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“The Big Bang Theory” spans 12 seasons and the same number of years, so we have to face some facts here: some of the episodes are bound to be total stinkers. Certainly, a few episodes in “The Big Bang Theory’s” storied history can compete for the absolute worst spot of them all, but what is the worst of the worst according to fans? We just have to look at IMDb ratings to find that out.
Chuck Lorre’s massively popular, Emmy-winning sitcom — which stars Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Kaley Cuoco, Mayim Bialik, and Melissa Rauch as Sheldon Cooper, Leonard Hofstadter, Howard Wolowitz, Raj Koothrappali, Penny Hofstadter, Amy Farrah Fowler, and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, respectively — focused on the personal lives of scientists (and Penny), including all of their ups and downs. Apparently, fans think that one episode in the show’s ninth season is the absolute worst; I should note, though, that the season 9 episode comes in second place to the show’s original, unaired pilot, which went through a whole host of changes before it actually hit the airwaves. Since the original pilot only exists in the form of scattered, low-res YouTube clips, it seems fans have crowned the season 9 premiere, “The Matrimonial Momentum,” as the show’s crappiest episode.
The worst episode of The Big Bang Theory is in season 9, according to the show’s fans
According to fans, the season 9 premiere of “The Big Bang Theory,” titled “The Matrimonial Momentum,” totally stinks — and honestly, I get why. It’s a pretty cruddy episode. After the show’s season 8 finale “The Commitment Deterioration” — where Leonard admits that he kissed another woman while dating Penny during the couple’s drive to Las Vegas, where they’re planning to elope — the show leaves the two in a pretty awkward situation, wherein Penny still wants to marry the man she loves but is understandably shocked by his admission. They go through with the wedding anyway without any of their friends or loved ones present; instead, they live-stream the slapdash ceremony for everybody back home, and their friends barely watch it anyway because Sheldon is making such a fuss about the fact that Amy asked him for a break from their relationship (which also happens in the season 8 finale). Amy dumps Sheldon in front of everyone, nobody pays attention to Penny and Leonard’s wedding, and even after their nuptials, Penny is still holding a grudge against her new husband. When she finds out the girl Leonard kissed works with him and much of the rest of the gang at CalTech, the two have an even bigger fight and go to their own apartments alone during their first night as a married couple.
“The Big Bang Theory” works best when it keeps the whole gang together, and obviously, “The Matrimonial Momentum” does the opposite of that. Not only that but shoving one breakup and one almost-breakup into the same season premiere just sucks all the humor out of the situation, especially because, to be honest, both Sheldon and Leonard behave abominably toward their partners. Fortunately, the show course corrects by the end of the series. This is definitely a really, really bad episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” but which other episodes do fans hate?
Other episodes of The Big Bang Theory fans don’t like, according to IMDb
“The Matrimonial Momentum” isn’t the only widely disliked episode of “The Big Bang Theory” — far from it. Just below it on IMDb, the season 10 episode “The Cognition Regeneration” also has an incredibly low rating (it shares a 6.8 rating out of 10 with the season 9 premiere, actually), and that one features yet another weird Leonard and Penny subplot where her ex-boyfriend Zack (Brian Thomas Smith) offers her a job, a prospect that makes Leonard irrationally mad. That clunker is followed by yet another episode with a 6.8 rating, season 11’s “The Athenaeum Allocation,” which features a bunch of nonsense over Sheldon and Amy’s wedding venue and an infuriating (and frankly sexist) argument between Howard and Bernadette about which of them should be a stay-at-home parent. “The Planetarium Collision,” a season 12 episode, rounds out the top five worst episodes according to fan ratings on IMDb — this one also boasts a 6.8 — and it’s probably because most of the episode focuses on Sheldon sabotaging Amy’s work as a neuroscientist so that she’ll help him work on their joint super asymmetry project.
Again, it makes sense that there are some rough episodes of “The Big Bang Theory,” and fans can tell you exactly which ones to skip. If you’re curious about them — or want to watch some better installments — “The Big Bang Theory” is streaming on Max now.