So lately I’ve been sleeping way too late thanks to four nerdy guys and a hot girl. I’m talking about the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. My friend Caloy gave me copies of the episodes and I was hooked from the first episode (watch clips of that here). I’ve never laughed so hard since Friends. I suppose both shows have similarities, the first one being that episodes mostly occur in two apartments that are across the hall from each other. Also, Leonard and Penny kinda remind me of Ross and Rachel.
The story revolves around five main characters. Leonard and Sheldon are both physicists who work in the same university and share an apartment. They live across the hall from Penny, a very attractive waitress whom Leonard falls for. Leonard constantly invites her over to their apartment to have dinner with them and their two other colleague friends, Raj and Howard. Raj is Indian and can’t talk to women unless he drinks alcohol while Howard tries too hard to flirt with women and only comes off as creepy. Sheldon is the most genius of the bunch and is relatively the best looking but he is the most annoying one as not only is he horribly demanding and hardheaded but takes the words “socially ignorant” to new levels. This, however, makes him the funniest of them all. Leonard is the most normal of the bunch and I use this term loosely. His sweetness on Penny is so adorably endearing and I’m rooting for them. Hard to believe that he would have any chance with Penny, you say? Watch this.
A tear actually slid down my cheek after I saw that last part at the last episode of season 2. Haha I am so lame. But when season 3 begins, the guys get back from the North Pole and Leonard goes over to Penny’s to announce that they are back. He greets her with a “I just came over to say -” and she doesn’t let him finish and jumps into his arms and starts kissing him. Apparently she missed him so much and wasn’t able to think of anyone else over the summer that he was gone.
If you find it hard to fathom the idea of Penny liking Leonard, maybe you’ll find this even more shocking: the actors who play Leonard and Penny in the series actually dated for two years in real life. Yeah I know. My jaw dropped like that too when I first read it. Here is the interview where she talks about it. Some excerpts below.
Well, I dated [co-star Johnny] Galecki, so … yeah. We dated for almost two years. It was such a huge part of my life and no one knew about it.
This is the first time I’ve ever talked about it, ever. It was a wonderful relationship but we never spoke a word about it and never went anywhere together. We were so protective of ourselves and the show and didn’t want anything to ruin that. But that also made it sad, too. That’s not the kind of relationship I want-I don’t want to be hiding. We couldn’t do anything. It wasn’t as fun as we wanted it to be. Everyone was always asking, and we deny-deny-denied. And I’m like, “Why am I denying this person that I love?” It took a little bit of a toll on me and I think it did for him, too. Not that I want to go traipsing down a red carpet with anyone, but there’s got to be a happy medium.
We broke up before the holidays and worked that whole time. We dodged a huge bullet. Dodged a war. But when you’re dealing with two professionals who have been working since they were both 4-and who kept their lives extremely private- we didn’t want anything other than that. So we’re not going to screw it up, and were not going to screw it up for everyone else and make things weird. There was so much at stake, and we both knew that. It was really intense.
Moments were really hard, but we have such a love for each other-and we knew we weren’t destined to be together-that we accepted it and said, ”Look, if we ever break up, we will be professional.” I’m so lucky it was a mutual ending and that we don’t hate each other. We’ve seen that happen on other shows.
At the wrap party he gave me a huge hug and I was like, “I’m really proud of us.” And he was like, “I know, me too. We didn’t kill each other, or kill other people. We made it.”
I don’t know about you, but that just made me feel sad. It always makes me feel sad to learn about two people who love each other but can’t be together for one reason or another. Much like Leonard and Penny at the end of season 4. They were together for most of season 3 but then Leonard blurts out “I love you” and she can’t say it back and later breaks up with him. He eventually starts going out with Raj’s sister Priya and this makes her realize, as she confided to Raj, that she made a mistake – Leonard is a great guy and she regrets letting him go.
The show has just been renewed for three more seasons, so I can’t wait to see what happens next. But the next season is a couple of months away, so in the meantime, now that I have finished marathoning all the four years of episodes that I missed, I can go back to sleeping before midnight.
Meanwhile, here are a couple of clips that made me LOL.
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