I would have the same sense if it was a male. The issue is not the sleeping around. The issue is the frequency of drinking to impaired function and the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism. I do not believe that she would have had sex with Raj if she had not been drunk and my read is that she did not remember exactly what happened. A male who had sex with a woman who he regretted having had sex with in the morning and who he doesn’t quite remember having sex with would be equally a problem to me. No more and no less. For what it is worth (or not worth) I had the same reaction to Sideways - others thought it was funny and I did not.
I know people in real life like this. Not drunk all day. Able to function. But drink very regularly and often drink to being at least somewhat drunk and then use their having been drinking as an excuse for the actions they engaged in while intoxicated. Both men and women. And I think they have alcohol problems (and drunken hook-ups are not even part of those circumstances).
YMMV. Just my take. And no I am not a teetotaller.
tin-n-va, yes it is a prediction. In the future the Penny Raj hook up will be seen as the episode that marked the end. I hope I am wrong because I have really enjoyed the show.
JoelUpchurch sorry I’ve never seen the show. If the character was just Sheen playing himself then, from what I can’t help but be aware of, I rest my case.
I got around to watching this tonight. I thought it was a great episode, but I have my own niggling point:
In a group of people that includes three associate professors, a newly-minted Ph.D in microbiology starting her first job, and a working electrical engineer with a master’s degree, at least five years on the job, a security clearance, and who builds serious hardware for NASA, just who do you think makes the most money?
If this were the real world, Wolowitz would be making more than any two of them combined. And I guarantee you that someone starting out as a new Ph.D microbiologist is not going to be making Rolex money. Not now, and maybe not ever.
Hell, with good tips she might have made more money as a waitress. from here:
Where they live, a $38,000 salary is just about poverty. On the other hand, given Wolowitz’s experience and job description, he’s probably making well over $100,000. The average starting salary for an EE with a masters in the U.S. was $72,340 in the same year.
It does beg the question as to what Wolowitz does with all his money. He lives at home, I don’t think we’ve ever been told that he has a car, and judging by his wardrobe he shops the children’s section at Wal-Mart. HE can afford a Rolex. Bernadette will be paying off student loans and watching her budget for the next decade.
Well, Bernadette does indicate her job pays unusually well, and Wolowitz might be supporting his mother. But even then, you’d think at best they’d end up with similar incomes.
I think I read somewhere the original concept of the show was to make the characters grad-studnets, which would’ve made their living situations make more sense (Wolowitz living with his mother, Leonard spliting an apartment in a building that a waitress can afford to live alone in(and where the elevator apparently can remain inoperable for years without getting fixed)).
Actually, now that I think about it, I think the boys would have to be research professors, since they don’t really teach and they have to schmooze to raise grant money. So they’re not faculty.
Research professors generally make more money than faculty - it all depends on the value of their work and how much money their work can bring in. But some of them make a pittance, because their salaries are totally determined by the funds they can raise.
It ranges from an average of $10,000/yr at one institution to over $200,000/yr at GMU. Given that range, you can fanwank the relatively low salaries of Raj, Sheldon, and Leonard I guess. But there’s no way a full-time EE with experience is going to make less than a starting microbiologist’s salary.
That’s the way I figured it. Only more than 10G. But Howard definitely makes more than the rest of them, easily. JPL doesn’t skimp on its payroll for engineers.
I thought there were some odd interactions this episode, and that was before Raj and Penny… Like Howard’s mother yelling for Raj? A little out of character. Priya wearing the Lieutenant Uhura costume after she’s derided it in the past? A little convenient. Just felt like the writers were a bit off. I still enjoyed it and there some good lines.
I can’t see any evidence to suggest that Raj and Penny didn’t actually enjoy the horizontal waltz (save perhaps Raj being to drunk to raise his flagpole). The episode (can’t remember the title) when Penny shows up drunk at the guy’s apartment and tells Leonard that he’s ruined ordinary himbos for her establishes that she’s really gotten a preference for sweet, socially awkward guys who treat her nicely. Hell, in last week’s ep, she admitted that even Howard has become a friend. And who does she go out with for a girls’ night? Bernadette and Amy.
Furthermore, the last half of the season she’s been dropping hints that she’s not over Leonard. I read her dismay about waking up with Raj not as horror at having slept with a nerd, but as horror at having slept with the wrong one. (And in Leonard’s bed, no less.)
Parenthetically, why are Leonard and Priya in Raj’s bed? Does Priya not have a bed of her own? Does she normally sleep with Raj? Ewww…
I assume he had been sleeping on the couch while she vistited. But since we’re nitpicking the socio-economics of Big Bang Theory, its kinda weird that Priya the high-powered lawyer has to crash at her brothers during her extended stay in CA.
On the subject of Howard’s money, there was an episode a couple of seasons ago or so where he was dating a gold digger and it even mentioned him using bonds he was given from his bar mitzvah to keep her happy. I wondered then what happened to all of his money. I can only assume it all goes into electronics.
I have to agree - it’s going to take some fast and furious writing to make me forgive this.
If it turns out to be a dream - lame
If they didn’t really but Leonard spends the next season obsessing over it - lame
If they did, and just forget it - lame (why did they bother?)
If they end up together - but no, seriously
about the only thing that will save this for me is if the next season opens with Leonard pummeling Raj and screaming “That’s my woman!!!”
*Last edited by TruCelt; Today at 02:18 PM. *
There were some very funny parts to this episode, but my reaction to Raj and Penny ending up in bed together was “oh, ick.” It felt forced and skeezy, and unnecessary.
Does anyone else think that the episode title is a reference to Calvin and Hobbes? The only other place I can remember the word Transmogrification is in C&H.