‘The Big Bang Theory’ season 9 premiere reaction: Johnny Galecki on the Leonard – Mandy surprise

To a certain extent, there was quite a bit on the season 9 premiere of “The Big Bang Theory” that we saw coming … with of course one notable reaction. How could you predict that the woman Leonard kissed aboard the boat in the North Sea was someone in Mandy who he actually works with? While we’ve never actually met the character on the show, the implication is that she is someone who has been around for a long time.

There were many surprises in the story overall, from the decision for Leonard and Penny to marry to also how the additional information about Mandy came out. In our review of the premiere, we actually said it was somewhat sad that these two fighting after their wedding came at the same time as seeing what happened to Sheldon and Amy.

In discussing some of the decisions from the writers, and also what is next for Leonard, Johnny Galecki said the following to The Hollywood Reporter in a postmortem:

“There’s part of me that’s been on the fence about this situation and you try not to ever judge your character but when you’re so close to him, it’s hard not to. There are moments when I want to defend Leonard. They were not together at the time and it was a kiss. It was influenced chemicals! (Laughs.) It can certainly be worse! At the same time, that Penny is hurt over the whole thing, it’s hard to not judge him harshly. As far as Mandy, Leonard is doing his best to rectify what he’s tarnished and is going to put his head on the chopping block for Penny for the relationship.”

You are going to see Mandy in the next episode, and it is possible that Leonard gets some sort of better understanding about what happened; or, it’s also possible that it just goes completely haywire and gets so much worse. Both have to be considered possibilities at the moment.

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