‘The Big Bang Theory’ season 6, episode 20 review: The battle for tenure
On Thursday night’s new “Big Bang Theory” season 6 episode, we had something that managed to accomplish quite a rare feat: present us with a storyline that felt like an old-school half-hour, while simultaneously having a feeling that felt new. After all, the original series regulars were the focus of the hour, and the significant others played a little bit more of a valuable supporting role.
The story this week was really pretty stable: after one of the professors at Cal Tech died, what we ended up seeing was the other doctors at the university fighting over the tenure position. This is a position that everyone clearly wants, and for good reason. Being a tenured professor has so many benefits that even Sheldon can’t ignore it: A higher salary, and an opportunity to have a long-term commitment.
All three of our doctors (plus Kripke) did just about everything in their power in order to get tenure, and this including wooing members of the committee. This included a guest appearance by Regina King, who just so happens to be making her second go of the season as Mrs. Davis. By far, the best pitch of the entire evening had to be Raj’s, who created an entire documentary about his life that included some unintentionally hilarious comedy, especially his lines about not really being “in space” during the introduction.
Did any of the characters actually end up getting what they walked this week? At the end of the day, all of the characters ended up trying to go to a memorial service in order to get the position, Leonard tried to use Penny’s appearance to her advantage, and Sheldon brought along Amy. All three of our leads did end up being candidates for the position, which led to another bizarrely racial-themed joke from Sheldon towards Mrs. Davis in celebration. (Is anyone else a little weirded out by this?) That aside, this was a very funny episode of the show, even if there was nothing major that happened in the end.
What did you think about this “Big Bang Theory” season 6 episode? Be sure to share some of your thoughts on this story below, and you can read some more news related to this episode over at the link here.
Photo: CBS
Stacie
April 11, 2013 @ 10:41 am
I loved the episode, overall. Also, Sheldon does not mean to be racially insensitive – as Bernadette explained in Season 5: when Prof Hawking had a cameo role – to paraphrase: “the part of Sheldon’s brain that’s supposed to know these things is getting a wedgie from the rest of his brain.” What is interesting is that, altho’ Sheldon learned (thru Amy?) that his gift of the CD “Roots” was not appropriate, he apparently was not told WHY it was inappropriate. After all, we learned in Season 1 from Howard, that all you have to do is tell Sheldon “It’s a non-optional social convention” and Sheldon complies. (“He came with a manual.”)