The Howard And Bernadette Detail That Bothers Big Bang Theory Fans
Of all the couples that come together on The Big Bang Theory, arguably the most steady is Howardette, aka Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (Melissa Rauch). While they had their bumps in the road, they were the first couple to get married and the first to have a kid. Really, things were relatively smooth sailing for the two after they got back together following their season 4 breakup caused by Howard electronically cheating on Bernadette with a character from World of Warcraft.
Just because Howardette is a relationship success, however, doesn't mean the way their coupledom was handled on the show was flawless. As we know all too well, The Big Bang Theory, like any long-running sitcom, is prone to gaffes, continuity errors, and plot holes. In fact, fans of the series often take to Reddit to share the mistakes they find throughout the series.
One of the latest hot-button goofs involves the Rostenkowski-Wolowitz household, and it got us thinking about another time things seemed a little off with Howardette.
How many chest hairs does Howard have?
The season 4 episode "The 21-Second Excitation" is notable for being the first to feature Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Amy (Mayim Bialik), and Bernadette having one of their girl's nights. It's during that very hangout session that Reddit user cornerboyfrank8 noticed a big Howardette mistake.
In a thread collecting a variety of plot holes, they wrote, "In Season 4 Episode 8 Bernadette says that Howard has only one chest hair but in Season 1 Episode 7 you can see Howard enter the room in a bathrobe, exposing his chest."
They are correct on both accounts. While having girl talk, Bernadette says to Penny and Amy, "You know what I really love about Howard? His chest hair." This prompts Penny to ask, "Howard has a hairy chest?" Bernadette then follows up with the clarification, "No, just the one. But it's really long."
Not only would Bernadette know that Howard, in fact, does have more than one chest hair, but Penny would, too. She was in the room during the "The Dumpling Paradox" scene in which Howard is wearing a robe that exposes his chest hair. Sure, he's no Burt Reynolds in the fur department, but it's very clear that there's definitely more than one hair there.
Do you need further confirmation? Refer to any number of episodes in which Howard bares his moderately hairy chest: Season 7's "The Deception Verification," season 4's "The Cohabitation Formulation," season 6's "The Contractual Obligation." We could go on, but the point is, as grotesquely humorous as the idea of Howard having a singular, way too long chest hair is, we know it simply isn't true.
Howard's chest hair confusion isn't the only time that the show has gotten a detail about the particularities of the bodies of Howardette wrong.
Bernadette's 11-month-long pregnancy
As we mentioned at the top, Howardette was the first of the three main couples on the show to have a child. Bernadette announced the fact that she was pregnant during the season 9 episode "The Valentino Submergence." It was a secret revelation that she makes to a rabbit she and Howard rescued, but she does state declaratively at the time, "I'm pregnant."
As the title suggests, the episode takes place on Valentine's Day, which would most likely put the date of the conception at some point in February or January. Normal logic would then dictate that Bernadette's due date would be sometime in September or October. Of course, in sitcom land, the basic rules of human biology don't always apply.
Cut to December 17, aka 11 months after Bernadette first announced that she was pregnant, and baby Halley Wolowitz is born. One doesn't need to be an obstetrician to know that humans carry their pregnancies for around nine months. While many people end up giving birth a little earlier or a little later than that, pushing it back by two whole months is remarkable. There are cases of exceptionally long pregnancies, such as a woman in the 1940s who was allegedly pregnant for 375 days (via Time).
We have to assume, however, that if the writers of The Big Bang Theory were meaning for Bernadette to be pregnant for an extraordinary amount of time, it would have made its way into the plot of the show. This seems like an issue of the writer's forgetting that Bernadette's Valentine's announcement should have resulted in a Halloween baby, not a Christmas one. Perhaps all the characters on the show were too distracted by Howard's alleged single chest hair to notice.