‘The Big Bang Theory’ review: Leonard and Penny’s frisky Halloween

For the first time in several seasons on “The Big Bang Theory,” we have to say that Thursday night’s new episode brought something rather different out of us: it made us root for a couple that we have had a really tough time wanting to cheer for over over the past few years and Leonard and Penny. The pair had become almost miserable in their relationship as of late, with their fights ranging from anything and everything, and just a couple of episodes ago, it really looked like they were going to be breaking up.

However, there was a sense of joy that was present there throughout this episode, and it did not just have to do with the fact that these two were having some extracurricular fun inside of Leonard’s lab. Instead, Penny genuinely tried to take an interest in what was happening on Leonard’s life, including what he did for a living. These research scenes were so nice thanks in part to the fact that we genuinely saw her seemingly get excited about some of what he was doing, and it brought back some of that whimsy from the first season.

This joy actually worked in a rather nice contrast to what we saw later on in the episode, as we saw Howard basically wander around miserable over the fact that nobody likes that he talks about space all of the time. In some ways, this was extremely believable: when you have some sort of experience like this, it’s incredibly hard to really go back and talk about anything else since it was the highlight of your life. Thankfully, he did seem to get the hint by the end of the episode, though we wish there were some more laughs thrown in there.

Finally, we’ll get to what really made this half-hour for us: the costumes. Stuart’s take on Willy Wonka was classic, as was Sheldon’s interpretation of Raggedy Andy coupled with C-3PO. Halloween on this show is a fantastic time of year, and while this wasn’t the “Flash disaster,” there were some laughs still in here.

What did you think about this episode, be sure to share some of your thoughts below.