‘The Big Bang Theory’ season 7, episode 2 review: The Sheldon conspiracy

While “The Big Bang Theory‘ premiere on Thursday night was about creating chaos, the second episode that aired revolved more around a difference sort of concept: Restoring order to the group. Leonard was back from his trip at sea, Penny had her boyfriend back without a reason to worry, and Raj started to get a little bit of a better sense of being able to speak with the ladies.

But, there were clearly some bumps in the road along the way. We cannot say that the story of Leonard and Penny enjoying some time in secret before Sheldon found out he was back in town was particularly funny, but it was realistic to how the characters would act in the situation. Sheldon was understandably angry, and it took, ironically, a version of Howard manipulated by excess estrogen to really talk them down and get them to be friends again.

This was admittedly the only part of the estrogen story that we found to be enjoyable, mostly because the rest of it was just, quite frankly, a little bit strange and played almost too much to the “women are emotional” stereotype. The physical bit about Howard and Raj, while predictable, was at least still pretty funny and the highlight of the entire episode. What made it for us was the slight change from the norm: Typically in this sort of sequence, the two parties doing the inappropriate act are found out. Not so much here, and Bernadette didn’t end up saying anything about the spontaneous groping the rest of the episode. This alone made this scene much more effective than it otherwise would have been.

Click here if you missed our review for the first half of the premiere, which was probably the stronger of the two half-hours. We’ll have more on the third episode, so be sure to stay tuned for more on that.

Photo: CBS