The Big Bang Theory: The Sibling Realignment (11x23)

Every once in a while, The Big Bang Theory tries to be very sincere. Oddly enough, it often works. Unfortunately, not this time.

Cons:

The pink eye plot thread was annoying and not funny. I didn't get a single chuckle out of it. You want to know why? There weren't any jokes. The joke was just - we all have pink eye. That's not good comedy!

Raj tries to find a date to Sheldon and Amy's wedding. You know what? I don't care about Raj's love life. He's a misogynist and I don't feel any sympathy for him in his loneliness.

The main plot is about the fact that Sheldon's brother George wasn't invited to the wedding. Sheldon's mother tells him he has to invite his brother, but George doesn't want to go. This leads to Sheldon and Leonard flying down to Texas to talk to him. Sheldon tells Leonard about all of the bullying he underwent at George's hand, but when Leonard gets to talking to George alone, he hears the other side of the story. George apparently always looked after Sheldon, always tried to stop him from getting bullied, apologized for him when he was rude to people, etc. etc. It sounds like it was a bit of a Reese and Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle situation, in that George bullied Sheldon but wouldn't let anybody else hurt him. We then get a "touching" scene where George reveals to Sheldon that the whole family protected him and gave him everything, and Sheldon admits that he never gave much thought to how hard it must have been on the rest of the family. George agrees to come to Sheldon's wedding.

Okay. I think I'm supposed to have an emotional connection to this, but I don't. The closest thing to caring about this that I can get is to be annoyed and angry about it. My annoyance all goes back to the inconsistent way that this show treats Sheldon as a character. They go out of their way to make it clear that he's not anywhere on the autism spectrum, so that they can get a free pass about treating that subject with any sensitivity. And here they have an episode where George and Leonard essentially commiserate about how hard it is to take care of Sheldon and how they wish he would say thank you. What a dickish thing to do. I just can't get behind this as a plot point. I can't say that Sheldon should be forced to forgive George for years of torment just because George had a hard time too. Yes, Sheldon can be downright cruel on occasion, but depending on the day, that's treated as something to laugh at, or as something that needs to be seriously considered. I can't keep up.

Pros:

I can't think of anything about this episode that I really loved... but I did think the whole Dr. Tire thing with George and his company was kind of funny. There's a moment where Sheldon wonders why he's using a stethoscope on the tire in a cardboard cut-out advertisement, and Leonard says maybe he's listening for small leaks. Sheldon is forced to admit that this actually does make sense. It's also a bit refreshing that Sheldon's brother, who Sheldon considers a deadbeat, is actually a successful business owner. I wasn't expecting that, so I guess that's kind of cool.

And... yeah, that's all I've got. This show annoys me.

4/10