The Killer Robot Instability

"The Killer Robot Instability" manages to show off the best and worst parts of The Big Bang Theory simultaneously. Some of the offhand comments are really great("What part of America is that accent from?"), and the B-plot that's actually about the characters manages to mix humor and actually learning something about the characters. However, the A-plot is both insulting nerd-type humor and much of the standard sitcom dreck we've seen a hundred times before.
Calling Penny's blow-up and the aftermath the B-plot is a little disingenuous. I had no stopwatch with me as the scenes switched off, but they seemed to occupy the same amount of time. The episode title and ad blitz of "KILLER ROBOT" just makes deciding which is which easier.

It's kind of refreshing to see Penny showing how she can be just as socially maladjusted as the fellas every once in a while. Anyone watching five minutes of any episode would probably catch Wolowitz demeaning Penny or trying to get her to go on a date with him(sometimes both at the same time!). For the better part of a year and a half, he's been getting away with it when Penny would ignore him. Her finally snapping on Wolowitz started out with me cheering for her as a feminist, yet ended with me kind of in shock at how vicious she was. This brought about a pretty funny role reversal when Leonard visited Penny to help counsel her on her anti-social ways with Wolowitz. The failed Hulk metaphor he tried to use with Penny was a good example of some of the nerd humor done right. I gotta think the writers might have been watching their sister show How I Met Your Mother after the callback to the first episode in this exchange. Later in the episode as she sat with Wolowitz to listen to him vent out his sadness, her look of boredom and disinterest made the scene much funnier. Wolowitz drastically misintrepreting her sympathy(as short as it is) as romantic interest, and Penny's whole "apology" trip ending in her decking him is a pretty funny outcome. The punchline(hah) is somewhat ruined by the odd slow motion, first-person, fish eye lens...thing they went with to show it.

The rest of the boys are busy building robots in a story that missed the boat on Battlebots' popularity by a few years. Does it even still air on Spike? Who cares? The main standout in this was the rival. I admired the way they introduced him with the Elmer Fudd r-to-w speech impediment and no one on screen really made fun of him for it. Raj's quote from the first paragraph seemed genuinely curious. His bravado and trash talk was pretty funny set against the absurd premise of a killer robot street fight(excuse me, stweet fight). This also spurred one of my favorite Sheldon lines of the season. His apparent "research" of social tropes and implementation in a weird, ineffectual way somewhat mirrors Michael Scott when he wiki-ed the steps of Conflict Resolution. Although this is repeated nearly every other episode, and not nearly as funny. This one, however, slayed me when he sauntered up to the rival nerd and proudly stated: "I'm given to understand your mother is overweight." The rest of the robot fight was pretty forgettable, however.

The conclusion and return of Wolowitz's faux-ladies man routine was simultaneously sad and funny. I felt the same about Penny sending Sheldon away in tears after poo-pooing the robot's destruction. The show is still a sitcom, and is obviously going to hit the reset button at the end of almost any episode. However, those two losing those qualities and growing as people would make the show less funny as a whole. In the end, like BBT manages to do every week, the show is pretty funny despite still being a pretty standard sitcom.

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