Sheldon almost gets nothing done in accomplish his dark matter theory. So he tries use his noise cancelling headphones. They turn out to work as Leonard and Penny say stuff that will annoy Sheldon when he cannot hear anything except that Leonard tells him that he is a great roommate. The purpose of the cancelling headphones is to see if he can be productive while Sheldon and Penny go out. Whenever I need to concentrate I use these headphones to help productivity. It was a good thing that the episode covered that.
However, he accomplished nothing. He gives himself a hard time by skipping work but that does not work because he storms into Penny's apartment due to her making noises. It seems that he took it as she was getting killed or having coitus with Leonard but she was actually working out. At the apartment, she is shocked that she is not at work.
Meanwhile, Howard irritates Raj by teasing him of playing the game of "Emily or Cinnamon". Howard makes statements on whether it was mentioned about his girlfriend or his dog. For once, Howard isn't the butt of the jokes like he is mostly especially with NASA storyline in the last part of S5, the early parts of S6, and the baseball misfire earlier this season.
Later on, it is implied that Penny made him go to work. This leads to him encouraging the guys to make him as miserable as possible to improve his anxiety so he can concentrate on his dark matter theory.
However, Sheldon is the one irritating his friends including Leonard and Amy. With Leonard, he is listening to a combination of Godzilla's roar, the Joker's laugh and Dark Vader to improve his productivity. It turns out that Leonard is annoyed by this. I love how Sheldon made a reference about Taylor Swift to, "Shake It Off".
At Amy's place for date night, she is worried about him due to his lack of eating and sleeping. He encourages her to irritate to him even more to increase his anxiety but this causes her to force him to take off the ridiculous cap. When he refuses, she kicks him out of the apartment and he has to take the bus home. He thinks he is having a conversation with an armadillo named Isaac Newton only to find that he was talking to a stranger.
Penny and Leonard drag him to his bedroom so he can finally sleep. When they sing one of Sheldon's favorite songs, "Soft Kitty", this does the trick to make him FINALLY fall asleep.
Ending:
The episode ends with Sheldon making progress with his theory matter without adding unnecessary stress. Emily and Raj join the guys for lunch. She has heard about the game that they have been playing. She finds it sexy and she ends up kissing him until there is dog hair in his mouth, which disgusts her.
Observations:
- The scene where he does his new ritual knock of "ladies". It was entertaining where Sheldon predicts what women talk about when there is no men in the room.
- I wish Emily had more scenes considering that her name was used.
- Finally, Emily gets to go to Caltech.
- Leonard wears a shirt that represents the rug from the cult hit, "The Big Lebowski", which starred John Goodman, who played Johnny Galecki (plays Leonard and played David on Roseanne)'s father-in-law on Roseanne. I love that Chuck Lorre connection.
I enjoyed this episode because this reminded me of my days when I wanted people to raise my anxiety level high to improve productivity especially my roommate and his friends playing annoying music while I was studying. This was a way to test my patience (in a good way, of course) and how to be more tolerant. I love how this episode tackled Sheldon's anxiety. What the episode taught me is that if I want to get things done, trying to improve my anxiety will not always do the trick.
