The Maternal Capacitance

Christine Baranski is a phenomenal actress, whether she's in a leading role like "The Good Wife," or in these individual comedy parts. She plays Leonard's mother, a cold blooded psychiatrist, who has no respect for her son or his work. But she meets a colder fish when she gets to know Sheldon. There is also a funny bit in the lunchroom involving Raj and Howard. One of the better episodes.

The reason Sheldon as a character is funny is not just because of all his quirkiness, but also because he is so different than the rest of the people that he interacts with. When you put another character that is basically the same as he is, it doesn't double the humor, it halves it (at best), because you simply copy the thing that was funny and hope that the copy is somehow as funny as the original, and that is never the case. I am not sure if I laughed once during this episode. I know that I didn't laugh during any of the scenes that had Leonard's mother.

I'm a late "comer" to this well-written and witty sitcom and am watching the episodes via DVD in their broadcast order. To me, "The Maternal Capacitance" was the best yet, even better than the Christmas episode from earlier in the second season. This one features almost continuous laughs from beginning to end.

Much-loved Christine Baranski fits right in with the regular quirky cast and adds that extra element that makes this a very special episode. The other reviewers have provided details that I won't repeat here but this one was so good, I watched it twice in a row!

I had to do a check on Ms. Baranski to see if this was a one-off or if she would appear again and was pleased to see she makes several other appearances as Leonard's hyper-analytical mother in future seasons so that gives all new fans of the show something to look forward to. She's really that good here.

This is easily the funniest episode yet. The LPM (laughs per minute) number is astonishing, boosted greatly by a masterclass stone-face performance by veteran comedienne Christine Baranski, whom most may remember for her role of Maryann Thorpe in "Cybill". The years have not dulled her talent of delivering absolute killer dialog while maintaining a twitch-less face world class poker players would envy. She interacts with the younger talent seamlessly, and together, they create magic. However, after the first ten minutes had passed in a breeze and the commercial break (we only have one during "half-hour" shows here in Finland) started, I began fearing the second half would not be able to maintain the LPM of the first half...

Guess what? It doesn't. And that is not the only problem. This *could* have been a full 10/10, but falls 1 point short because of not only the LPM dropping during the second half, but also for the sequence that starts with Leonard and Penny talking in private, and from there onwards sadly follows every cliché involving main characters whom the viewers want to see ending up together, but the writers keep coming up with excuses to postpone said event in the fear that with "the tension" gone, the show would be ruined. Hasn't anybody seen "Mad About You"? That show lasted 7 seasons (161 episodes) without loosing quality, for crying out loud!

People who rated this 10/10 then don't seem to realize the episode could be better and therefore does not deserve a 10/10. It is *very* hard to pull off a true 10/10 sitcom episode, but it is possible. Perhaps the greatest sitcom ever, the British "Coupling" (of which a limp American remake was made and it predictably failed) managed to pull of more of those than any other show. For peerless, inventive writing and masterful comedic performances, see episodes like "Sex, Death & Nudity" (1.3), "Inferno" (1.4), and "The Cupboard of Patrick's Love" (1.6) - and that's just examples from the *first* season out of four!

While there are more good episodes than bad of Big Bang Theory, only a handful are fantastic, and this is the funniest episode of at least the first nine seasons.

The deadpan delivery of the guest actress, and her interactions with all the regular characters we had gotten to know well change the way we think of all of them. Or more precisely, how more precisely we think of each character's particular traits.

It was rather clever to make Leonard's mom more like Sheldon, rather than an obvious extension of Leonard. And this allowed us to squirm with Leonard, instead of going for obvious cheap laughs as the parent struggles to get along with Sheldon, like a lesser writer would have thought to do.

The line "I think I'd like to do the math" is one of the hardest I've laughed out loud at a TV show in the last decade.