“Sheldon, swallow this blue pill or I take a Sharpie to your Incredible Hulk #181…”
I think it’s pretty clear she wouldn’t be adverse to speeding things up if an oppurtunity presented itself.
In other news, she’s getting orthotics. Mum’s the word!
Sheldon undergoes a radical personality change when he gets drunk, and it doesn’t take much alcohol to get him drunk. Amy could take advantage of him in that state.
This episode was just rerun locally, so I’m resurrecting it, because I’m wondering what was in the envelope. The fact that we now know Howard’s father apparently remarried, and still owned the house with his mother, makes Penny’s seem really unlikely, and Leonard’s much more credible. Maybe Howard’s father even tried to get back together with Howard’s mother, and having been once burned, she wouldn’t take him. We have no idea what kind of communication they may have had, and with her gone, chances are we’ll never know.
Howard’s father is still alive, apparently, though, and I see potential for a reunion when the baby is born, especially after Howard has the freak-out we know he is going to have the first time he has to take care of the baby by himself: he will call the guys for help, and Raj will end up doing all the work with a surprising amount of support from Stuart. Leonard, Howard and Sheldon will play video games, until either Amy or Penny discovers what is happening and shames Howard into realizing he has “abandoned” his child. Howard will be shocked, because he “thought he would be different from his own father.”
Anyway, back to the letter.
I was originally thinking they gave the job of representing the real letter to the actress, and at the same time, spared the “less-smart” one the task of making up a fictional letter. But the appearance of Howard’s half-brother made me change my mind. Now I think it is Leonard’s. Why they would give the real story to Leonard, I don’t know. Maybe because Sheldon thinks Leonard is a good liar (ie, he doesn’t sweat, stutter, or have tics-- not that he makes up good lies), and everyone tends to do what Sheldon wants, because he filibusters.
My wife, and I, each graduated at 16, the result of school policy on when you start the first grade, plus accelerated promotion for the sake of not ‘being held back by the rest of the class’… and I don’t recommend it, because of the social negatives, to anyone except the most intelligent of the intelligent, like the kids who become doctors at 16, or get their phD at 18.
High school is particularly difficult. Surrounded by people who are driving themselves to school, using their cars for trysting, going places forbidden, or just, in general, ‘dating’., the 15 year old junior is trying to find freshman girls whose parents aren’t telling them to avoid dating sophomores, let alone juniors…
you get the idea, lots of frustration for being unable to participate socially, plus some degree of antagonism from classmates because they are tired of your being top of the class all the time, etc. etc.
in other words, while my intellect doesn’t measure up to Howard, Sheldon, Amy, Bernadette, Raj and Leonard, I can understand how there are two sides to the growing up brilliant story.