that the writers don’t have much meat to the arc between Sheldon and Amy and so are leaving as much material as possible to fill out the season.
The opening of this year’s season of The Big Bang Theory has been truly bizarre, with its awkward balancing act between the programme’s formulaic comedy of years gone by and its more recent dramatic developments. It’s as if the writers can’t figure out a way to utilise the entire cast, with the likes of Stuart and Raj being completely relegated to generic character types and Bernadette barely getting as much as a line. Given the impressive work recent seasons have done at getting the best out of the ensemble, it’s a shame to see The Big Bang Theory floundering so much this year.
Tom Beasley – Follow me on Twitter for movies, wrestling and jokes about David Cameron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=W04aXcyQ0NQ
Originally published October 24, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
