Pack your bags for Sincere City.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
If Sheldon Cooper’s character arc has been focused on anything over the course of The Big Bang Theory’s nine seasons, it’s been Sheldon’s efforts to open up, learn how to relate to others and stop being so damned selfish all the time. “The Empathy Optimization” captured that arc in microcosm. Sheldon managed to alienate his entire circle of friends in one fell swoop, forcing him to dig deep and seek forgiveness. The result was a conflict that started off on shaky footing but eventually developed into something special.
Early on, this episode suffered from the fact that sickly Sheldon was too obnoxious and abrasive. Yes, a great deal of this show’s humor stems from the fact that he’s a self-centered jerk and everyone else just sort of grins and bears it. But usually that abrasive quality is tempered by the fact that Sheldon is naive and ultimately well-meaning. He offends others because he doesn’t understand how to connect with them. But in the opening montage scene, Sheldon’s bratty behavior was way over-the-top. There was nothing funny about him childishly refusing Leonard’s offer of chicken soup or lobbing vaguely racist insults at Raj. It just made you question why these people have put up with this nonsense for so man years.
These scenes started the episode off on the wrong foot because they made it seem like Sheldon hasn’t evolved one iota since the beginning of the series. It’s a hallmark of sitcoms that there’s little real character evolution from week to week. Whatever valuable life lessons are learned in one episode are generally forgotten when the status quo reverts to normal the following week. But normally there’s a sense that Sheldon has made important strides over the years, particularly in his relationships with characters like Penny and Amy. This episode had to work that much harder to recover from the opening scenes and craft a Sheldon-centric storyline that viewers could actually connect with.
Luckily, things picked up once the emphasis shifted from “Look how mean Sheldon is” to “Look how desperate Sheldon is to make amends.” Jim Parsons was great about selling the notion that Sheldon was genuinely embarrassed by his behavior and wanting to make amends. How can you be mad at a guy who went through the trouble of learning the pan flute and commissioning a batch of T-shirts The real conflict, naturally, developed when Sheldon’s efforts to smooth things over only wound up making matters worse with some of his friends.
Love still means having to say you’re sorry.
Most of the apology sequences were played for laughs (with the bemused reactions from Howard and Bernadette standing out especially in that regard). But the story struck an unexpected vein of drama when Sheldon managed to escalate matters with Emily and Raj. Emily, not having had as much experience with Sheldon’s anti-social behavior, didn’t take kindly to having her profession demeaned by a snooty physicist. And poor Raj was caught in the middle.
It was a welcome change to see Emily become a focal point of an episode for a change. Even though Laura Spencer was made a regular cast member for this season, more often than not it’s as if the writers have forgotten her character even exists. Finally she was given some juicier material to dig into, and the resulting Emile/Sheldon feud was entertaining to watch. Sheldon’s final apology on the party bus felt both genuine and pragmatic. I liked that he didn’t try to gloss over his personality flaws or pretend that he would never upset Emily again in the future, instead choosing to preemptively apologize for any future incidents. In a way, this little conflict helped to induct Emily into the main group in a way she never had been before. Maybe now she’ll start showing up more than once every couple months?
On that note, what’s with Amy lately? This is the second week in a row where she’s only appeared via Skype conversation. Now that she’s patched up her relationship with Sheldon, it’s almost as if the show has no more use for her. Hopefully it’s simply an issue of Mayim Bialik’s availability and Amy will be back in regular rotation soon. On the plus side, her deadpan conversations with Sheldon were pretty entertaining, reinforcing the notion that even Amy can only tolerate so much of Sheldon’s nonsense at a time.
The party bus sequence was a nice way to wrap up the episode and end Sheldon’s latest debacle on an upbeat note. For all that Sheldon acted like a jerk in the early minutes of the episode, by the end the group felt more close-knit than ever. It seems like the writers are still building towards whatever conflict will dominate the rest of Season 9 now that the Sheldon/Amy split is resolved. For now, it’s enough simply to see the whole gang bonding and enjoying Raj’s drunken stripteases together.
This episode struggled early on thanks to an overly antagonistic depiction of Sheldon. But once the story moved to the apology phase, things picked up considerably. There were some great character bonding moments this week, and even Emily got the chance to play a central role in the story. Hopefully that’s a sign of things to come in the remainder of Season 9.
