How This Became The Worst Episode Of The Big Bang Theory

It's not how I pictured it either, but I'm still glad we're doing it

Me too. Well, they're at least half right. Leonard and Penny's wedding certainly didn't turn out to be what anyone was picturing

but whether fans were ultimately glad the couple took the plunge was another story

Because amazingly, the matrimonial momentum found a way to turn one of the most anticipated

moments in the show's history into the centerpiece of the worst episode of The Big Bang Theory

We have the rest of our lives to dredge up stuff from the past and fight about it. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Rajesh were all pretty stock nerd caricatures

And given their astronomical IQs, Penny was often left looking like a stereotypical dumb blonde

Marathon? Wow, how many Superman movies are there? You're kidding, right? But in the pilot, they all came off with a surprising amount of charm

It ended up with Leonard falling head over heels for Penny, and their love story would become a central element of a show

that would run an astounding 12 seasons for a total of 279 episodes

By the end of season 8, Leonard and Penny were engaged and Sheldon had found love with Amy Farrah Fowler

In that season's finale, Sheldon calls his friends out for their failure to set a wedding date

so Leonard and Penny make the spontaneous decision to elope. It's a joyous moment for the characters and the audience

but on the way to get married in Vegas, Leonard confesses to kissing another woman in an isolated incident years earlier

Would you rather I didn't tell you? No, I don't want there to be secrets between us. See, now I'm confused

I mean, what am I supposed to do? Uh, keep your mouth off other women. Penny doesn't call off the wedding

but it's pretty obvious she's not taking it well. At the same time, after another of Sheldon's typical acts

of bizarre insensitivity, Amy tells him she needs some space to reconsider their relationship

The audience then learns Sheldon was planning to propose to her and the season ends on a double cliffhanger

with both couples in a precarious spot. The episode was particularly well done

and its cliffhanger is effective because there's so much love apparent in both relationships

The characters' affection for each other is evident throughout, and Leonard and Penny decision to get married provides a nice emotional high for fans who are really invested in these couples Audiences went into the summer break wondering how the conflicts would be resolved and what they got was the matrimonial momentum

Where are the rose petals? We're out! We can use the potpourri from the bathroom

Okay. Really, we're good. Yep, just want to get married. Leonard and Penny arrive in Vegas and await their nuptials at a typically chitzy Vegas

wedding chapel that's next door to a strip club. The atmosphere couldn't possibly be less romantic, and they're both painfully aware of it

From the first beat, it's also clear that despite her reassurances to Leonard, Penny isn't particularly happy to be there

and even Leonard seems surprisingly unenthused about marrying the dream girl he's pursued for nine years

The conversation in the car sapped everything of its magic, and it feels like they're just going through with it because it's what they had planned to do

thus the titular matrimonial momentum. When it comes time to say their vows

the ones Leonard writes are couched purely in terms of science. I like to think those atoms traveled 14 billion years through time and space to create us

so that we could be together and make each other whole. It's consistent with his character, and Penny obliges him by acting wowed

But despite his years of love for her, they're totally impersonal, and he kind of delivers them like someone reading a greeting card

Penny uses the lyrics to Randy Newman's You Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story

Is that the song from Toy Story? He loves that movie. I do. It's the only truly sweet moment in the whole wedding sequence

but we know she did it because she didn't have anything emotionally honest to say at the moment

so even that is kind of heart-wrenching. They return to their hotel where he carries her over the threshold

and they try to act like everything is alright, but when they go to kiss, the truth finally becomes unavoidable

She's still angry about what he confessed. It causes a fight and the two head home to their separate apartments

There was nothing inherently wrong with the idea of Leonard and Penny's wedding being

a disaster in one form or another. The writers were trying to create a situation where both Leonard and Penny, scared of getting

married for different reasons, are trying to subconsciously sabotage the wedding. The problem is there nothing funny about that So almost the entire wedding sequence is just uncomfortable to watch which is of course by design but that discomfort is never alleviated

And the episode's B-plot doesn't help because it's arguably even less fun to watch

While Leonard and Penny are doing their thing, Sheldon shows up at Amy's after she told him to give her space

and is, as usual, unrelentingly self-centered. It's only been 11 hours. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was nearly 11 hours

I made you watch that? He then follows her to Howard and Bernadette's house

even though he knows he's not invited, and insists on being let in

even though everyone has made it clear it would be awkward. Once they do relent and bring him inside

Sheldon quickly insults Amy by implying she's getting old. You should think fast

because men can sire offspring their entire lives, but those eggs you're toting around have a sell-by date

Prompting her to dump him and run off. After everything has died down

Sheldon visits Penny for coffee, but gets angry at her and storms out because she didn't try to talk Amy out of dumping him

The episode finally ends when a defeated Leonard laments to Sheldon that he didn't picture his wedding night turning out like this

Really? I never imagined any other way. The whole thing is just kind of depressing

The episode ends on a downbeat, but that's not its problem. The problem is that the matrimonial momentum is pretty much nothing but downbeats

This is partially explained by the fact that it serves as something of an unofficial two-parter

with a subsequent installment, the separation oscillation. At the end of that one, Leonard and Penny reconcile and decide to stay married, which

is nice. But saving that resolution for the second episode of the season left the premiere in a tough spot

The matrimonial momentum had to ruin Leonard and Penny's wedding without fixing things

by the end. But in addition to being denied a happy ending, the episode was also denied the comic relief

of a lighter B-plot. Instead, the B-plot is busy adding to the bad vibes by breaking up another fan-favorite

couple and doing it in a way that didn't make Sheldon look so hot. His behavior toward Amy comes off as sexist especially in combination with his misogynistic rantings to Leonard The show writes it off as Sheldon general social dysfunction but it hard not to notice that his anger in this episode frequently takes the form of a generalized hatred of women And you know why Because you a man The champagne of genders

And like the main storyline, the B-plot also doesn't have a lot of laughs in it. And it's

not for the lack of trying. But the writer's attempts to ring humor for moments like Howard

comparing Amy to an abusive victim or Stewart creepily showing sexual interest in both Amy

and Penny at inappropriate times fall flat, especially in the serious story context of

an ugly breakup. The problem is also weirdly exacerbated by the show's laugh track

which seems to find everyone's heartbreak laugh-out-loud uproarious. Listen, I may not have been entirely faithful, but you, you are not easy to lift

The whole thing is especially disappointing because of how well the show's writers handled

similar stories in the past. Take, for example, season 3's The Wheaton Recurrence. That episode

also features Leonard and Penny navigating a relationship problem, a scene where Sheldon

comes to talk to Penny about those troubles, and an ending where the couple breaks up

Whereas the wedding episode is relentlessly downbeat, The Wheaton Recurrence chooses its

moments when it comes to delivering the sad stuff, which makes those moments much more effective

The love between the characters is also unmistakable, which stands in stark contrast

to the matrimonial momentum where everyone seems a little extra insensitive to each other

The earlier episode is also consistently funny, features a hilarious B-plot with guest star

Will Wheaton, and ends on a light-hearted sight gag. I gotta call you back, I want a bet, and it's time to collect

The wedding of two beloved characters fans had been following for over eight seasons

wound up being joyless. For what it's worth, the show did try to make the botched wedding up to fans a year later

when Leonard and Penny had a second wedding in the season 10 premiere, the conjugal conjecture

And that was probably always the plan. But while the second wedding could fix things for Leonard

and Penny, it couldn't change the fact that the show's audience first had to sit through one of

the least fun TV wedding episodes of all time