Quick Take: The Big Bang Theory, "The Apology Insufficiency"
"I was afraid you were going to fixate on that Mars rover incident." - Sheldon
Review: The Big Bang Theory, "The Apology Insufficiency"
(S0407) Like most episodes of Big Bang, this one was divided in two halves. In the first half, Howard is trying to get security clearance to work on a new lunar lander project and the guys get interviewed by Eliza Dushku, who plays an FBI Agent. Awkwardness ensues, of course. Leonard tries to figure out how to be confident so he can attract girls, and he tries it out on Eliza Dushku the FBI Agent, and it goes badly. Since she's a pretty girl, Raj can't talk to her until he gets drunk, and after he is, he's too worried about getting deported to answer the questions and then throws up on her shoes. And Sheldon lists a series of complaints that are mostly small and personal, but hidden in the middle there is the fact that Howard crashed the Mars Rover trying to impress a girl, and that does it in. No clearance, and Howard is pissed at all of them.
The second half sees Sheldon coming to grips with unexpected guilt and trying to make up for it. He goes to Dushku and tries to recant his statement and replace it with a more positive one, but since none of it was false, it didn't work. In fact, it probably made things worse, and almost got Leonard in trouble, too. He tries to appologize to Howard, but this turns out to be a big mistake and Howard doesn't accept. So he visits Penny (yay missing Penny!) and attempts to drink his sorrows away, which goes pretty miserably (and is pretty gross). But he gets an idea and makes the grandest gesture he can to prove he's sorry: he gives Howard his seat on the couch. It works, and everyone's friends again. The seat-giving lasts about 94 seconds, but it was the gesture that mattered, right?
This season has become pretty Sheldon-centric, but in this episode, I didn't mind much at all -- it showed a Sheldon who has something of a heart, even if it's under-used and mostly ignored. He was really upset that he'd done something so detrimental, and he did whatever he could to fix it and couldn't understand why it wasn't working. Awkward and socially inept Sheldon is so much better than mean Sheldon, even if it mean Sheldon offers easier opportunities for hilarity. Awkward Sheldon makes the writers have to think about the jokes more, to try harder, and it makes the writing better, I think.
And, as always, the side stories were awesome. Raj had a particularly good one; his freaking out about the FBI and his Indianness was brilliant comedy. His ongoing panic around pretty girls is getting bizarre in a good way, and without his resorting to rum cake when the wine was out, we wouldn't have lines like: "You can't send me back to India! It's so crowded! It's like the whole country is one big ComicCon and everyone has the same costume -- Indian Guy!"
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Video: The Big Bang Theory, "The Apology Insufficiency"
The fatal slip up...
