Sheldon Makes A Good Data

Big Bang Theory, S06E13

The boys drove to a comic convention and were stranded when Leonard's car got stolen during their photo shoot.  The girls decided to try and understand their men by trying out some comics books themselves.  They soon got into heated arguments about what they read, surprising Leonard and the others.

This isn't the first time that the guys have dressed up, but it is certainly one of my favorites.  I'm not the biggest Star Trek fan, but I am familiar with some of the character that were on The Next Generation.  Sheldon as Data was absolutely perfect.  I loved it!  He has about the emotional range of a synthetic human and the makeup job on him looked great.  Second, I loved Leonard as a little, glasses-wearing Picard.  Leonard was so cute with a bald head!  The others costumes were good too, but I especially liked Leonard's and Sheldon's.  Then I liked that Sheldon seemed to respect Leonard's leadership for once simply because he was wearing a captain's outfit.  Man, Leonard should wear that every day to keep Sheldon listening to him for once.

The worst thing was that Sheldon had hacked Leonard's GPS so that it not only spoke in Sheldon's voice, but also did things like quiz them with trivia about driving and such.  I was with Howard when he suggested that Leonard drive them off a bridge.  It sort of made it the one good thing about his car getting stolen--at least they wouldn't have to listen to Sheldon guiding them the way back home too.  It was sort of funny, though, that the robbers were enjoying all the Sheldon trivia.  I doubt they would have enjoyed it as much if they had the owner of that voice giving them all of that interesting knowledge.

I liked that the girls tried to dive into the boys' world by reading some comics.  I never expected, though, that they would really get invested in the stories.  I mean, they were arguing things that I'm sure the boys have for years and years.  And they had just scratched at the surface.  They were simply debating about Thor's hammer.  If they ever managed to get that issue settled, who knows what they would go on to next?  It was cute that the boys found the energy again to act out their fantasies and went to investigate the girls' arguments with their phasers sent on "stun."  But I wonder what happened after that?  Were the girls embarrassed that they were on the same level as the guys?  Or did the boys join into the arguments, making things much worse?  That was the only thing I was disappointed about.  I wanted to see the meeting of the old comic nerds and the new comic nerds.

This was a great episode.  It definitely goes down as one of my favorite stories about the guys being in costumes.  I have to watch it again because I really enjoyed seeing Sheldon as Data and Leonard as Picard.  It was also funny to see the girls having heavy discussions about Thor's hammer as if it were some kind of important world issue.  They might not exactly get the boys' infatuation with the comic book world, but they definitely dipped their toes in it now.

Meg Gets "Taken"

Family Guy, S10E20

Meg went overseas to Paris with a friend and got kidnapped by human smuggling group.  Brian and Stewie went to save her, going through many typical action movie steps before they do so.  Meg almost had a terrible thing turn into a wonderful dream, but it was literally blown up in front of her face before that could happen.

For a Meg story, which are rarer in these days, I wasn't expecting much, but it turned out to be a spoof of the movie Taken, which made it a lot more interesting.  I had a feeling it was based on that story when Meg and Ruth got in the car with a dubious stranger, but as soon as I saw the place that she and Meg were staying, I instantly knew it had to be going down that road.  It's a little exciting to watch a spoof  that I recognize on any of the Seth MacFarlane shows because I feel like I don't know even a fourth of the movie references they make.

I liked that when Peter got a call from Meg as she was getting kidnapped, Peter realistically told the man on the phone that he would never be able to find him and told Lois that Meg was dead.  Even for this show, no one would have been able to believe that Peter would have the skills to rescue Meg in a foreign country he's never been to.  I actually thought they were going to be cruel enough to just let Meg be, but thankfully Brian seems to have a bit of a soft spot when it comes to Meg (he's about the only one), and he got Stewie to come with him to get her.  When I saw that Stewie was on the job, I knew that they would be able to successfully get Meg back.  Plus, it also meant that this was more of a Brian and Stewie story than Meg, really, so it wasn't going to be as bad.

Most of the jokes, however, weren't that great while they were finding out information about where Meg had been taken.  They weren't necessarily bad, but they didn't make me laugh either.  My favorite joke was when Brian and Stewie stole a car and it had "car chase GPS."  That was a cool way to mock the typical development of most car chases in any given action movie.  If there was such a car that had that, it would be pretty cool.  I mean, most people would crash within a few minutes of attempting most of things that people try in those sorts of scenes.

Because bad things always happen to Meg and it's treated like normal, I was a bit happy when her kidnapping turned into her being possibly engaged to a wealthy, handsome prince.  But I already knew that before their lips touched that Stewie was going to shoot him in the head.  There was no question in my mind.   I think Meg deserved a happier ending after all the shit she has to put up with her family, but of course, it wouldn't be funny in a horribly ironic way if Meg had her dreams come true.  At least Stewie wiped her mind (though not the part where she met the man of her dreams) and got her to safety.  Even with Peter poking fun at Meg that she got no mail while she was gone at the end, at least she was home in one piece.  I guess, this show can't be that heartless to her and have her abandoned somewhere.  No point in sending her somewhere exotic to be miserable when she can be miserable at home.

I think I liked the spoof element best in the episode, overall anything else.  It would have been great if they could have had better jokes, but it was at least nice to see a Meg-centered story where she wasn't treated too much like a lesser person.  Thank goodness for Brian who cares enough about Meg not to treat her life like garbage and for Stewie who is a bad ass skilled and equipped well enough to handle an international rescue.