"The Big Bang Theory" Episode 23 of this season titled "The Launch Acceleration" dealt with a number of relationship issues for Howard, Leonard, and Sheldon. The biggest storyline in the episode involved Howard's space plans changing and how it might impact his upcoming wedding. However, Leonard and Sheldon had complications of their own. Here is a recap of this relationship-oriented episode of "The Big Bang Theory."
Howard's space issues
The episode opens with Howard learning that his space mission has been canceled, and he couldn't be happier. It turns out that his fears of going into space were a little too much. However, those fears return suddenly when he gets a phone call from NASA. Not only his launch going to happen, but it is going to happen very soon. In fact, the space launch is going to directly conflict with the wedding. Bernadette still supports Howard's dream, even though he really doesn't want to go into space. He decides to speak to her father, thinking that he will be furious over the idea that the wedding might get canceled. Instead, her father surprises Howard by admitting that the space venture has forced him to respect Howard. It looks like both the space mission and the wedding will be on the table for the season finale.
Amy tries to move things along with Sheldon.
After seeing the relationships of their pals evolve, Amy decides to make things a little bit more serious with Sheldon. She does this by trying to transfer his childhood interests onto her. After doing things like playing Super Mario music and allowing Sheldon to be a train conductor, her strategy starts to work. Sheldon finds himself enjoying his time with Amy, and even attempts to engage Leonard in some relationship talk.
Leonard makes things weird.
The relationship between Leonard and Penny has been mostly quiet this season, but that changed in this episode. After a long spell of taking things slow, Penny decides that it is time to take things further in the bedroom. The hope is that nothing weird will happen, but that backfires when Leonard pops the question during the act. Of course, Penny is upset about that, and the two go their separate ways. At the end of the episode, Leonard asks Penny if she has an answer. She plants a big kiss on him before replying in the negative. It looks like the two are still dating, but there are no wedding bells on the horizon.
No Raj?
Further proof that this episode was all about couples is that Raj was nowhere to be found. The lonely soul of the show didn't have a place in this episode, and that might be okay. No need to force a storyline if it doesn't fit. Raj will be back in the season finale, and it will be interesting to see if anything big happens with him.
