The Big Bang Theory: The Septum Deviation (8x09)

You won't believe this, but there was actually a joke in The Big Bang Theory that made me laugh out loud. Miracle of miracles. First let's do the plot.

Leonard discovers that he has a deviated septum, and he has decided to get a minor surgery to fix it. Sheldon doesn't want Leonard to get the surgery, due to the risks. He tries to figure out the odds of Leonard dying, and as he describes everything that could go wrong, Leonard promises he'll think more about the surgery. Then, without telling Sheldon, he and Penny go to the hospital for him to get the surgery.

Sheldon figures it out, because Amy tells him due to his prodding. In the hospital waiting room, a minor earthquake tremor causes a brief power outage. Sheldon, panicking about Leonard, tries to rush to find him, and ends up hitting a glass door and falling over. We next see Leonard and Sheldon back at home with matching bandaged noses. Leonard teases Sheldon about his dependency issues. Later, Sheldon opens a package with monogrammed urns inside. One is for Leonard, with a message that basically says "I told you so," and the other is for Sheldon, that says "I'm with stupid."

This was actually very sweet. They took a simple premise and did what they could with it, infusing some touching friendship stuff in with an otherwise light plot. The urn thing was particularly hilarious. I also liked how Penny said she was going to spend the rest of her life with Leonard, and Sheldon said that he was too. Leonard and Sheldon have such a funny friendship.

The other plot follows Raj, Howard and Bernadette. Raj's parents are about to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, but just as Raj is trying to decide what to give them as a gift, he learns that his parents have split up. He is very upset, and he tells Bernadette and Howard that his parents just let the little things build up over the years until finally everything fell apart. Bernadette is worried that the same thing might happen to her and Howard. She asks Howard if there's anything about her that bothers him, but he refuses to say. Instead, he asks that they try a technique that he learned in couple's therapy in the past - saying things that they love about each other. It starts off civil, but quickly turns into thinly veiled complaints, such as (I'm paraphrasing): "I love that you care so much about your appearance that you spend an hour in the bathroom when I really have to pee in the morning" (Bernadette to Howard).

Okay, so this plot thread is the one that had the joke in it. The one that literally made me laugh out loud. When Howard says that he did couple's therapy, Bernadette asks who with. Howard refuses to say, and Bernadette smugly says "It was your mother." Later, when Raj comes over, he hears that the two of them have been giving each other compliments, and he says to Howard: "Oh, like you and I did at couple's therapy!" I have no idea why, but this cracked me up. I thought it was going to be another joke about Howard and his mother, and I totally expected the joke to be over. Instead, they threw one last hilarious twist on the joke, and it worked really well. This is a caliber of humor that we almost never see on this show, so I was caught off guard by its cleverness here. The rest of the plot thread was pretty good, too. It dealt with some more serious material (Raj's parents breaking up) but still had a nice big dose of humor.

Actually, this was one of the best episodes of The Big Bang Theory that I've seen in a long time.

9/10