I Truly Adore Sheldon, But I’ll Never Forgive Him After This One TBBT Episode
Sometimes his childish behavior was just too much.
It’s been several years since The Big Bang Theory ended its more than a decade long run, but Sheldon Cooper still holds a special place in my heart, and I won't lie when I say that many fans around the world share the same bond with the beloved character.
It’s no doubt though that Sheldon is still a very difficult person to understand and, what’s even more important, to accept, since he’s the one to constantly bring some kind of chaos to his friends’ life.
The show’s creators were fully aware of all that as The Big Bang Theory’s finale proved that Sheldon made a long way towards recognizing his closest people’s positive impact on his way of living.
However, there’s still one thing about Sheldon that keeps tormenting me, and it’s something that would never be justified even by his major personal development.
The Big Bang Theory’s season 7 episode 8 titled The Itchy Brain Simulation proved that Sheldon’s desire to teach everyone a lesson they failed to learn can sometimes turn out into something way over the line.
The episode sees Sheldon and Leonard disputing over a DVD they rented on Sheldon’s account and forgot to return, which Sheldon blames Leonard for. The latter confesses that it might in fact have been his fault, but what happens next is something that left even Leonard shocked.
In an attempt to kinda punish his friend and also to show him what it’s like to live with an “itchy brain,” Sheldon forces Leonard to wear an itchy sweater that later on results in Leonard’s horrendously looking rash all across the upper part of his body.
When the torture is finally over, Sheldon reaches a whole new level of villainy when he says that he actually returned the DVD years ago and just didn’t let Leonard know about it all this time.
The episode thus came as a complete destruction of the character’s long-developed arc that always suggested he was able to do bad things only in case of a mere misunderstanding.
Though Sheldon’s attempts to make his friends suffer for fun didn’t occur that much during the show’s run (it’ll be fair to note that Sheldon’s friends sometimes didn’t mind torturing him for fun either), the episode still signaled a major issue that needed to be resolved sometime until the series’s definite ending.
The Big Bang Theory’s further seasons and especially the season 12 finale were able to make it up to the unexpectedly failed character whose complete transformation made sure he would never consider such atrocities after all.