shamyyellow

Agreed. A lady working on this episode wrote on Twitter that she'd be working with Jim and Mayim all week and it was a dream come true, so no matter what the elopement is all about, we definitely get Shamy. That and the Majim selfie at what looks like a movie theater. And the two glasses and bottle on Shamy's coffee table. Kind of exciting not to know everything.

I think it's fairly obvious that the man who teased "did they or didn't they elope" meant Sheldon and Amy. They're the only main characters who are engaged. I'm not saying it isn't possible that Raj or another character would, but it's unlikely that a casual fan who attended a taping would use that as their teaser if it was a storyline nobody was familiar with or introduced to. Since we saw two wine glasses and a bottle on Shamy's coffee table and Amy's birthday is in the next episode (whether they mention it or not), I'd say it's even more likely. Also, he said "did they or didn't they?" and then "my lips are sealed". I'd bet money he would've given everything away if they actually went through with it and "didn't they" wouldn't have factored in unless they didn't. So my guess is they get drunk or carried away, opt to elope, and back out out the last minute. Or it's a dream.

Do you think it's possible Young Sheldon might change that? I'm not really saying one way or another, but I do think it's possible (and believe I have seen it) that the audience/writers will be influenced by what they see from the prequel. They have highlighted the fact that Sheldon deeply loves his parents in a way I never really saw or took seriously on TBBT. I could see Sheldon eloping without his mother present messing up the emotional background they're trying to sell through stories of his childhood. Sadly, I think that makes it less likely he would even if it shouldn't factor in.

You're right. It's about an episode too early, but with everything I've seen and heard being Shamy-centric, that's my guess. As far as who cares about Amy's birthday... it's a bigger deal because of the once-a-year coitus agreement and Halley's 1st birthday. I know they broke that agreement late in S10, but it's never been brought up again so we don't know if it's still a thing.

It's also Amy's birthday.

For triggering Sheldon's proposal, I'm guessing.

Thank you so much, @Kev0821! I truly appreciate the time you took to fill us in. I know how nerve-wrecking and hard it can be to remember everything. You did an amazing job!

Wait... that was the end of the episode?

I'm seeing more details about Howardette than I am about Shamy.

I wonder why they needed to announce that. It's not like they fill the audience in on what's coming next week on the regular. Does the time jump happen at the end of the first episode or have some relevance to what was taped tonight?

I'm actually surprised they wrote it in. Now they're going to have 2 invisible kids?

Yep. Unless it's for a dream sequence, it looks like she said yes.

Is it possible that you and other's might be missing the disses about Sheldon while focusing on all the negativity thrown at Leonard? The first words Leonard spoke in the finale were a diss about Sheldon and what a pain in the ass he's been since Amy left. The guys talked about him being stupid because he likes going to the train store and is particular about the medicine he buys. He's stupid and annoying because he likes to look at ladders. When he left to another table with Ramona, Howard said he was "lured away by a stranger with a candy bar." When they realized who Ramona was, Howard said she was around "before Sheldon hit puberty and grew man parts." He made Ramona laugh so according to Leonard, there had to be something wrong. In the next scene, Bernie almost gagged at the thought of Sheldon's "sexual appetite". In the scene after that, Sheldon retells a joke from Raj about wanting to hang himself while they were out together. In the next scene, the girls insinuated that he was too stupid to know better than to run out into traffic. Later in the episode, Raj says an attractive women would never be interested in Sheldon. The list goes on and on... I'm not taking away from the fact that the writers can do better with Lenny, but this particular complaint seems like selective hearing to me. Every character on this show is ridiculed for the sake of comedy and it's often at the expense of continuity or the well being of relationships. They called Amy unattractive about 17 times in the finale to build Ramona up. They called Sheldon stupid about the same amount to strength his naivety. They had Penny yell at Leonard so he would call Amy because then Sheldon could emphasize that naivety even more by seeing the problem with that, but not Ramona. I guess I just see that Sheldon/Shamy fans let it go while Leonard/Lenny fans don't because they're unhappy with the storylines and lack of progress they've been given. And no, I'm not saying that's unreasonable. I guess I'm just pointing out that the problem always comes back to Lenny being mistreated. Shamy is in a good place, so those jokes at his/their expense don't really bother us. If the writers would just fix Lenny and give their fans something more/better to focus on, this probably wouldn't even be a discussion.

I feel like every season declines in the middle whereas the beginning and the end are almost always better. It makes sense that halfway through, they aren't starting a storyline or summing anything up so it gets a little iffy... but that's just my own personal opinion about quality, not ratings. I know this was a conversation a few weeks back, but there are so many reasons why ratings drop, especially since the way people watch television is constantly changing. It's not just people switching cable for iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, it's the habits we are forming because of that. TBBT in general is increasingly hard to watch week by week in a world of streaming full seasons of hour long episodes. Personally, I can never tell if I like a season or not until I watch it all back to back. That makes me wonder how many people opt for that instead of week to week. Just a few years ago, it wasn't so easy to do it any other way. Now, if I'm not obsessed with a show, I'll just wait and watch it all at once after the season finale airs. Another huge reason ratings may or may not be what they used to is the lack of promotion. This year, there were zero visits to the set by the usual entertainment shows. They didn't hold any special events, they didn't do any panels, and there was little to no excitement coming from them to us. We saw promotion work rather nicely in S9 between the hype over Shamy coitus and the 200th episode. The only promotion this season got was from their official YouTube channel a day before and a few hours after the finale aired. Keep in mind that their channel has a total of 400K subscribers, which is a great example of how bad numbers aren't exact cut and dry. How does a show with 20M viewers have such a weak online following? There are a lot of answers but none of them have to do with the overall popularity of the show. However, the number of people that promo reached explains why it did nothing for them. With the last 3 seasons, we have seen ratings slip in March/April/May. I don't know why exactly, but they do. I truly believe the reasons I stated have at least something to do with it, but even the overall age of the show will have some impact over time. We live in the day and age of new everything all the time and what isn't placed right in front of our faces isn't always recognized or remembered. And I will admit that Lenny's constant fighting and bickering has definitely turned me off, so I can't really blame anyone else who hasn't enjoyed it much either. That isn't to blame Lenny for the decline, but to say the show was more cohesive when that wasn't the case. The people on this forum who are the least happy and threaten to quit watching the show are Lennies, so it makes sense their downfall is at least partly to blame for ratings going down.

I think the whole point of sending Amy to Princeton "for the summer" was to bypass having very many episodes with her actually gone. Yes, they can film Skype scenes like they did with Howard in space, but he was up there for weeks, not months, and 3 episodes was a realistic amount of time spent with him gone. I imagine we will either see a flashback of what happened after Sheldon proposed or no time will have passed with a time jump soon to follow, but I'll be honest... both options sound weird. The flashback to the proposal sounds the most realistic and least confusing, but the picking up where we left off, I'm not sure. Will they just be on some major super-speed where 3 months pass in 3 episodes? The only way to bypass all of this is if Amy leaves Princeton, Sheldon stays in Princeton, or Sheldon visits her every weekend. There is no way they're going to limit Mayim's screen time to Skype sessions for 3 months worth of episodes. My money is on a flashback to the proposal in present time. It gives them time to change the sets a little more, move things along for Raj, and work out a lot of details for all of the couples so the show returns a bit refreshed.