It's not how I pictured it, either,
but I'm still glad we're doing it.
Me, too.
Well, they are 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.
But before we get into our own big theory,
why not take a moment to subscribe
to the Nerdstalgic channel?
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 eight, 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?
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's 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.
Really, we're good.
Yep, just want to get married.
Yeah.
Leonard and Penny arrive in Vegas
and await their nuptials at a typically chintzy 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've 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 returned to their hotel where he carries her
over the threshold, and they try to act
like everything is all right.
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's 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.
You said it was an eternity.
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 down beat, but that's not its problem.
The problem is that "The Matrimonial Momentum"
is pretty much nothing but down beats.
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's
general social dysfunction, but it's 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're a man, the champagne of genders.
And like the main story line, the B plot
also doesn't have a lot of laughs in it.
And it's not for the lack of trying,
but the writers' attempts to wring humor
from 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 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 three'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 Wil Wheaton,
and ends on a lighthearted sight gag.
I've got to call you back.
I won 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.
So what do you think?
Was "The Matrimonial Momentum" the worst episode
of The Big Bang Theory?
And if it wasn't, what was?
Let us know down in the comments below.
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definitely find others you like if you check out
the rest of the channel.
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