'The Big Bang Theory' season finale recap: Sheldon possibly finds a perfect mate, and she's Blossom

Image Credit: Sonja Flemming/CBSIt’s strange, fellow Big Bang theorists, but I find myself with not much to say about last night’s season finale, since pretty much everything in it that mattered occurred in the final three minutes. In short: Leonard was bummed to see Penny dating a dim bulb who thought the Big Bang boys’ experiment to bounce a laser off of the moon meant they wanted to blow it up. (Sheldon, oddly trenchant as ever, boiled down the dim bulb’s appeal thusly: “He must be very skilled at coitus.”) Howard suggested Leonard play the field himself by using a fancy online dating service, but then Raj thought it’d be better if they’d submit Sheldon to the site instead. Miraculously, they got a match. And she turned out to be Blossom.

Okay, she wasn’t star of the very special early 1990s NBC sitcom, exactly. Sheldon’s match was played ever so briefly by Blossom‘s Mayim Bialik, and it turns out the character, the alliteratively named Amy Farrah Fowler, very well may be the ideal mate for Sheldon Cooper. This much we know so far: She shares Sheldon’s aversion to soiled hosiery (i.e. dirty socks). Her agreement with her mother to date once a year is similar to Sheldon’s deal with his mother to attend church once a year. She used the Sheldon-esque word “baffled” to describe her feelings about a deity that “takes attendance.” And she stated in no uncertain terms that “all physical contact, up to and including coitus, are off the table.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Sheldon swooned.

In any case, he offered to buy her a beverage, she agreed, Howard and Raj were stunned/alarmed at their unexpected success, and just like that, the season was over. Now, readers of Michael Ausiello’s EW.com blog already know that Ms. Bialik’s guest star contract has an option to return to the series next season, which now seems kinda like me saying I had an option to watch Sunday’s Lost finale. (YES! Finally got Lost mentioned on this site!) Bialik — who has a Ph.D in neuroscience in real life (!) — perfectly played a more Sheldon-y Sheldon than Sheldon, and like many of you, I’m pretty much dying to see where Amy Farrah Fowler’s relationship with Sheldon might lead. (For one thing, how will this outwardly self-serious woman respond when she learns Sheldon only drinks hot chocolate in months with an “r” in them because, as he said, “What’s life without whimsy?”) Consider your cliffhanger well hung, Chuck Lorre — er, on second thought, better not.

Meanwhile, as Sheldon was possibly starting a romantic entanglement (as much as he is capable of doing so, anyway), Leonard and Penny tied a few new tricky knots into their own season-long relationship tapestry. Penny ditched her dude after realizing Leonard had ruined her capacity to “tolerate idiots,” got drunk, and pulled her ex into an apparently rowdy and rodeo-themed session of post-breakup sex. When Penny told Leonard the next morning she thought said sex was a mistake, Leonard made a surprising swing over to the apartment of one Leslie Winkle in an attempt to get some more meaningless sex. It was great to see Sara Gilbert again — as her character said, it’d been over a year since she’d last appeared on the show — but it seemed like a bit of a waste to bring the actress back just to pop up in a tiny scene. Perhaps next season, Leonard, Penny, and Leslie will find themselves in a Big Bang love triangle? One can only dream, even when one runs the risk of getting beat up by schoolyard bullies when one refers to oneself as “one.”

What did you make of The Big Bang Theory‘s season ender? Are you keen for more Mayim Bialik next season, or are you hoping the show’s writers keep to their promise that Sheldon’s one and only love is science? Do you wish there’d been more of Leslie Winkle? Are Penny and Leonard now truly over? Are you at all surprised by Raj’s appreciation for Big Bang‘s sister CBS drama series The Good Wife? And how long do you think it will take for “prevening” — i.e. Sheldon’s word for “the ambiguous period between afternoon and evening” — to enter the national lexicon, or at least inspire a series of t-shirts?