The episode that should've been the Season 4 premiere gave us a little more to look forward to than we may have expected.
Sheldon volunteers at a local railroad museum, despite being only 11 years old. Being a high school graduate and a die-hard train fanatic, he was easily able to convince the museum to hire him. Unfortunately, he gets a little overenthusiastic about his favorite not-so-scientific subject. He give a lecture to a guy who just wants to use the men's bathroom, and tries to convince a family that only he has the proper technique for ringing a train bell. The last straw is when he tries to correct his boss on the Southern Pacific Railroad as he's giving a lecture on the Saint Louis-Southwestern Railway, better known as the Cotton Belt Line. Normally, my first instinct is to submit this error to IMDb, but I have a suspicion the writing staff made this error on purpose.
Then there's Missy. As her father George drives her to her little league baseball game, she has a harder time holding her bladder. And then we find out why; she gets her first period. This is one of those storylines you had to expect, since Sheldon and Missy are twins and tweens. Both Missy and George try to handle the situation as best as they can, and she coaxes her father into taking a detour to the drug store to buy "feminine products." But since he's a typical middle-aged white man from Texas, he doesn't know what he's supposed to get for her, until a female cashier closer to his age helps the two of them out, and Sheldon's twin sister play the game as if nothing happened just like in so many tampon commercials that have aired over the years. So many teen and tween girls, both real and fictional, have their own stories about when and how they got their first periods, and such. Some are more embarrassing and inconvenient than others, and certainly more than Missy Cooper. Hers could've been worse. It could've been like Carrie White.
We've all seen TV episodes where the B-story is better than the A-story, and in some cases, way better. In this case, it's the C-story that turns out to be the best. Sheldon's born-again Christian mother tries to act like a standard housewife, but she secretly watches a VHS copy of the 1989 Patrick Swayze action movie "Road House." And Georgie catches her in the act! I love the way he teases his mom about being the fact that it's an R-rated movie. She goes from threatening to ground him for revealing this guilty pleasure, but suddenly changes her mind when he compliments his mother on her taste in movies. And soon mother and son have a giddy discussion not only on the Patrick Swayze classic, but other action movies. I could spoil the episode and reveal what happens when Mary tries to loosen up and exposes her taste in movies, but I'm not going to.
Sheldon Cooper's railroad enthusiasm is a well-established fact as far back as early episodes of "The Big Bang Theory," but he's primarily focused on the railroads of the southwestern U. S. Someday I'd like to see his reaction to the railroads of the Northeast and Great Lakes region. If he's anything like me when it comes to trains, that might be a lot of fun.
