BUT if Sheldon tells Leonard he can’t eat because he’s having dinner with Penny, then Leonard may never pick up dinner for him again and if he tells Penny he can’t come over because he just ate, she might never fix spaghetti with Mama Marinara sauce & cut-up hot dogs for him again. (“Now, that’s Eye-talian!”)
So it’s actually rational selfishness.
Yes, the rerun episode (one of the best, thak you Charlie Sheen) had the bit with the owner of the ball pit (paraphrased):
How long has he been this special?
Emotionally…about 29 years.
BAZINGA!
You’ve conflated two exchanges.
The first was early on the episode…Sheldon’s agonizing over his electron problem. Howard asks him how long Sheldon’s been stuck.
‘Intellectually? Since last night. Emotionally, about 29 years.’
Then when he goes to the ballpit… When he thanks the security guard for calling him, not the cops, the guard tells him, by way of explanation, ‘My sister has a kid who’s special.’ Leonard’s response is ‘Yeah, he’s extra-special.’
That whole episode was great though. Particularly the food scene ‘If I don’t eat my lima beans, I can’t have my cookie!’ ‘What would I do with CORN?’
OOPSIE! Thanks for the correction.
There’s another Big Bang rerun on tonight at 8:30. CBS is obviously looking fo rnew viewers.
I find that hard to believe, each laugh break sounded the same and they started and ended in perfect sync.
Ah, that makes much more sense.
I liked the exchange between Penny and Leonard after he gets woken up by his frightening ring tone (that he paid three bucks for!) - “Sheldon escaped and is terrorizing the villagers.” Penny snorts acknowledgement and just turns over and goes back to sleep.
I agree. And with much of the “custody” give and take, I was impressed at how poor the acting was. I know this is just a sitcom, but at times lately it really seems like Penny and Leonard horribly overact. It was not as tho the characters were saying those lines, but as tho a not terribly talented actor was impersonating a mother or father…
Right. And, wouldn’t the laugh track be something they added to the show after the taping? I mean what does one going to the live taping have to do with knowing whether a laugh track is used. It is clearly a laugh track there.
I gave the show a couple of tries, because I thought is was supposed to be real witty with smart writing, based on its status on this board. Instead I found it not to be very witty or smart at all, but instead depending on all the same cliches that tons of corny sitcoms depend on.
Then I remembered that I have no idea of the references to math and science and lots of other jokes they make, so therefore, my judgment probably doesn’t really matter after all. In fact, I was never going to post about the show at all until I saw the quote about the laugh track, and figured I might as well go all in.
C K Dexter Haven was the Doper who attended a taping last year. Here are his two threads about it. I don’t think he specifically said there isn’t a laugh track, but he did say they were asked to laugh loudly even on the 2nd & 3rd take of a scene, implying their laughs were being taped for use.
Yeah, I don’t doubt that, muldoonthief. But don’t they ‘sweeten’ those laughs with the laugh tracks? I mean, it just sounds exactly like the rhythm of a laugh track.
I also want to say that I probably shouldn’t have opined on the rest of the show at all. One of those things that I probably would have been more polite to keep to myself, as I sense this thread is probably more so for fans of the show. I do sometimes start watching shows based on recommendations from the dope, and I am not often disappointed. I guess I didn’t have to register my disapointment on this show in this thread, though.
Nzinga - it’s ok to have different opinions. I love the show despite its weaknesses, but not everybody has to. I don’t like “Modern Family” but apparently the zeitgeist says I’m supposed to.
As far as I am concerned, the writing seemed a bit “off” in the current episode; not particularly clever, especially compared to the show at its best!
But it was still “okay” funny, I suppose. I just don’t want them to overdo the “Sheldon as Leonard and Penny’s special-needs child” angle in future episodes.
By the way – how many more episodes left in this season?
Oops - looks like I mis-understood. I don’t like laugh tracks much, either, but I’m so used to them at this point that I (usually) don’t notice them.
I’m not sure that being asked to laugh loudly on the 2nd and 3rd takes implies they are taping it for use. Rather, they don’t know which of the 3 takes they are going to use for the final cut and they realize that the laughter would naturally wane upon the 2nd and 3rd retake.
How is that different? They’re taping the scene and the audience laughter, so they want the audience laughter to stay at the same level on all the takes. If they weren’t taping the audience laughter, why would they care?
I’m not sure, but I suspect that there are two different ways that Dopers here are understanding ‘using the laughter from all the takes’:
They should just get a bunch of hobos like Craig Ferguson.
Craig Ferguson is a hobo?
No, he just has an audience of hobos. They work for chicken, you know.
Although now that you mention it, he probably has been a hobo.
No, he’s just Scottish.