Sheldon struggled against an unexpected backlash to his insensitivity on The Big Bang Theory 9×13.
Sheldon returns to his old tricks — as does The Big Bang Theory — in “The Empathy Optimization.” The episode takes place in the aftermath of Sheldon’s most recent cold, which he used as an excuse to revert to his cruelest and most self-centered self.
Amy weathers the storm by remaining at her conference in Michigan, but Penny, Leonard, Howard, Bernadette, Raj, and Emily are wrung dry by Sheldon’s antics. The survivors decide to take a trip to Las Vegas — without Sheldon.
Which is pretty satisfying, until Sheldon gets wind of the idea.
Like the overgrown child that he is, Sheldon is desperate to be invited — not that he actually wants to go. In addition, it takes Amy a frustratingly long time to coax Sheldon into understanding why his friends are so upset by his behavior. Eventually she manages to hammer the concept of empathy a little way into his head, and Sheldon embarks on a campaign of apology among his friends.
While the attempt is funny enough (and we’re pretty sure we’ll see “Sheldon Cooper Apologized to Me” tee-shirts in the CBS store soon) Sheldon’s selfishness is deeply frustrating. His recent steps toward maturity with Amy seem to have no impact here, and it seems unlikely that the writers of The Big Bang Theory will recall his newfound empathy when they need Sheldon to be a jerk in the future.
Not to mention the fact that Sheldon is, once again, ultimately let off the hook for his poor behavior. Emily refuses to accept his apology, leading to a fight with Raj — who presumably has been beaten into Sheldon’s submission after all these years. Sheldon ultimately apologizes with relative sincerity to Emily, and she and Leonard happily allow Sheldon to come to Las Vegas with them.
But even this feels somewhat hollow. Sheldon’s apology includes a caveat for his future bad behavior, which, you know, is just not how this kind of thing works. Sheldon doesn’t want to be more empathetic. He just wants to get what he wants, and has no way of tempering that against the needs of other people.
While it’s nice to see that Amy is no longer afraid to speak bluntly to her boyfriend, it’s still disappointing that The Big Bang Theory 9×13 returns to its tropes of using Sheldon’s bad behavior to generate conflict — and then resolving it so that everyone is, rather inexplicably, happy.
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