The
Big Bang Theory: Of Terminators and Fanboy Fantasies
A major theme in The Big Bang Theory is that
Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrappali
are big fans of science fiction. Another premise is that they are also
totally inept when it comes to women. While the season two episode “The
Terminator Decoupling” may not be the funniest installment the
television sitcom has ever produced, it does combine these two fundamental
elements into a cohesive and humorous exploration of fanboy fantasy.
Although
Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica have received more
attention from the male quartet, there have been brief mentions to the
television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in
a handful of episodes. The fact that the main Terminator sent to protect
the teenage John Connor is played by the attractive Summer Glau, for
instance, was comic fodder in the opening teaser scene of “The
Loobenfeld Decay” from season one.
“Assuming
all the good Terminators were originally evil Terminators created by
Sky Net but then reprogrammed by the future John Connor, why would Sky
Net, an artificial computer intelligence, bother to create a petite,
hot seventeen year old killer robot?” Sheldon asks Leonard regarding
Glau’s character. “Artificial intelligences do not have
teen fetishes.”
When the
gang actually comes face-to-face with Glau in “The Terminator
Decoupling,” their response is not simply one of nerdy gleefulness
but centers instead on the fact that the actress is both female and
available. While Sheldon is mainly lost in his own world, more worried
about retrieving a forgotten flash drive with the help of Penny than
anything else, Raj and Howard embark on an unstated competition to see
who can successfully woo the sci-fi actress first. In the process, the
usual character quirks of Raj not being able to speak to women, Howard’s
innate ability to “creep out” women and even Leonard’s
nice-guy persona are all evident and on full display.
The meeting
occurs when Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj take a train to San Francisco
in order to attend a physics conference. While Sheldon babbles on about
the wonders and joys of train travel—much to the annoyance of
the others—Raj notices that Summer Glau has also boarded the train
and taken a seat in the back of their coach. “Maybe John Connor’s
on board and she’s protecting him from an evil Terminator,”
Leonard jokes.
This sets
Sheldon off on one of his many classic sci-fi observations. “If
Sky Net actually did exist in the future,” he hypothesizes, “a
perfect way to infiltrate and destroy mankind would be to send Terminators
back posing as actors who have played Terminators in popular films and
television series, lulling us into a false sense of security, i.e.,
that’s Summer Glau from The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”
Howard,
meanwhile, is ecstatic about Glau’s presence. “I’ve
actually got a shot at a Terminator,” he exclaims. “When
it comes to Terminators, you’ve got a better shot of scoring with
Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Raj mockingly replies, bringing the Sarah
Connor jokes to an end while moving the episode into full fanboy fantasy
mode. “You’re overlooking something,” Howard calmly
explains, letting the insult slide. “I have eleven hours with
her in a confined space. Unless she’s willing to jump off a moving
train and tuck-and-roll down the side of a hill, she will eventually
succumb to the acquired taste that is Howard Wolowitz.”
Raj objects
when Howard assumes he should have the first crack at meeting Glau,
especially since Raj saw the actress first. Howard, however, points
out that Raj has a psychological problem when it comes to women, in
that Raj can’t speak to them unless under the influence of alcohol.
Leonard interjects that he should have a shot as well, but when Howard
tells him to go head, he hesitantly backs down. “I’ve already
got a gorgeous blond back home that I can’t score with,”
Leonard says, referring to Penny and his inhibitions regarding women.
“I think I’ll let you two take this one.” Raj then
heads off to the bar while Howard tries to come up with an appropriate
opening line.
“Why
not just try ‘hello’?” Leonard suggests. “No,
no, no, that always creeps girls out,” Howard explains, displaying
his need to overcompensate when it comes to the opposite sex. “I
need to come up with something that’s funny, smart and delicately
suggests that my sexual endowment is disproportionate to my physical
stature.”
Howard
eventually decides on an opening line—“It’s hot in
here, must be Summer”—but can’t muster the confidence
to approach the actress. Raj soon returns with a bottle of beer in his
hand, and upon hearing Howard practicing the line goes up to Summer
Glau and uses it himself. He then asks if she’s seen the movie
Slumdog Millionaire, adding that “it’s loosely
based on my life.” An exasperated Howard is shell-shocked.
“Do
you believe him?” Howard asks the others. “Normally around
women he has the personality of a boiled potato. Put one beer in him
and he’s M. Night Charmalarmalon.” Leonard, however, notices
that Raj is actually drinking non-alcoholic beer, suggesting that the
effects are purely psychological. Howard immediately takes advantage
of the discovery and approaches Raj, asking him to take a look at the
bottle. While reading the label out loud, the Indian astrophysicist
loses his speech as soon as he gets to the words “non-alcoholic.”
He weakly waves to Glau and exits, leaving Howard his long-awaited opportunity.
“Hi,” he says to his latest dream girl, “I’m
the small package good things come in.”
In typical
Wolowitz fashion, Howard quickly manages to make Summer Glau uncomfortable
with stories of erotically-suggestive dreams he has had about her, while
simultaneously boring the actress with lame jokes like, “If you
married the famous rock guitarist Johnny Winter, you’d be Summer
Winter.” As she awkwardly sits pressed against the window, Howard
finally decides to just go for broke. “Here’s the question,”
he says to her in a rare moment of womanizing candor. “Do you
realistically see any conversational path that would take us from where
we are right now to a place where I could ask you out and you’d
say yes?” The query is met with a simple yet emphatic “No.”
Before he leaves, Howard asks if he could take a picture of them together
with his cell phone for his Facebook page. Never content to leave well
enough alone, he then asks, “Now can we take one where it looks
like we are making out?” Howard ends up returning to the others
with a broken cell phone.
At this
point, Leonard Hofstadter finally decides to approach the Terminator
actress himself. “I’ll be honest with you,” he tells
Glau after sitting down across from her. “I’ve just spent
the last two hours imagining various scenarios in my head, trying to
come up with some clever line to say to you. But then I finally realized
you’re a human being, I’m a human being; I could just say
to you…” The conductor interrupts him, however, announcing
the next stop. Glau quickly excuses herself and exits the train.
“Hi,
my name’s Leonard,” he finishes, now sitting all alone.
As usual, his awkward honesty may have actually been the right approach—especially
compared to Howard’s creepy directness and Raj’s “alcohol-induced”
smoothness—but Leonard’s low self-esteem when it comes to
women prevents him from ever knowing.
Summer
Glau, however, is not the only “celebrity” to make an appearance
in “The Terminator Decoupling.” The keynote speaker at the
conference the gang attends is Nobel Prize-winning physicist George
Smoot. While Raj, Howard and Leonard had been infatuated with meeting
Glau, Sheldon Cooper’s focus has been on giving the Nobel Laureate
a paper he has written, and at the end of the episode he finally gets
his opportunity. But just like his friends’ failed attempts with
the actress, Sheldon’s personality traits, i.e., his ego and lack
of social etiquette, bring about an equally negative outcome.
“You
won the Nobel Prize, what, three years ago?” Sheldon rhetorically
asks Smoot in a hotel lobby. “You must deal with a whole lot of
‘what has Smoot done lately.’ My thought is, we continue
my research as a team—you know, Cooper-Smoot, alphabetical—and
when we win the Nobel Prize, you’ll be back on top.” Smoot
doesn’t give the simple “no” that Summer Glau gave
Howard Wolowitz, but his response is just as dismissive: “With
all due respect, Dr. Cooper, are you on crack?”
Anthony
Letizia (February 15, 2010)
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