TV-Reviewed

With episodes that sound like they’re named after ridiculous scientific experiments, never ending sci-fi references, and characters so smart they’re flawed, only one thing came to mind during Monday night’s season premiere of The Big Bang Theory…finally! Finally after three months of summer television, we have been given back our nerds. The show, which kicked off its third season with “The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation,” is proving to be one of the highlights of CBS’s Monday night comedy line-up. By the first commercial, we had already been reminded why we love the show so much.

Sheldon, Leonard, Wolowitz, and Koothrappali, which at the end of season two headed off to the North Pole for Sheldon’s 3 month long science expedition, have returned frost bitten and bearded like cavemen. They rack up the first laughs of the new season just by entering the scene in there ridiculous yet strangely cool beards. After that, we quickly learn that Sheldon (Jim Parsons) is convinced he is in line for a Nobel Prize from the supposed success of his expedition, a matter that the rest of the brainy gang seem unusually tight lipped about. It turns out that while in the North Pole, they let Sheldon believe he was making a monumental breakthrough in the world of physics when in actuality his equipment was being effected by an electrical can opener.

Meanwhile, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) is across the hall letting Penny (Kaley Cuoco) know he’s back and finds out that she’s missed him more than he thought. Penny, the least brainy but bustiest member of the gang, has spent the past two seasons denying her feelings for Leonard. In the past, when they’ve thought about their feelings for one another, the cosmos seemed to bitch-slap them for trying to be anything more than just friends. However, it seems that absence has made the heart grow fonder and this time nothing is going to stop them. Oh, except Sheldon. After finding out about his friends’ grand deception, Sheldon bursts in on Penny and Leonard, killing a perfectly good moment.

Sheldon is humiliated at work, betrayed by his friends, and even Penny’s attempts to console him only make him realize that he’s wasted the past three months of his life. “I’ve missed Comic-con,” he squeals in between sobs. What else is an overdramatic, genius man-child to do except run back home to his mama? Once again Sheldon stands alone as one of the funniest characters of the show. Where Wolowitz (Simon Helberg ) and Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) spend much of their time as a tag team setting up each other’s jokes, and Leonard & Penny are best when they’re playing off each others awkwardness, Sheldon remains one of the funniest things to watch only because he is so absurd. Example of this: trying to use the Star Wars force choke to strangle Leonard from across the cafeteria. Every statement, question, or response works hilariously on its own and reflects why he’s often the odd man out, even amongst his own socially awkward friends.

Feeling bad for Sheldon, Penny has insisted that she and Leonard not do anything until he retrieves Sheldon and makes up with him. The sexually frustrated Leonard, along with Wolowitz and Koothrappali, rush off to Texas where Sheldon’s Mom lives. Mrs. Cooper, played by the hilarious Laurie Metcalf, was the extra something special of the episode. Though only in it for a little while, she brought the laughs in a big way. An example being when she tells Koothrappali, who’s anxiety disorder prevents him from speaking in the presence of women, that she knows a healer at her church who could “take a shot at whatever third world demon is running around inside of you.” She seems to be the only character who can outsmart Sheldon, though she does it behind a smoke screen of bible thumping ignorance. Like when she states that evolution is an opinion, forcing the scientist in Sheldon to forgive his friends and return home.

So alls well that ends well. Or is it? Sheldon returns home and Leonard and Penny FINALLY do it. Though in the ending credits we see Penny and Leonard lying in bed starring at the ceiling trying to say how it won’t be awkward before inevitably admitting that things are indeed awkward. Obviously “figuring things out” will play a major role in season three but whether things end badly or awesomely, I am sure they’ll crack us up along way.

Rating: 9.1