As soon as I read the episode info and saw that Kripke was going to be making an appearance, I lost all hope of this episode coming anywhere close to matching the brilliance of last week’s. I was not wrong. I don’t like Kripke. I don’t find a speech impediment to be funny, and with him, it’s completely extraneous. Sheldon could just have an enemy (I don’t doubt he had many, in fact). You don’t need to give the character this extra identifying mark.

So not only was I dismayed by Kripke’s appearance, his practical joke was just mean-spirited and again, not something that I found funny. I don’t like watching people getting humiliated. Sheldon dressed up for a radio interview. That’s adorable, and then to not only be embarrassed for absolutely no reason in front of a national audience, but to have his friends laughing at him as well, just made me sad. Luckily, Wolowitz’s uh, love triangle with Bernadette and Katee Sackhoff saved the episode for me.

Kripke first showed up in the episode that made me uncomfortable for the same reasons: it was the one where Penny was ridiculously mean to Wolowitz. I didn’t like the mean-spiritedness then, and I certainly don’t like it now. However, there were some good aspects, so let’s talk about those:

I’m so glad they decided to bring back Bernadette. Wolowitz actually found a girl who doesn’t think he’s completely creepy, so I definitely wanted to see more of her, and see how Wolowitz was going to screw it up. You knew he was going to ruin it somehow, but I didn’t think it would be because he was cheating on her with Battlestar Gallactica‘s
Katee Sackhoff, and I certainly didn’t think he would ruin his relationship over a fantasy of Katee Sackhoff, but he is Wolowitz after all.

The way they resolved it was very nice: Wolowitz was his super-creepy self, and Bernadette was smart enough to back away. At first, I was afraid that she was going to actually accept his proposal, which would have made me lose all respect for her, but she was smart enough to back away. However, the terrible song in the middle of The Cheesecake Factory was kind of hideously romantic, so I certainly don’t fault her for falling for it.

But now that we have both Leonard and Wolowitz in relationships, will it damage the dynamic of the show? What about all of the Wolowitz/Raj storylines? What about the balance of people eating takeout at the apartment? Surely Sheldon won’t stand for this.

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