There was just hardly anywhere to stick in a laugh on this one, no matter how hard you looked, and that's a compliment, actually.

I think it's just YMMV - I like bitter.

I guess i'm in a minority in agreeing that Penny's career is clearly a joke, but finding that a really interesting and quite subversive piece of characterization and social commentary? It makes the show better, not worse, for me.

Yes, it was far too blunt, too deliberate, too meta, even aside from whether one sees Leonard/Penny as a positive or a negative thing in general. I thought "together you make one great person" is kind of a veiled insult though, so I'm ok with that. And maybe we can see the negatives in Stuart's positives - he sees…

Yeah, I think they're not theoretically averse, but we've seen before that Raj's games tend to be overthought, frustrating, self-centered affairs that have outworn everyone's patience.

I don't see the show as immature - I see it as being about immature people. Not the same thing at all.

I can kind of vaguely conceive of Leonard and Penny splitting up at the
end - I don't think it's actually likely, but I might love it
if they did. Both of them being finally mature enough to just accept
that this isn't it and let go and move on could be a really strong
ending, if done right. (The way Friends should…

I think Penny and Leonard are both more complex and more interesting than they get credit for sometimes (I don't know that they're one another's ultimate soul mate either, but they're not boring to me) but in this episode I thought they had a nice shared lack of sentimentality and woobiness about everything.

It's also weird about Howard and Bernadette because it's kind of a lie - she initially tried to keep him from going to space and later was the one who got him to shut up about it. I wonder if something is going to happen with those two about how she takes him for granted, even with all Howard's goofiness - they have…

I did expect the next thing Sheldon was going to say about what the train driver was going to show him was how to take the train through a tunnel…maybe a little to blunt, there, but given the context even what he did say (something about a crossing) sounded suggestive somehow.

I like the theatrical, multi-cam format for this show. It gives it this odd, stilted intimacy that works for the story.

Personally, I maintain there's a subtle current of BDSM to their relationship. Nothing physical, of course, or even conscious, but they have this continuous tension of emotional and erotic control, restraint and denial between them that's…kinda hot, from that direction.

Well…Sheldon and UPS guy were just so annoying, so tedious, train-noises is such a low, irritating form of humor…after just a few minutes of that I could feel Howard's need to kill himself, Bernadette's anger and Amy's utter, total, crushing disappointment *in my bones*.

Not just Amy's college stories, but even more her stories of her mother, who seems to be puritan to the point of misogyny and to have done quite a number on her daughter. One the one hand, a lot of "get a man, be properly feminine" type stories, on the other, just as many "you mustn't enjoy anything, ever." It seems…

I couldn't believe the bleakness they managed to give the moment when her father tells her having Christie in his life just wasn't going to happen. Good god. I usually don't like a neat ending, but I felt so bad for her there I was perfectly happy when Alvin showed up with the car and the brothers at the end and made…

I'm really pleased with the introduction of the brothers, as adults, for some reason (and for it not being dragged out.) It allows a lot more options and types of relationships to explore than if it was just the trio of Christie/Bonnie/Alvin. And that Alvin meeting Violet and Roscoe wasn't dragged out either.

Once again, I agree the home stuff is stronger than the restaraunt, but I'm going to chine in to defend it anyway. I was trying to introduce some friends to the show and rewatched the pilot a few days ago. I had forgotten the very first scene if Christie sobbing while she works because someone had called her "a good…

Well, more optimistic, at least. A place where people are dealing with stuff, however ineptly. The restaurant is just a seething cauldron of misery and resentment.

Can't weigh in on "Rudy" (not really my cultural wheelhouse) but I think the awfulness of the restauraunt has some method in it's madness. It's a counterpoint to the relative stability of the home, and it's so consistent in what it is - awful in every way - that it looks like a deliberate choice to me, and I quite…

It was just two grotesques full of rage,spite and self loathing trying to hurt one another to a laugh track.