Leonard Nimoy, The Voice Of Sheldon's Conscience

Big Bang Theory, S05E20

Penny surprised the boys with a Star Trek toy to make up for all of the free food she has taken from them.  Sheldon decided to open his box after his Spock figure told him in a dream that playing with new toy was the most logical thing to do, but he broke it within a minute and switched his broken toy with Leonard's.  Raj also tried to find a woman to wed, but found himself contemplating whether being alone is worse than a phony marriage.

I will say that Penny, as much as I don't care for her, really knows how to please a nerd.  I was skeptical at first that she would actually get a gift that Sheldon and Leonard would love, but she passed the test with flying colors.  If anyone, though, was going to give into temptation and open the box, I would have thought it would be Leonard.  But I guess when Spock appears to you in a dream and tells you what to do, you better throw away all the "codes of geekdom" and open the box.

It was incredibly funny when Sheldon was talking to his Spock figure and the voice coming out of it was actually Leonard Nimoy.  It also liked that Spock kept changing positions when the camera moved away from him.  This was almost better than Nimoy being there himself.  It's interesting that Sheldon won't listen to most people's opinions, but a dream Spock (not even the flesh kind either) is someone's words he can't easily ignore.  Even though I can hardly see Sheldon being categorized with the rest of the human race, this manifestation of his conscience through an action figure (although it supports the theory he's more than a little insane), make Sheldon less of an ass than he seems.  I mean, it's Sheldon's dream, so when Nimoy was shouting at him to do the right thing and return Leonard's unbroken toy, it had to be Sheldon's guilt gnawing at him.

The best part of Sheldon battling with his Nimoy conscience was when Sheldon was defending his choice to switch the boxes.  Leonard would never open his box and never know what Sheldon had done:

[Sheldon] Everybody's happy.[Spock] Well, I am unhappy.[Sheldon] I thought where you come from they don't have emotions.[Spock] I come from a factory in Taiwan.

 I think that I could watch Sheldon and little Spock talk to each other all day.  Despite the understanding that Spock and Sheldon seemed to have reached, Sheldon still leaves the broken toy with Leonard, and then lies over and over again to cover what he has done before he finally tells the truth.  Sheldon was the most honest when he told Leonard that he didn't want him to be happy with his toy and hoped he'd break it.  Damn, Sheldon.  Did you learn nothing from Nimoy??

I felt bad for Raj and the story about his failure of a matchmaking.  I wasn't surprised that his parents thought he was going to come out to them because it sounded that way to me too.  I was surprised that in New Delhi everyone already thinks that Raj is in the closet.  It's sad that Raj has to defend himself so much, but it's no wonder with his metrosexual tendencies.  I don't know why Bernadette and Howard thought it was a good idea to give him a little "rich girl" puppy he could carry in his "man purse" (Raj, really??).  Either he will forsake human contact for puppy love or he'll just repel more women who think they don't have a shot because they will think he he is secretly into men.  Fine, Raj is lonely and maybe a dog might take awau a little of his troubles, but this isn't what I meant at all by tossing him a bone!  Come on!  Raj could date someone.  Even if it's not true love.  A puppy, indeed!

Good episode, though.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've seen this show, so I wasn't sure if I actually missed it.  If they had more episodes like this one, I probably would anticipate Thursday a little more.