Gender roles and money issues were at the center of The Big Bang Theory Season 8 Episode 6.
Serious stuff for a sitcom, we know. But the series treated then both with awkwardness and attempts at humor over any real life lessons, despite Bernadette’s early quote.
"I want us to be partners, equals, adults in a mature relationship," she said at one point.
Yeah, right.
The problems started with Penny’s new job and new clothes. She now has a company car, so she goes ahead and sells her old car… without telling Leonard of course.
He insists she keep the money from it because the car had been a gift, but she has a job now, Penny says. She doesn’t need his financial support.
So Leonard says they ought to put the cash into a joint bank account. Easy enough, right? Except this leads the couple to picking on each other’s negative qualities, with Leonard upset that Penny is no longer reliant on him. He thinks she has control issues.
They turn to Howard and Bernadette for help.
Bernadette brings home more bacon than Howard, so she controls his allowance, providing him with a sticker chore chart no less. Wouldn’t it be nice if she were portrayed as more than a nagging wife someday?
This disappointing storyline concludes with Leonard saying it’s okay for Penny to make more than him because he’s accustomed to seeing love as a wife emasculating her husband.
In Sheldon and Raj Land, the latter recalls how the government once funded an experiment in abandoned salt minds. Could these two handle the hot and gross conditions there?
With jokes about Funyuns, Miley Cyrus and Star Trek Voyagers abounding, they do a trial run in the university’s steam tunnels.
They also have a sweet moment where Raj comforts Sheldon about his nervousness about dark matter until…. NOOO! RATS! SO, SO, SO MANY RATS!
As for the top The Big Bang Theory quotes of the night?
- SHELDON: I’ll just Google ‘hot, dark, and moist’ and see what comes up!
- AMY: When I was an undergrad, I spent days in [a steam tunnel] pledging a sorority … they forgot I was there, but it really opened up my pores.
- SHELDON: Admittedly this brushes up against my well-known aversions to heat, small places, going below floor level, dampness, hatches, ladders, darkness, echoes, and eliminating in Home Depot buckets. That last one is quite new, but I have a feeling that’s going to rocket to the top of the list
Go ahead and watch The Big Bang Theory online and sound off on the latest episode!