Sheldon's A Black Hole

Big Bang Theory, S06E06

Sheldon played Words With Friends with Stephen Hawking, but was worried that he hated by Hawking because Sheldon was beating him.  Leonard read Penny's essay against her wishes and tried to fix it for her.

I was actually hoping that Sheldon wasn't as smart as he thought he was and the person he had befriended on the game was just someone impersonating Hawking.  But no such twist occurred.  I was disappointed by this until Hawking later called Sheldon to gloat when Sheldon threw the game.  He was pretty funny when he said:

What do Sheldon Cooper and a black hole have in common?  They both suck.

I knew what the zinger of that question was going to be, but I never expected Hawking to mock Sheldon so hard!  Crazy good.  Especially after the way he went on and on about the game and when worried that he was going to make an enemy out of his favorite new friend, he refused to listen to Leonard's problems.  It also felt good to see that because he was being such an ass to his friends about how superior he was to have a friend like Hawking, while openly devaluing Howard, Leonard, and Raj.

In the other story, I wasn't surprised that Leonard couldn't just leave the news of Penny taking a college class alone.  Of course, he would want to help her with her paper and, of course, Penny would be pissed that he changed her essay.  Everything went as expected, so it was boring until Penny seemed to have gotten a B minus on her own.  That I found hard to believe when she was talking about her essay topic would be "slavery is bad," but we soon found out that Amy and Bernadette had helped her.  Well, I don't blame her for wanting to teach Leonard a lesson because he was being too intrusive in her academic life, but she really proved that she isn't good enough on her own to get a decent grade.  Plus, she was sort of intimidating her friends who had helped her in the first place.  Why do they need to sugarcoat that she's a little dumb?  They shouldn't get bullied by her because of that.  This is one of the reasons I find it hard to decide whether I like her or I not.

This wasn't my favorite episode, but at least Sheldon got a little punishment for being his usual self.  Also, it was nice seeing Leonard being a bit of a bad boyfriend instead of focusing on all the bad things Penny is doing (still don't like her much, though).  I would have preferred to see something with Amy and Sheldon attempting some normal couple thing and turning it into something very unique for their own tastes.  They need to have as many scenes like that as possible because they are the best.  Right now, it's really the number reason I keep watching.

For the 23th Special, Pretty Good

The Simpsons, S24E02

A black hole that Lisa had a hand in bringing about was sucking everything in Springfield into it.  Homer filmed some paranormal things going on in the house, revealing a demon that wanted to take Maggie.  Bart went back in time to buy a comic book for less and ended up changing the present to his benefit but to Homer's disadvantage.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed this Treehouse of Horror this year.  It wasn't one of my favorites of all time, but it was definitely good enough that I felt like I'd like to see it again to see what little things I missed in it.  My favorite of the three was probably the last where Bart went into the past and made it so that he was Artie Ziff's son.  However, I will say that the second story, where they spoofed Paranormal Activity was a close second.

The first story where a black hole was sucking everything had a lot of good parts.  In a way, I felt like it was kinda spoofing Gremlins because Lisa specifically told the family not to feed it and they all kept throwing things into it while knowing the danger.  My favorite thing thrown in was Bart's homework that kept getting spat out, and Bart finally gave up and threw Mrs. Krabapple (or should I call her Mrs. Flanders?) in there.  The best line of the story was when Homer said:

A black hole?! (whispers) I'm sorry, can we call it that?

Anytime someone says something like that, I pretty much enjoy it.

The second story was a pretty good spoof of the aforementioned movie.   In general, I just liked seeing Homer and Marge act like the couple in that movie, but putting their own funny spin on it.  Specifically, I liked when Homer tried to "comfort" Lisa when she asked why all these horrible things were happening in their house:

Oh, sweetie.  Sometimes a mysterious, invisible being from Hell waits for a family to go to sleep then kills them.  Now, go to bed.

I really like when Homer says things in a comforting way, but his actual words are doing the direct opposite.  I almost always laugh when he does that.

I also thought it was funny at the end that the demon wanted a threeway with Homer and another demon if he wanted to save Maggie from being taken.  That's not what I thought would happen at all!  Then Homer was sort of a little too into it to the point that the demon wanted him to stop whatever new sex thing he was trying out.  Gross, but damn funny.

The last story was probably my favorite because I like when they do stories in different timelines.  Also, this is the second time that Bart has met Homer in the past (another was in the episode that spoofed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and it was so easy for Bart to screw up his parents' first meeting.  I really liked how angry Homer got at Bart and how repulsed Marge was by his treatment of him.  Then it just got better when Bart easily accepted that Homer was out of his life when he returned to the present to find he was rich and a Ziff (plus he just looked so cute with that little afro).  It continued to be entertaining when teenage Homer traveled forward in time with Bart and met his older self and they worked together to beat Bart at his own game.  I guess I'm a sucker for happy endings because I liked that even though Artie and Bart beat the crap out of all the members of the United Federation of Homers Through History, Marge realized her mistake and took in all of those guys into her home (I don't know how she'd feed them and pay for all the destruction they would do, though).  I liked all the different Homers and how none of them could find the time to take out the trash in a whole day.  Marge has to love Homer because there is no way anyone could tolerate more than one Homer at one time.

The opening animation about the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar was a little interesting, but not that funny.  I just like how it could have been prevented if Marge didn't help Homer and hadn't had Moe sacrificed instead.

I'm pretty pleased with this episode, and I hope that they deliver more stories like this in the season.  After last week's disappointment of doing New York City again, I'm happy that there's a glimmer of hope for this season yet!  Maybe there will be a hilarious episode down the road if I'm lucky.