Leonard asks Sheldon to teach him the rules of football in an attempt to blend in with a group of Penny’s football-watching friends. Meanwhile, Howard’s chasing after a girl, which causes him to abandon Raj in the middle of a kite fight, threatens the future of their friendship.
The plot of one partner trying to show an interest in the other’s hobbies is a familiar one. The writers didn’t do much to turn it on its head. I would have liked to see more interaction between Leonard and the people at Penny’s party, but the crowd was just a group of extras with no dialogue.
The episode did touch on Leonard’s underlying worry that if he didn’t share more of Penny’s interests, they would eventually break up. This was played for a joke, but it’s nonetheless a real possibility. Leonard’s awkwardness clearly embarrassed Penny at the party, and this could bleed into next week’s episode, when they have their first big argument since becoming a couple.
Though Leonard and Penny’s relationship has grown, the core of the show is still the friendship among Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj. Their scientific approach to problems of social interaction is what distinguishes Big Bang from other sitcoms. Leonard could have gone to Penny to learn football, for instance, which might have brought them closer as a couple (and which might have seemed too convenient a solution). Instead, he went to Sheldon. I enjoyed Sheldon’s not-so-subtle attempt to rescue Leonard from Penny’s party. It was another example of how well Leonard and Sheldon understand each other, made clearer because it took place in a crowd of people Leonard had no hope of understanding.
The B story, the spat between Howard and Raj, struck me as one only Big Bang could tell. It played on how much their friendship resembles a marriage—a concept first brought up by Leonard’s neuroscientist mother in Season 2′s “The Maternal Capacitance.” Recalling that episode made Howard’s attempts to win back Raj’s affection that much funnier.
In closing, while Leonard’s efforts to fit in felt a little too familiar, Raj and Howard’s “lovers’ quarrel” kept me interested in the episode as a whole.
