"The Big Bang Theory" is a ratings titan! As much as I've slammed the show for exhausting things around the Penny/Leonard relationship, they seem to have found the right balance. Yes, the Penard interaction is still one-note and dull, but instead of continuing to force what wasn't working, they've turned Penny and Leonard into a cohesive unit, externalizing their conflict. The result: a whole lot of Sheldon unhinged, with Penny and Leonard as the reactive bystanders. That's been the formula the past few weeks. And while you can only take a certain approach for so long before it grows stale, I'll take Sheldon as the force of conflict over relationship infighting any day.

We've seen a good bit of roommate angst since Penny and Leonard hooked up, but this week we get our first taste of Sheldon competing with Penny. You can imagine how well that's going to work out for him. Discussing Valentine's Day over lunch, an anguished Raj shares his unromantic plans before Leonard informs the crew that he's been given the opportunity to visit the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, and can bring a guest. Certain that he's headed to CERN with Leonard, Sheldon rushes home to pack. Leonard heads back to the apartment to break the hard news to Sheldon: He's taking Penny to Switzerland for Valentine's Day. The full recap is after the jump.

Bazinga! I love it when "The Big Bang Theory" producers heed my advice or, at the very least, take things in the direction I was hoping they would. It's been two weeks now of keeping the Penny/Leonard relationship on the back burner; it's there, but it seems the show has moved beyond the excruciating Penard emphasis that had been weighing things down all season. The result is a return to the kind of geekily neurotic fun that the series does best, awkward in an entertaining way. This week, all hell breaks loose when Sheldon gets stuck on a research project, unable to function until he solves the problem. As we've seen before, Sheldon's pain becomes everyones pain. Sure, this is somewhat of a retread of the post-robbery fallout from last week. But it's the kind of simple, clean setup that the "Big Bang" cast nails. The full recap is after the jump.

Leonard and Sheldon get robbed! This might be the simplest setup all season, and the resulting fallout is wonderfully unpredictable. It's been an uneven stretch on "The Big Bang Theory," with the lows (recycled plotting around the gap between Penny and Leonard) starting to outweigh the highs (the Wil Wheaton death match, the fireworks surrounding Leonard's mom coming to town). Sometimes a return to basics is just what a series needs to regain its footing, and this latest episode is a throwback with the kind of clean conflict that lets the cast members flex their stuff. Sure, it's a Sheldon-heavy episode and I won't lie: the plot lines that follow his neuroses tend to be my favorites. The winning formula is simple: Kick off the episode with a polarizing event, and let the conflict unfold between Leonard/Penny and Sheldon, with Howard and Raj mixed in for flavor. It's when the show tries to be more that it loses itself, as it has lately. The full recap is after the jump.

When we last left "The Big Bang Theory," Leonard's mother was in town, and things were getting hot between her and Sheldon. Or, things were getting as romantically charged as Sheldon would allow. As much as Leonard has settled into a sexually active (if not charged) mode with Penny, Sheldon shows no signs of following suit. It's a central holding of the series: Sheldon is asexual and will not hook up, thank you very much. Series producers have been dancing around the edges of this dynamic, as Sheldon's active distancing from intimacy (like that Penny-dressing moment that could have gone elsewhere) is proving more interesting than Leonard and Penny's growing pains/fighting/making up. And while Beverly's drunken smooch was the biggest act of romantic aggression Sheldon has encountered, it's really a non-threat; after all, Beverly is his best friend's mother, she was drunk, and other people were standing in the room. Not exactly the kind of circumstances to get Sheldon to come out of his shell. But what if he were given a bird in hand? How would Sheldon react in the face of dogged and relatively convenient female pursuit? Well, this episode presents just those circumstances. The full recap is after the jump.

It's the holiday season for the "Big Bang Theory" gang, with Leonard's mom in town for an awkwardly hilarious whirlwind visit. The show has needed a little guest star-motivated chaos to shake up what's become a cycle of repetition around Penny and Leonard. There's been a bit of hype heading into this episode, some reasoning that the return of Beverly Hofstadter meant an inevitable romantic interlude with Sheldon. Well, that moment comes and goes...and I wouldn't call it intimacy. In a season of romantic missteps, "Big Bang" producers played this one well. The full recap is after the jump.

Well past the honeymoon stage, the most interesting byproduct of Penny and Leonard's relationship on "The Big Bang Theory" is Penny's growing bond with Sheldon. The unlikely pairing effectively elevated an otherwise forgettable episode a couple of weeks back (including one classic scene), quietly establishing Sheldon and Penny as the odd couple to watch on the show. Penny and Leonard don't belong together. They don't work. Embracing their awkwardness has only made the situation more awkward -- a one-note exploration of dead chemistry. Even when chaos reigns between the members of the focal couple (see the fighting episode), it's bland and strained. It's a little strange to have the best relationship stuff coming via Penny and Sheldon -- as has been the case over the past few episodes -- but it's working. The full recap is after the jump.

Love abounds on "The Big Bang Theory" these days, and it isn't pretty. In what's become the theme of the season, the relationship bug has caught Howard in this week's episode; what results is more awkward than funny, which is descriptive of the entire season to this point. That hyped Katee Sackhoff guest appearance? Yeah, that wasn't anything more than the Howard fantasy bathtub moment we got in the preview clip. It's a shame: the show needs all the extra zip it can get, continuing to miss opportunities with a hell-bent focus on geeks in love. You want to do geeks in love? Fine. Then make it heartfelt and hilarious -- really amp the comic tension with situations that are larger-than-life but unique to the show's characters. But vanilla geek love? The bland exploits of bland men? Who wants to see that? Thankfully, we get a solid dose of Sheldon in victim-to-vengeance mode in the B storyline. The series is awfully lopsided, boasting one good plotline per episode, at best. What was looking like a run of a few ho-hum weeks is developing into a new level of mediocrity. The full recap is after the jump.

I've heard the argument that "The Big Bang Theory" is a triumph of great characters, harnessing the power of plot clichés to make geek life something that broad audiences will find familiar and funny; for the most part, the formula works. But sometimes, the storylines are too ham-handedly trite, overwhelming any original bent the cast can breathe into it. Case in point: this week Leonard, Howard, and Raj head into the wilderness on an overnight stargazing trip. Making friends with other campers, Howard returns with some "magic cookies"; the trio chow down and get super-high. This tees up a series of half-baked gags that we've seen in, oh, every other sitcom where a character gets stoned. Yes, they get the munchies. Yes, they get the giggles. Yes, they forget to watch the meteor shower. No, it's not very funny. The series has been all over the place lately, shifting from good to great to painful and back again. And as strong as last week's episode was, this week is a return to the kind of one-note, drive-the-joke-into-the-ground comedy that marks the series' weaker episodes. The full recap is after the jump.

"The Big Bang Theory" has struggled all season to find a comedic balance within the Penny/Leonard relationship, and after weeks of distancing the show from the awkward lovebirds, producers started to tackle the issue head-on, planting the seeds of discontent in last week's episode. It was only a matter of time before the couple's first big fight, and this week it happened, resulting in some of the best comedy this season. Test-running a board game that Sheldon invented, Leonard gets bent out of shape when he finds out that Penny is going to be letting an old flame crash on her couch for a couple of weeks: "A definitely not gay musician, sleeping on my girlfriend's couch. Yippee!" The fireworks quickly escalate, neither side backing down, and before you know it, we're in the middle a rip-roaring fight that starts to make the contrast between Leonard and Penny a little interesting again. The full recap is after the jump.

It was inevitable: Leonard gets Penny, it's fun for a minute, their relationship is awkward and boring, producers attempt to maintain the course but, ultimately, have to start planting the seeds of relationship demise. "The Big Bang Theory" has gone from trying to skirt the relationship to tackling it head-on; this week's episode has Leonard in a neurotic tizzy when Penny doesn't invite him to watch football with her friends. As awkward as it is to have the series distancing itself from the comic possibilities between Penny and Sheldon, the comedy is stronger in episodes where their relationship is left on the back burner. The full recap is after the jump.