This review contains spoilers.

12.13 The Confirmation Polarisation

There’s a point in every show’s final season when it starts to dawn on the audience that everything that’s happening on screen – every in-joke and character beat – could be happening for the last time. This might be the final time we ever open an episode with a Fun with Flags livestream, for example, or see a nerd-tastic special guest star.

But The Big Bang Theory deserves its victory lap, and if every episode from now until the finale has Sheldon and Amy talking about flags, then so be it.

On the guest star side of things, it seems like Sean Astin and Kal Penn are going to be sticking around for a while. The pair are playing rivals to Amy and Sheldon for the Nobel Prize, rather than themselves, and that gives the show a little more space to use them. There’s not even a clumsy audience reaction when they enter, when in season two I feel like it’d be a whole grand production.

Then again, as Sheldon points out in this very episode, they kind of peaked with Mark Hamill at the end of last season, and sadly the show is unable to bring back favourites like Leonard Nimoy and Stephen Hawking.

It doesn’t take long for the new physicists on the block to cause problems for Sheldon who, at the start of the episode, was celebrating with Amy over their now proven super-asymmetry theory. Of course the university is eager to get a piece of their success now that it has potential physics celebrities in their midst, and announces it will recommend them both for a Nobel.

But in a moment that has no business being as satisfying as it comes off, Leonard points out that it wasn’t the guy who had the idea for the Big Bang who won the prize (taking it right back to the title), but rather another scientist who built on the original work. Sheldon becomes worried that this will happen to his own life-long dream but, even though Amy gives him permission to cut her out because she’s from another field, he stands by her.

It’s an example of immense growth for Sheldon at a moment that’s bigger for him than any other. At the start of the show we probably wouldn’t have predicted that the character would get married, but it was a given that he would achieve what he deems academic success before the series was over. Given that this is a feel-good sitcom it’s almost certain that he and Amy will go on to win the thing, but that doesn’t make his decision any less impactful.

It’s an episode focused on careers all around, as Bernadette offers Penny the head sales position on her new project. While I’m sure the fact that Bernie is a tiny tyrant has a little bit to do with her initial hesitation, it turns out that Penny has come down with a case of imposter syndrome. How this has never come up before is beyond me, but I can’t express how glad I am that Leonard is the one grappling with the baby storyline and Penny gets to go out on the strength of her career progression.

There’s a tendency for shows to focus solely on the dramatic trifecta – marriage, babies and death – as they wind down but, because The Big Bang Theory got all that out of the way seasons ago, it has no choice but to find other story avenues to go down. A blessing in disguise, perhaps.

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, The Propagation Proposition, here.

MUBI, the natural streaming service choice for cinephiles everywhere, is guaranteed to deliver a fantastic line-up of quality movies from around the world every month. For a relatively small amount, you can receive a constant influx of little-known, overlooked, indie and award-winning films, and it always feels worth the cash. Long may it live!

Here’s what’s ahead in February…

1st February

Satan in High Heels

2nd February

Tyrannosaur

3rd February

Children of Men

4th February

Black Sun

5th February

La Libertad

6th February

On The Beach at Night Alone

7th February

Hotel Dallas

8th February

Central Airport THF

9th February

Paris, Texas

10th February

Fish Tank / Awards Season

11th February

Pendular

12th February

Claire’s Camera

13th February

In The Last Days of the City

14th February

Submarine

15th February

Brothers of the Night

16th February

Winter’s Bone

17th February

Foxcatcher

18th February

The Day After

19th February

Tokyo-Ga

20th February

The Virgin Spring

21st February

Beasts of the Southern Wild

22nd February

A Foreign Affair

23rd Februrary

21 Grams

24th February

A Separation

25th February

Notebook on Cities and Clothes

28th February

Suite Française

We’ll keep this list updated every month.

Netflix is in “advanced talks,” according to Variety, to join the Motion Pictures Association of America—a trade organisation (aka lobby group) currently representing the six major Hollywood studios. If Netflix’s first ever Best Picture nomination at the Oscars wasn’t a sign that Netflix is a major feature film player, then this certainly seals the deal.

For those who don’t know, the MPAA is the organisation that lobbies for copyright protection, anti-piracy protection and tax credits for productions. They’re often known as the organisation responsible for movie ratings. The MPAA describes its function as “advocating for policies that recognise the power of our stories, reward creators, and allow us to produce, distribute, and protect the creative content audiences love.”

Right now, the MPAA has six major studios as members: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. However, when the Fox/Disney merger is complete, it will lose one of its members. As each member pays annual dues between $15 million to $20 million per year, that’s a big deal for the MPAA.

Enter Netflix, which has increasingly proved itself as a major player in the U.S. feature film industry, despite being a streaming video provider. Notably, Netflix recently left the Internet Association, the trade agency that represents tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. In other words, Netflix is looking to rebrand itself as a more traditional media content creator rather than a tech company and, increasingly, Hollywood is being forced to take that rebrand seriously.

More news as we hear it.

The original Star Trek TV series followed Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after three seasons, which means we never got a proper look at how that mission ended. (Though, we did get some idea from Star Trek: The Animated Series.)

Now, we will.

According to THR, IDW Publishing is launching a comic book series called Star Trek: Year Five, which will explore the end of Kirk and company’s first five-year mission. The series will explore the crew’s feelings about the end of their mission and their return to Earth.

The writer’s room for the series includes Brandon Easton, Jody Houser, Jim McCann and the team of Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing. Kelly and Lanzing will be writing the first issue in the series, which will be illustrated by Stephen Thompson.

“[Star Trek: Year Five is] a vital, hard-hitting, character-focused look at Captain Kirk on his last year in command,” said Lanzing. “[Kirk’s actions in the series] will have huge ripple effects, from the outbreak of war in the Alpha Quadrant to an unprecedented strain of trust with Spock. We’ll turn a mirror on modern society, just as [the original television series] did in the 1960s, and go boldly towards meaningful, heartfelt stories.”

“With Year Five, we don’t just want to thrill — we want to channel the power of [franchise creator Gene] Roddenberry’s original vision, to tell a story about the future that illuminates our present,” added Kelly.

Illustrator Greg Hildebrandt will also be working on the series. The veteran comics illustrator, who has never worked on a Star Trek story, despite being a longtime fan of the franchise, said he “admired the social, moral and political statements that were obvious in Gene Roddenberry’s plot lines… It was an honour to paint this cover art of the original cast. Having painted Trek before, it was a kick for me at 80 years old.”

Star Trek: Year Five will launch in April.

The original Star Trek TV series followed Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after three seasons, which means we never got a proper look at how that mission ended. (Though, we did get some idea from Star Trek: The Animated Series.)

Now, we will.

According to THR, IDW Publishing is launching a comic book series called Star Trek: Year Five, which will explore the end of Kirk and company’s first five-year mission. The series will explore the crew’s feelings about the end of their mission and their return to Earth.

The writer’s room for the series includes Brandon Easton, Jody Houser, Jim McCann and the team of Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing. Kelly and Lanzing will be writing the first issue in the series, which will be illustrated by Stephen Thompson.

“[Star Trek: Year Five is] a vital, hard-hitting, character-focused look at Captain Kirk on his last year in command,” said Lanzing. “[Kirk’s actions in the series] will have huge ripple effects, from the outbreak of war in the Alpha Quadrant to an unprecedented strain of trust with Spock. We’ll turn a mirror on modern society, just as [the original television series] did in the 1960s, and go boldly towards meaningful, heartfelt stories.”

“With Year Five, we don’t just want to thrill — we want to channel the power of [franchise creator Gene] Roddenberry’s original vision, to tell a story about the future that illuminates our present,” added Kelly.

Illustrator Greg Hildebrandt will also be working on the series. The veteran comics illustrator, who has never worked on a Star Trek story, despite being a longtime fan of the franchise, said he “admired the social, moral and political statements that were obvious in Gene Roddenberry’s plot lines… It was an honour to paint this cover art of the original cast. Having painted Trek before, it was a kick for me at 80 years old.”

Star Trek: Year Five will launch in April.