Ever since the show's 7th season, The Big Bang Theory has been spewing out endless stories that have either been underwhelming, uninteresting, or just really unfunny.
There hasn't been an episode since the 6th series that I've really wanted to remember, not The Opening Night Excitation, not The Meemaw Materialisation, not even The Scavenger Vortex, because, although they're good enough in their own right, they're far from the show's glory days.
I've sat patiently through the last 3 years of the show, and instead of watching plot developments and characters progress, I've watched the humour leak out of the show until there's not a lot left but irritating melodrama. Until now...
The Brain Bowl Incubation is the first time in years that this show has seriously made me laugh. It got everything right, it's spontaneous, it's outrageous, it gets the characters just right, and finally, Sheldon has a purpose again other than to be the hideously drawn-out gag machine.
We finally get some character from Raj who drifted through series 9 on autopilot, and Bernadette was put on the backseat so other characters could come to the forefront.
If the series continues at this pace, it could return to its golden age, and be a show that exists because it funny again, not just because it's making Chuck Lorre a tonne of money.
The Big Bang Theory has some great plots coming, but the humour has been lacking. This episode serves to remind us what this show can be when it puts the effort in.
It reminds me of Lorre's writing from the Sheen years of Two and a Half Men. Outrageous and superbly witty. If he can recapture that, then this show has a long future ahead of it.