The Big Bang Theory – Recap & Review – The Lunar Excitation

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The Big Bang Theory
The Lunar Excitation

Original Air Date: May 24, 2010

Theresa – Staff Writer
theresa@thetwocentscorp.com

It’s the third season finale, and Dr. Sheldon Cooper is going on a real live date. It’s like a freakish experiment – let’s watch!

We start off with the boys conducting a lunar ranging experiment on the roof. Don’t ask me what that is – something about bouncing lasers off the moon. While Raj is holding up the experiment by using the telescope to watch The Good Wife,  Leonard decides he’s going to pursue this whole friendship thing and ask Penny to come up and join them.

Unfortunately, he finds her with her date, Zack, apparently pulled from her old barrel of aggressively dumb good-looking guys. Zack, who considers himself to be employed in the science of menu-ology, is actually interested to see something involving lasers. However, Leonard has to assure him that the moon will not blow up because they’ve set their laser to stun.

Penny and Zack leave to go to a surprise party, but Penny comes back alone and drunk. She wakes up Leonard and starts yelling at him for ruining men for her, because before him, she wouldn’t have known that Zack was unbelievably stupid. To make it up to her, she demands that she and Leonard have sex, and tells Sheldon he better put on his noise-canceling headphones for this one!

The next morning, as Sheldon laments the universal standards of orange juice and toast, Penny sneaks out on her walk of shame. When Leonard runs into her later, she insists the whole thing was a mistake and asks him to please forget it. Leonard, on the other hand, is indignant that she used him for cheap sex. But he does seem to have a new fan in the downstairs neighbor, who heard exactly what different tune Penny was singing last night (hint: it involved the word “Yee-haw”). Leonard decides that if Penny gets to have ex-sex, so does he, and he makes a random call on Leslie Winkle. Alas, after making a very awkward proposition for recreational use of each other, he gets the door slammed in his face. Also, turns out a drunk Leonard is not as irresistible as a drunk Penny, because Penny slams the door in his face when he shows up there too.

I know, I said Sheldon was going on a date, and I’m finally getting to it. After the laser, Raj and Howard had decided another fun experiment would be to make a dating profile for Sheldon to test the website’s assertion that they could find a match for anyone. Well, turns out the site gets the last laugh, because “Sheldon” actually gets paired up with someone! Her name is Amy Farrah Fowler and she’s legit, because they actually answered all the questions exactly the way they thought Sheldon would. They want to set up a date for tomorrow, uh, “pre-vening” (preevning?) as Sheldon calls it, but to do that, they need to get the real Sheldon on board.

Using the Star Trek logic of pon farr doesn’t work, but threatening him with hiding a dirty sock they found on the roof somewhere in the apartment does. Under duress, Sheldon agrees to meet Amy for coffee, still insisting the whole thing is inane and futile. He, Howard, and Raj go to the cafe where Amy promptly and matter-of-factly intercepts him. Amy, by the way, is played by the insanely fabulous “I’m so glad she came back to TV, she’s been so awesome lately, and I promise I won’t call her Blossom” guest star Mayim Bialik!

First, they have a similarly monotone exchange about how they’re both being coerced into dating – Amy sympathizes with his “aversion to soiled hosiery”, and she’s only there because her mom makes her date once a year. THEN Amy informs him that “coitus” is off the table, something clicks, and Sheldon (omg!) offers to buy her a drink! We leave them standing awkwardly at the drink counter, waiting for Amy’s tepid water, and I leave the third season absolutely ecstatic that the show found an incredible way to pull that off!

How about you, readers? What’d you think of Amy/Mayim, and are you happy with the way they introduced her for Sheldon? Where do you think or hope they will take this? And how about Leonard and Penny’s angsty saga? Leave your Two Cents in the comments! I can’t wait for the 4th season – this show just keeps getting better!

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