The Big Bang Theory kicked off its final season Monday night, September 24, with Amy and Sheldon’s honeymoon to Legoland and New York City. From Lego-crafted eggs and bacon to Harry Potter robes and wands, the experience should have been a dream come true for the newlyweds. Instead, it was…not that.
It started off well, though. The episode—titled “The Conjugal Configuration”—immediately catered to Shamy fans by having Sheldon wake up his new bride and sweetly calling her his wife. (If it’s still oddly surreal to see Sheldon wear a wedding ring, join the club.) We find out the two have consummated their marriage in a hotel suite overlooking the Legoland entrance, and Sheldon has ordered room service made out of Legos. It’s beautiful—until it all goes south.
The next day, Sheldon and Amy check into a new hotel in New York City, where they’re seeing a stage production of Harry Potter and getting a tour of Nikola Tesla’s old stomping grounds. Sheldon tells the bellman they’ll be very busy exploring the city and having coitus, which rubs Amy the wrong way. Shockingly, Amy’s frustration has less to do with Sheldon being so public about their private life and more to do with the fact that he wants to have sex again. “Really, Sheldon, you want to do it again?!” she asks. “Don’t act surprised,” he replies. “It’s on the schedule!”
Later, Amy’s annoyed with Sheldon again after he makes a scene during the play by yelling safety measures from the audience. And when they return to the hotel, Sheldon suggests they engage in coitus. “It’s a bit late,” he says, “but I did block out the rest of the evening for conjugal relations.” Amy is tired and asks to reschedule, but that doesn’t fit with Sheldon’s itinerary. If they don’t have sex tonight, he says, he hasn’t scheduled it again until Thursday at 6. “And that will have to be no frills, because we have a 6:30 reservation at Benihana.”
Of course, Amy shouldn’t do anything physical she doesn’t want to do or be a puppet to her husband’s love-making schedule. But in the past, Sheldon’s been receptive to Amy when she voices her frustration. This time, though, instead of explaining why spontaneity is important to her, she quips, “Would it be so bad to mix it up?” Sheldon is floored by this. “Mix it up?! Who are you? Betty Crocker?” He leaves to take a shower, while Amy feels disappointed and defeated.
PHOTO: Michael Yarish
The next day, during the Testla tour, Amy’s still upset. Sheldon can tell she’s testy, but Amy claims she’s not. So, Sheldon deduces she must be sexually frustrated. “If you abided by my coital schedule, your brain would be floating on a cloud of oxytocin right now,” he says. This sends Amy over the edge. She tells him she’s walking away, while he’s got the look of a deer in headlights. “I’m only recently married,” he tells the group of Tesla fanatics. “Do I stay here or do I follow? Say something useful.”
When Sheldon eventually finds Amy, he’s able to do what the couple should have done 24 hours earlier: communicate how he’s feeling. “You realize I’m not a particularly physical person,” he says. “I want to be a good husband to you, and intimacy is a part of that. I’m just worried if I don’t schedule our bedroom endeavors, I may not think about them, and you will grow cold and distant and seek solace in the arms of a heavily muscled longshoreman.”
Amy tells Sheldon she could never be with anybody but him; it’s OK if he wants to make all the schedules in the world, but maybe he just shouldn’t tell her about them. Sheldon agrees and says he’ll create an algorithm that will generate a pseudo-random schedule. “Do you know why it won’t be a true random schedule?” Sheldon asks. “Because the generation of true random numbers remains an unsolved problem in computer science,” Amy replies.
Of course, it’s Amy’s mathematical/scientific brilliance that turns Sheldon on—and this makes him want to have spontaneous sex. “Where are we going?” she asks when he pulls her away from a park bench. “To the hotel room,” he responds. “And when we get there, I’m going to need you to say that to me again, except naked.”
Related: Could there be a Big Bang spin-off after the series ends?
