S04.E11: A Pager, a Club and a Cranky Bag of Wrinkles

[jewel21]

And to think for me it comes naturally. 

Reba's bad singing was practically identical to my 'good' singing, heh. 

It was fun listening to it though and I'm sure she had a blast and there was a lot of laughing on set that day. 

[ams1001]

9 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Hang on, apologies in advance, imma gonna nerdsplain here.

It isn't that Sheldon doesn't like Star Wars or The Hobbit.  Despite being a fan of both, Sheldon is first and foremost a pedant.  His objection to the club isn't due to the content they were viewing, but due to including fantasy novels/movies/shows in a club labelled science fiction.

[snip]

Sheldon--young or contemporary--is both a snob and a pedant.  He rejected that club because he couldn't bear that the name didn't reflect the subject.

It just occurred to me a little while ago that his issue is the miscategorization of the movies, not the movies themselves, but you explained it more thoroughly than I would have.

9 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Well, that and he didn't really want to join any club and was looking for excuses to walk away.

It kind of surprised me that the adults would expect him to just go join a club or something, or that the students would readily accept the prospect. The majority of them (I'm assuming this is a four-year college, right?) will be roughly 7-10 years older than him. They're not likely to want a little kid around for their social time, except maybe as a curiosity. (Especially those who share classes with him, who will probably be annoyed by him soon enough, if they aren't already.) I know there aren't a lot of age-appropriate options for him in small-town TX, but throwing him into college clubs by himself at 11 doesn't seem like a great idea, either. They seem to be treating his going to college as no different than if he was at the local public school with kids his own age (where there would be adult supervision...and in some ways he may not need the same kind of supervision as other kids might, but knowing the kind of kid he is and how he can get under people's skin, they really should be keeping a better eye on him when he's at school among actual adults, most of whom won't feel any sense of responsibility towards him).

[HurricaneVal]

28 minutes ago, ams1001 said:

It kind of surprised me that the adults would expect him to just go join a club or something, or that the students would readily accept the prospect. The majority of them (I'm assuming this is a four-year college, right?) will be roughly 7-10 years older than him. They're not likely to want a little kid around for their social time, except maybe as a curiosity. (Especially those who share classes with him, who will probably be annoyed by him soon enough, if they aren't already.) I know there aren't a lot of age-appropriate options for him in small-town TX, but throwing him into college clubs by himself at 11 doesn't seem like a great idea, either. They seem to be treating his going to college as no different than if he was at the local public school with kids his own age (where there would be adult supervision...and in some ways he may not need the same kind of supervision as other kids might, but knowing the kind of kid he is and how he can get under people's skin, they really should be keeping a better eye on him when he's at school among actual adults, most of whom won't feel any sense of responsibility towards him).

Exactly!  What parent in their right mind would want their 11yo child to hang out with 18-24 year old college students?  That's like a recipe for disaster.  I can understand wanting your awkward child to feel more comfortable around people and learn how to get along in society, but forcing a kid--especially one like Sheldon--onto that age group just isn't the path to success.

Not to mention, Sheldon has likely experienced a fair amount of bullying in his life just as an artifact of who he is.  Putting him in a college environment is great for his intellectual fulfillment, but he's still a child, with a child's internalized fears and self-protection instincts.  

I don't think he was obsessed with lunching with Dr. Linkletter because he wanted to pester him, or thought he was the only person at the school capable of Sheldon's preferred lofty mealtime conversation.  I think, subconsciously, Sheldon wanted to lunch with Dr. Linkletter because it was safe.  

And, spoilered below:

Spoiler

I really liked the continuity of Sheldon's penchant for lunching with his contemporaries.

 

[Sarah 103]

2 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Putting him in a college environment is great for his intellectual fulfillment, but he's still a child, with a child's internalized fears and self-protection instincts.  

This is the problem. Mary has tried to have Sheldon interact with children his own age, and that didn't work well. The only person his own age he gets along with is Paige. That friendship has been complicated due to Paige's parents getting a divorce. 

3 hours ago, ams1001 said:

It kind of surprised me that the adults would expect him to just go join a club or something, or that the students would readily accept the prospect.

My guess is Mary is gave up on Sheldon making friends with kids his own age, so while this may not be her first choice, at least college clubs get him interacting with other people. The best case scenario is the college students accept him as sort of a younger sibling who tags along.           

[HyeChaps]

IMO Cranky Bag of Wrinkles is mean.

 

[WinnieWinkle]

Finally saw this one.  Really enjoyed it.  I felt so bad for Sheldon when Dr Linkletter finally laid it on the line.  And felt sorry for Dr Linkletter before he laid it on the line!  Missy gets a few good lines but they seem to be barely using her lately.  

[TheLastKidPicked]

On 3/14/2021 at 6:32 PM, WinnieWinkle said:

Finally saw this one.  Really enjoyed it.  I felt so bad for Sheldon when Dr Linkletter finally laid it on the line. 

Did anybody else's heart break when you saw the look on Sheldon's face?

 

[WinnieWinkle]

27 minutes ago, TheLastKidPicked said:

Did anybody else's heart break when you saw the look on Sheldon's face?

 

Absolutely.  I mean we know Sheldon is his own worst enemy but he's still a little boy.  Any episode that underlines that works for me.  

[TheLastKidPicked]

22 minutes ago, WinnieWinkle said:

Absolutely.  I mean we know Sheldon is his own worst enemy but he's still a little boy.  Any episode that underlines that works for me.  

Ian Armitage did a great job with his reaction.  Startled, hurt, yet immediately grasping the situation.  

[DoYouLikeMutton]

On 3/12/2021 at 12:41 AM, chocolatine said:

I wish Mary hadn't coddled Sheldon by pretending that it was really important for him to join a club and just told him flat-out that Prof. Linkletter doesn't want to have daily lunches with him. 

Agreed.   Sheldon's parents have coddled him his whole life, walking on egg shells around him so not to hurt his feelings.  I think Sheldon could have dealt with and accepted the truth a whole lot better than his parents gave him credit for.  I thought by this era in child upbringing, parents were more in tune.  This is reminiscent of child-rearing of the 50's and 60's when children were never told the truth.

[possibilities]

I thought that it was more reflective of current day parenting, where children are over-protected and catered to and treated like fragile flowers. When I was growing up (in the 1970s), parents were much different in that the ones I knew expected more of their kids and didn't coddle them so much.  You weren't allowed to be "too sensitive" to be corrected.

[SnarkySheep]

On 3/12/2021 at 8:01 AM, Chaos Theory said:

Sheldon doesn’t understand the necessity of social interaction.  For him school is a place you learn.   So why does it matter where he eats his lunch?  

I kind of get why Mary was urging him to try making friends on campus and become a little more social. But realistically, even under the best of circumstances, he would have trouble simply due to his age. Sheldon is now 11 - traditional college students are 18-22ish, and of course for a variety of reasons there are many older students as well. But even the very youngest of the bunch wouldn't want to hang out with Sheldon, simply because it would seem too much like babysitting. I remember being a freshman in college, and it seemed like there was a huge divide even between where I was then and the high school I had left literally just months ago - because, culturally, it is. 

[LisaM]

I miss Dr. Sturgis. 

I don't get Mary pushing Sheldon to join college clubs either. I was pleasantly surprised that the people with whom Sheldon interviewed took him seriously and did not immediately try to dissuade an 11 year old from joining. 

Love seeing Reba and Annie together. 

[femmefan1946]

On 3/11/2021 at 6:01 PM, ams1001 said:

😂

What is it with these adults being so afraid to lay down the law with Sheldon? (Or even the janitor. Why doesn't Dr. L tell him not to let people into his office? Why would a janitor think he should be doing that in the first place?) 

 

The world is run by janitors and secretaries. They know where the keys are and when your trash will get picked up.
Cross them at your peril.

[femmefan1946]

Of all the clubs the Science Fiction one would probably have been the most accepting, if Sheldon hadn't talked himself out of joining.

SF/F has been a safe space for weirdos from gays, to feminists, to Little People, to bronies and furries, to cosplayers and crossplayers, to the developmentally delayed, to genius IQs, to problematic Dunning-Kruger sufferers. 
Most people don't know how the Star Trek fandom was basically women and fanfiction was invented by women getting gushy with slash about Spock and Kirk.

I have pictures....

[c0urage]

Is there a "The Hobbit" movie before the 2012 "The Hobbit"?

[surreysmum]

On 5/7/2021 at 9:18 AM, c0urage said:

Is there a "The Hobbit" movie before the 2012 "The Hobbit"?

There was an animated made-for-TV movie in 1977, by Arthur Rankin (of Rankin and Bass) - in fact, there were various animated versions of the Tolkien works in the late 1970s, capitalizing on the fandom that was in full swing at that time. There's a pretty good summary on Tor.com: https://www.tor.com/2019/04/24/middle-earths-weirdest-movie-rankin-bass-animated-the-return-of-the-king/

and an article specifically about the animated Hobbit:

https://www.tor.com/2018/09/17/1977s-the-hobbit-showed-us-the-future-of-pop-culture/

I first read the Rings trilogy (and subsequently The Hobbit) in the 70s, but I have no conscious memory of seeing any of the animated TV versions (some unkind critics might suggest I blocked them out).  I do remember the ubiquitous paperback versions of the Rings trilogy, though -absolutely everybody was carrying them around! I was about 12 or 13 when I first tackled Tolkien - it wouldn't surprise me at all if Sheldon read the whole lot in his cradle!

Edited May 13, 2021 by surreysmum
to add a second link

[John Potts]

I would think that a janitor would have have standing orders not to let anyone into the Professors’ offices. If nothing else, he has a computer that might be worth stealing, exam papers he doesn't want students seeing and so on.

Why would a teenage boy want a pager? Oh, for the days when it was considered weird for teens to have mobile phones…

Glad Meemaw and Reba got on better. Dale was even bearable in his brief scene!

On 3/12/2021 at 4:54 AM, tennisgurl said:

More adults really need to explain boundaries and basic social skills to him, and this is also one of those episodes that really goes hard on his most insufferable qualities. I do think the reading quietly club sounds pretty great though. 

Agreed: Sheldon generally does accept something he can codify as a rule. Indeed, his objection to the Sci Fi club was Star Wars wasn't following "the rules" and was basically fantasy*. Not that Star Trek (particularly TOS) was particularly rigorous in its scientific accuracy.

I'd join the "Reading Quietly Club" too! I get annoyed when I’m reading and somebody insists on starting a conversation. I’m always tempted to say, “Sorry, is my reading quietly disturbing you?”

On 3/12/2021 at 5:59 PM, HurricaneVal said:

Did anyone else think that Bruce was going to end up dead?

I did think she might be senile and mistake Georgie for her grandson (who might be dead, actually 30 or whatever).

* I assume he would like the addition of Midichlorians in The Phantom Menace as it would be a "scientific" explanation for the Force