I'm doubtful that they'll put that much thought into a future episode to do that. I would have preferred that they do let Penny get the job, and have Zach in a few episodes at least. It could have been more of a jump to new story lines. It feels like they've been stuck on the "Penny is unhappy in her job and marriage" thing for ages.

That's a bit of a problem yes. Maybe they'll have Zach split up with whoever it is, and then he'll offer her the job again. But actually, until Zach said that his fiancée put the kibosh on him hiring Penny, I figured it was just a story he made up and he wasn't really engaged; he was just trying to get Penny back from Leonard. Or maybe testing to see how close they really were, or something. But perhaps I expect too much from a half-hour sitcom that only has less than 20 minutes of real episode time.

I also watched "Mom" last night, for the first time in over a year, because the promos seemed interesting. What a disappointment THAT was!

I think most of us have the same problem. Expectations of interesting story lines. Seeing potential in a character or story line, and then being completely bummed out. I definitely thought Zach was making up the fiance, and thought we would see something at the end that showed her being a photo or something silly.
I also would have been happier without the end snippets of Bernadette voicing the dummy, and Sheldon walking on stilts. Both were done terribly...

When Zach referred to his fiancée as Sarah, I thought maybe he had changed the "code name" on his phone from Siri to Sarah, and was in love with his phone as Raj started to be in a previous episode.

The bit with Sheldon on stilts wasn't so bad, but they could have dropped the ventriloquism bit (although I think Howard did that too in the past, so he shouldn't have been so bothered by it) and done more with Zach turning out to have an imaginary fiancée. Even if they showed US that in the same episode, it could have taken a while before anyone else found out.

I agree with everyone here. I expected to see the old goofy Zach but he was serious here. Now I am not even sure that Zach has a fiance, perhaps he was making it up to show Penny he is older and wiser. Which is sad because seeing Zach alone and pining for Penny would be sad. But seeing another controlling girlfriend not letting Zach hang out with Penny is not fun either. I thought the stilts scene was weird. As for Bernie, wasn't her talent in the talent show singing that Spice Girls song as seen in the episode where the girls find out embarrassing moments, kind of like this episode where Bernie shares this supposed embarrassing episode, which doesn't seem to Bernie-ish to me. It also reminded me of a Modern Family episode where the Gloria character also reveals that she did a ventriloquist act in a talent show in her youth. To me ventriloquist dolls are not inherently funny or interesting. Just lame. I also have enough of Howards magic show past being a joke. Is magic just too nerdy ?

Well among other things, considering how much those guys read - and watch on TV and in theaters - where "magic" is supposed to be real, you'd think they would have adopted the more accurate term for what people like Howard did: illusion.

@Knixon said:

Zach's fiancée. And it should be someone Penny knows and was competitive with, or maybe someone Raj or Leonard 'dated" in the past, or something...

But maybe they'll still get to that, in a future episode.

I had the same idea watching it. I would have liked to see Zach's fiance being one of Raj's exes , specifically Claire. Then Raj would wonder if was she was interested in Zach since the day he met her at the wine tasting.

@znexyish said:

Now I am not even sure that Zach has a fiance, perhaps he was making it up to show Penny he is older and wiser. Which is sad because seeing Zach alone and pining for Penny would be sad.

Or perhaps Zach didn't really want her around and was letting her down easy.

@MyriVerse said:

Or perhaps Zach didn't really want her around and was letting her down easy.

Then he just shouldn't have offered her the job to start with.

We'll probably never see Sarah, now that Zack is married to Marissa.