The Werewolf Transformation

Season 5 / Episode 18

 

 

Pasadena's most tightly wound physicist lets his hair down when a disruption in his routine sends his identity into a tailspin; and Howard is accepted into NASA's astronaut training program. It's haircut day for Sheldon, and Leonard has driven his roommate to the estimable barber, Mr. D'Onofrio, sole possessor of Sheldon's haircut records from Texas and consequently the only one deemed capable of clipping his hair into the #3 boy's cut. Sheldon is gutted to learn however that Mr. D'Onofrio is in the hospital in a coma - who's going to cut his hair now he wails to Leonard.

 

One day later the gang are profferring solutions to Sheldon, whose histrionic adaptations to his "teen heartthrob" hair are beginning to eclipse the mealtime ambience, and indeed everything else of importance, but the hirsute physicist shudderingly rejects Supercuts as being a "Sodom and Gomorrah with mousse" and regards Penny's "hill folk" tonsorial skills with skepticism. Sheldon turns to the internet in his quest to find a suitable barber but only succeeds in discovering the alarming growth rate of hair. It's settled. His only option is to "embrace the chaos."

 

With mayhem the motto of the day, Sheldon is no longer unnerved by incursions into his spot and slips into his Tuesday pajamas even though it's not Tuesday, but when the bad boy of 4A decides to join the Beat Generation, complete with bongos and hep talk, Leonard and Penny doubly renew their efforts to get Sheldon the haircut he so desperately needs. Meanwhile Bernadette is keeping tabs on Howard, whose increasingly harrowing Skypes from training camp are replete with the horrors of eating a butterfly, spooning with an armadillo, and an inexplicable need for more underwear.

 

To everyone's immense relief, Sheldon is finally persuaded to let Penny trim his locks and even compliments her work, generously assuring her that he can carry off the Hollywood treatment she's given him. Unfortunately though his return to meticulously kept timetables and bowel movement schedules is doomed to be short-lived when his ticklishness combined with Penny's unsteady hand on the electric clippers leaves a wide swath in the back of his head. Not prepared to face the existential fallout of Sheldon having a bad hair month, Penny is grimly resigned to the necessity of moving away.

 

 

by Check E. Light