Television Sitcoms

Once one of the biggest television sitcoms of all time, "The Big Bang Theory" ran for twelve seasons and nearly three hundred episodes — and they can't all be winners. The long-running series that chronicles the performatively nerdy hijinks of Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), and also Penny (Kaley Cuoco) has plenty of beloved episodes — like the series finale "The Stockholm Syndrome," which holds the top user rating on IMDb.

That said, there's apparently a few fans just really don't like, and they've made their feelings quite clear.

So which episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" just aren't up to snuff? These choices were decided by the fans themselves, so please, put your pitchforks down. There's one technicality: the actual number one spot was occupied by the infamously weird pilot fo "The Big Bang Theory," which didn't feature Cuoco and had to be overhauled before the series actually premiered. From lowest to highest rated, here are the five least popular episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" according to IMDb.

Season 10, Episode 22 - The Cognition Regeneration

With a 6.7/10 rating on IMDb, the third to last episode of the series' tenth season, "The Cognition Regeneration" earned the lowest score aside from that extremely weird pilot. This particular episode of "The Big Bang Theory" isn't just relatively light on laughs, but its A-plot concerning Penny and Leonard is downright irritating. By this point in the show, Penny has given up her dreams of becoming a famous actress to become a pharmaceutical sales representative, and even though she's finally making a decent living, she definitely doesn't like it.

Enter her ex-boyfriend Zack (Brian Thomas Smith), who runs into her during a girls' night at a bar and asks if she and Leonard want to grab dinner; when they all meet up, Zack tells Penny he might have a job for her, which sends Leonard into a truly embarrassing jealousy spiral.

Penny and Leonard are already married, and so his jealousy is completely immature; the worst part, though, is the twist that Zack's fiancée got so mad at the prospect of him hiring Penny that she threw a shoe at him, making Leonard "right" all along. Throw in a subplot where Sheldon tries to learn a bunch of different skills to challenge himself beyond his scientific prowess, including baking and juggling, and you've got a dud of an episode.

Season 9, Episode 1 - The Matrimonial Momentum

From the very beginning of the series, Leonard has his eyes on Penny, and he eventually gets his way; the two end up together and finally get engaged at the end of the show's seventh season. When Leonard — while he and Penny are en route to elope in Las Vegas — admits to kissing another woman during an expedition to the North Sea years ago, though, Penny is obviously shaken up, but tells him it was long before their engagement, so she forgives him.

This leads right into the Season 9 premiere, "The Matrimonial Momentum," which boasts a 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb.

Despite clearly needing to discuss the fact that Leonard was unfaithful to Penny and hid it from her for years, the two rush ahead with an impersonal wedding with none of their friends or family present, electing to live stream it so that the gang can join in from home... which is a nice thought. See, Sheldon's girlfriend Amy (Mayim Bialik) just broke up with him, and he's forcing everyone to take sides and managing to insult her in the process, despite hiding an engagement ring he's been saving for her.

Basically nobody in the group even watches the wedding, so it's lucky that Penny and Leonard get a do-over wedding in the Season 10 premiere, "The Conjugal Conjecture."

Season 11, Episode 17 - The Athenaeum Allocation

Fans might not love Season 11, Episode 17 — "The Athenaeum Allocation" — because it's honestly just kind of boring. Not a lot happens in this installment of "The Big Bang Theory," which earned a 6.8 out of 10 from fans on IMDb, and it mostly spins its wheels as Amy and Sheldon prepare for their wedding.

They ultimately decide to see if they can have the reception at The Athenauem, an exclusive venue for members only, according to Leonard... whose lie is exposed when Sheldon sees him and Penny casually eating lunch there. Naturally, this causes a fight between the two, although it's pretty half-hearted.

Over at the Rostankowski-Wolowitz household, Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) and Howard are thrilled that both of their babies are thriving, but now it's time to decide which of them will stay home and which will go back to work. Howard definitely doesn't push Bernadette into staying, and instead tries to lobby to stay home instead of her.

Their argument eventually gets resolved when Stuart (Kevin Sussman), comic book store owner and resident lonely man who isn't Raj, agrees to be their nanny. Also, this episode has way too much Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie), one of the show's most grating supporting players.

Season 12, Episode 5 - The Planetarium Collision

To say Sheldon Cooper can be mean and dismissive to those around him is... a large understatement. He hasn't changed that much by the show's twelfth and final season, and he's in rare form in its fifth episode, "The Planetarium Collision," where he's incredibly excited to keep working on a super-asymmetry project with Amy after their wedding.

Unfortunately for him, Amy, a neuroscientist, has to return to her own work, which sends Sheldon into a selfish tailspin. Insulting several people in the process, including Amy, he arranges to have her replaced on her own project so they can work together, and she's understandably furious.

They eventually work it out when Sheldon and Amy come to an understanding — specifically, that Amy doesn't want all of her work to be tied to Sheldon or their relationship. Still, the fit he throws over Amy pursuing her own long-term project, which she's been working on for years — and which he dismisses as lesser compared to his work, even though she's studying complex functions of neurological pathways.

If you're curious about the "planetarium" part of this title, it has to do with a relatively petty squabble between Raj and Howard over who gets to present at the Griffith Observatory, which doesn't amount to much. Ultimately, fans rewarded this showing of Sheldon's total selfishness with a 6.8 out of 10.

Season 10, Episode 13 - The Romance Recalibration

Using a tired sitcom trope where men immediately become uninterested in their partners, Season 10's "The Romantic Recalibration" has Penny dissatisfied with Leonard, who seems to have somewhat given up since the two got married earlier in the season.

Angry with her lazy husband, Penny decides to take Amy away for a spa weekend in Leonard's stead, leaving him behind with Sheldon... but there's a particularly strange twist in this episode. Despite that Sheldon frequently seems averse to even touching Amy, much less engaging in public displays of affection, it seems pretty out of character for the two to passionately kiss before Penny and Amy leave on their trip.

By the end of the episode, Amy and Sheldon are somehow the example of a perfect relationship thanks to their iron-clad "relationship agreement," an apparently binding document they've both signed that sets strict rules for their relationship. Despite the fact that Penny and Leonard are both adults who could just have a normal conversation, they ask Sheldon to help them draw up a "relationship agreement" of their own, painting him as someone who understands interpersonal relationships. It's still the highest rated out of the bottom five, earning a 6.9 out of 10 from fans.