“This takes me back, Leonard obsessing about Penny. Don’t get me wrong, I love your new stuff, but once in a while, it’s nice to hear the hits.” – Howard
Penny asks Leonard to pretend to be her boyfriend again so her dad will leave her alone about their breakup, which of course goes to a weird place as Leonard uses it to mess with her and steal lots of kisses. Meanwhile, Howard and Bernadette stay up with Raj as he tries to spot a livable planet around Epsilon Eridani, and in order to speak around the pretty girl, Raj gets way drunk.
Penny’s dad likes Leonard and wants to see them together again for real, and tries to convince Penny he doesn’t like Leonard to sway her attention in his favor. Raj prank calls the telescope operators in Hawaii, then gets sad about how no one wants to kiss him, which leads to a failed pass at Bernadette. Raj and Howard accidentally kiss. Just another weird day in the lives of these guys.
This week’s episode seemed to flow better than about half of this season has. They didn’t try to accomplish too much, and that gives everyone more time to just relax into the scenes and be funny. It also gives everyone a chance to be the center of attention, and reminds us all that this started out as an ensemble cast, and is still best when it gets to be that way.
The Raj getting drunk joke has been used in almost every episode of this season; the higher incidence of pretty girls encourages it, but shouldn’t everyone be worried about him drinking so much? Or about the joke being way, way, way over-used? Now that I’ve noticed that it’s so common, it stands out like a sore thumb every time it’s used.
Other than that, though, it was a sweet, weird, awkward episode, and that’s the landscape of the best TBBT episodes, the ones that can be rewatched over and over.
More thoughts on “The Boyfriend Complexity”:
* “I’m just saying, if we fake got back together, that’s not how it fake happened!” – Leonard
* “What kind of spaceship has a hole in the middle?” “A Romulan battle bagel?” – Howard and Raj
* “Gallileo did his best work drunk!” “How do you know that?” “Well, he was Italian, it was a reasonable assumption…” “Can’t you even open your mouth without spouting a racial stereotype?” – Howard and Raj
* Bernadette’s impression of Howard’s mom is spot on! And I really like how she’s worked into the group and pretty much gets along with everyone.
* “You’ll never guess what just happened.” “You went out into the hallway, stumbled into an inter-dimensional portal which brought you 5,000 years into the future, which you took advantage of the advanced technology to build a time machine, and now you’re back to bring us all with you to the year 7010, where we transported to work at the thinkatorium by telepathically controlled dolphins.” – Leonard and Sheldon
* “My only friends will be my genetically engineered monkey butler and the little people I hire to be my living chess set!” – Raj
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.