A hot time on the old town tonight.
Warning: full episode spoilers follow.
With the first two episodes of this season focusing mainly on the relationship drama carrying over from Season 8, it was a welcome change of pace to have a new installment that featured all the main cast equally and strove to be more silly than dramatic. “The Bachelor Party Corrosion” didn’t really take full advantage of the notion of Leonard, Sheldon, Raj and Howard partying it up in Mexico, but it offered a decent half hour of entertainment nonetheless.
The plot this week was about as straightforward as they come. Leonard and Penny and married, their latest relationship crisis is over, and the time has come for a belated bachelor party. Nothing special, but the road trip element definitely spiced up the storyline a little. The fact that the quartet made the journey in Richard Feynman’s van was a nice added touch. It was amusing to see how quickly Sheldon morphed from biting, flailing kidnap victim to excited bachelor when he learned whose butt made the imprint he was now sitting in. The episode settled into a solid groove from there. The banter among the four guys was amusing, whether it was Sheldon freaking out about catching a disease or Howard plotting to disguise Raj as a sombrero-clad Mexican driver. I’m actually a little disappointed that didn’t happen.
It wasn’t long before a flat tire derailed everyone’s fun, however. I was a little torn on the direction this storyline took. On one hand, it was fun to watch the guys resort to increasingly ridiculous measures to get that last, pesky lug-nut loose. The faux-educational approach as they demonstrated one scientific principle after another was a neat touch. On the other hand, it really seemed like the writers could have done more with this story than force the guys to deal with a flat tire. They Mexican setting wound up being entirely superfluous, and the whole ordeal could just as easily have played out a few miles from their apartment building rather than a hundred miles across the border. It’s seems to be a tradition for road trips to go awry on this show, but sometimes it would be nice to see more episodes take advantage of the foreign setting. Show us what happens when Sheldon is set loose in Mexico and tries to drown his Amy-related sorrows in tequila.
Richard Feynman is not amused.
Back home, the girls featured in a storyline that was equally unambitious but amusing. Penny’s bachelorette party (if it can even be called that) consisted of nothing more than sitting in her living room with Amy and Bernadette and drinking wine. Yet it worked. Their get-together started off on a real high note thanks to Amy’s disturbingly anatomically correct penis cookies. Something about the way she proudly bragged about the veins being made from gummy worms was just hilarious.
And while this subplot remained fairly lighthearted, it did involve the girls working through some issues. Penny had to deal with the fact that she really hasn’t told anyone outside her close circle of friends that she got married. This probably doesn’t speak too highly of the state of said marriage, but there you go. This led to a nice little scene where actor Keith Carradine reprised his role as Penny’s father, Wyatt, for the first time in about five years. In a fun little twist, rather than being distraught that he missed his daughter’s big day, he was pleased that this faux pas bought him a free pass for accidentally killing Penny’s pet pig so many months ago. Apparently Penny doesn’t visit home very often. Penny and Leonard’s odd sleeping arrangements were also brought up, with the implication that there’s going to be a reckoning soon as far as dealing with Sheldon’s clingy behavior. As long as the show has been building to this moment, I’m eager to see how it all plays out.
Amy also received some much-needed attention as she made her first baby steps toward moving on from her relationship with Sheldon. It was funny to see just how enthusiastic Penny and Bernie were about the thought of Amy finally getting a makeover, and then visibly crushed when Amy settled for getting her ears pierced. Along the way, plenty of allusions were made to Amy’s Carrie-like upbringing. It was the usual partly disturbing, partly humorous approach to her world. I only wish actress Annie O’Donnell had put in a brief appearance alongside Carradine.
While neither storyline was particularly ambitious, this episode tied everything together nicely in the end as Leonard and Penny compered metaphorical battle scars in the hallway. Losing a pet pig and having to sentence Amy to closet time may not be pleasant, but Penny was probably right in that these are preferable to being trapped in the Mexican desert with Sheldon.
Despite the bachelor party premise, The Big Bang Theory played it pretty low-key this week. And for the most part, that approach worked. This episode delivered a steady dose of humor and entertainment while giving Amy some much-needed focus in the process. It’s just a shame more wasn’t done with the idea of Leonard and friends being marooned in Mexico.
