The Nerdvana Annihilation
The guys are hanging out and they all go in on a $800 bid on a time machine prop from the original
The Time Machine movie. Of course, they'll be outbid. Whew! That was close. What in the world would they do with a time machine? Except they won the auction.
Why didn't anyone else bid? Oh, because it's about the size of a Renault. Didn't Leonard say it was miniature?
Cut to the best animation/opening sequence in all of television.
Step by step, Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Rajesh push and pull the time machine up the stairs. But they're blocking the stairwell and Penny has to get to work. Sheldon suggests she go upstairs to the roof, hop over a few buildings, but don't look down because she might get vertigo. What? Is he kidding? "Oh, I never joke when it comes to vertigo," deadpans Sheldon.
You know what, this time machine looks pretty cool. After all, this is the machine that transported
Rod Taylor from Victorian England into the post-apocalyptic future with those subterranean Morlocks.
Leonard flips the switch and, Great Scott, it lights up! What day do we go to? Of couse, March 10, 1876, the day Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and called out for Dr. Watson. But they can't all go back to Dr. Watson's laboratory. It would get very crowded and Doc would get suspicious. What to do? Duh. Go into the future and grab a cloaking device, just like - ack! another
Star Trek reference - Captain Kirk will steal a cloaking device from the Romulans on Stardate 5027.4 (that's 1/10/2328 for you and me.)
So off Leonard goes. He pulls the lever (in a previous life, he would have yelled, "c'mon Jokers!") and hilarity ensues. What happens next makes me wish I was an actor on this show. These guys have so much fun.
Whoa, here comes Penny. She skinned her knee on the roof. She wound up having to climb through an Armenian family's apartment who served her eight courses of lamb and tried to fix her up with their son (who probably had beautiful eyes). And she missed her shift at work.
She's mad. She's real mad. And seeing this contraption that caused her to miss work ("it looks like something Elton John would drive through the Everglades") brings her to ridicule all the comical and space-age toys and trinkets scattered around. Doesn't bother anyone, except a suddenly sullen Leonard. She's really upset. It's his fault. Has he lost her forever? Is the dream over? Nerve struck.
Leonard wishes the time machine would take him back to just before he placed the bid. Girls like Penny never end up with guys who like time machines. Good ol' Sheldon (in his unabashed, science-driven honesty) points out his inability to woo Penny goes way back before the time machine was a twinkle in his eye. And besides, Rod Taylor got
Yvette Mimieux to get out of his dreams and into that time machine, so it
is possible.
Now, all of a sudden, hold on, we're back in the stairwell with the guys pushing the time machine up the stairs. Editing problem? Oh, Leonard's dreaming of getting Penny to work the old fashioned way: rappeling down the elevator cables clutching his woman - and getting a kiss.
But that was just a dream. Leonard is questioning everything around him. Nothing causes a guy to grow up real fast like seeing death in the face - slash - experiencing the prospect of losing the woman you love. Everything must go. All the toys, props, even the Darth Vader voice changers (gasp! a
Star Wars reference - hey, they heard you, all you
TBBT blog-responding fantastics). He's headed to the dark side. The guys want Little Sheba back. Heck, he's created Nerdvana in that abode. He
can't sell it all.
But Penny agrees it's time to move on. And Leonard gets a kiss (while awake) as an appreciation token, too. Now he's in the zone, and goes in for the kill. But before you can say "I'll pick you up at 7:30", up walks some Fred Jones knock-off coming to take Penny out on a date.
Foiled again, Leonard. But back to the time machine. His Penny From Heaven dream lives another day.
Now it's Sheldon dreaming while seated in the time machine and he's attacked by flesh-eating Morlocks. Whew! Just a dream. Leonard actually hired some workers to remove the time machine and
they are Morlocks. But, wait, that was a dream, too. I wondered how far this dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream sequence was going to go? Would we find Leonard and Sheldon's apartment inside a snow globe? Nope, show over.
Line of the night: "I guess that makes me large breasts" - Howard Wolowitz, in answer to Penny's advice, "it's the things you love that make you who you are."
And, yes, I know about the Geordi La Forge/
Star Trek: TNG reference. He was never going to open that box.
