I was expecting the worst when I saw the set-up. Instead this was one of the better episodes of the year. They could have gone wrong with the love quiz in a morass of stupid, hurting insults as they’ve done in the first half of the season. What we got was Sheldon showing humility and Penny adulthood, with real affection for one another and no hint of anything more. How much closer to perfect could that be?
Leonard and Amy blew the quiz off in one line and that was perfect too. The Zombie game didn’t work and Howard was too much Howard, so not overall great. But all the characters acted like people and Stewart wasn’t around to bring people down. This is really promising for the rest of the year.
Howard’s character has begun to grate on my every last nerve. I thought this episode was terrible. They were extra super a-holes to the airline person, which (as the wife of an airline employee) pissed me off.
Imagine if Penny and Sheldon started to make out during that staring time.
Don’t agree with the OP, it was an episode that I wanted to go on much longer, at least for the Sheldon-Penny interaction. That part was very touching.
I shipped my brother’s ashes via the USPS. They dropped and broke the shipping container in transit and spilled some of him on the floor. I am sure the result of them sweeping him up and patching the container was floor dirt and maybe even a cigarette butt being buried in the family plot.
Just a side note on my reaction to the airport drama.
My father’s ashes made it all the way to the cemetery, and then THEY lost him. The package turned up in a back room a couple of days later, but I was on the verge of saying, “He made it inside the gates. Close enough, I guess.”
I was going to mention that also. If Howard is determined to keep his mother close to him, there is a process where cremains are converted to diamonds. Not great diamonds, but you could make a stone for a ring or pendant.