Thursday, January 17, 2019

MISSING LINKS - "COLUMBO" & "THE BIG BANG THEORY"


‘The Big Bang Theory’
“The Athenaeum Allocation”
&
‘Columbo’
“Troubled Waters”


Fair warning – there be spoilers ahead, maties!

“Shamy” (the pet combined name for Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler) wanted the CalTech Athanaeum to be the venue for their wedding, but Bawwy Kwipke – I mean, Barry Kripke - already had it reserved for his birthday.  Among his demands for releasing his booking for them was that he would be allowed to sing “Volare” at the wedding reception.  That proved to be the deal-breaker for Amy Farrah Fowler. 



Time for some fanfic to fill in the blanks of the life of Barry Kripke!

The actor who plays Kripke, John Ross Bowie, was born in 1971.  But as many actors sometimes play older than they really are, for the purposes of this post I’m going to claim that he was born earlier than that.  I’m making Kripke five years older than Ross was in the Real World.


When Kripke was an impressionable nine-year-old, his parents took him on a sea cruise to celebrate his upcoming tenth birthday.  And during the trip young Barry became infatuated with Rosanna Wells, the lounge singer working with the band during the cruise.  Just from that first night on board, it was love at first sight for the boy afflicted with rhoticism.  When Rosanna Wells sang “Volare”, Barry wished that it would last forever.  (For many others, it only felt like it did.)

So much so that he would have gladly stayed up to see her next set, but when the band took a break at 11 PM, his mother would take him back to their cabin and put him to bed.


That particular cruise turned out to be Ms. Wells’ last, however.  On that first night, during the band’s break, Rosanna Wells was murdered by the lover she was blackmailing – Hayden Danziger.

Barry Kripke was devastated by this tragedy.  Had she not died, his fixation with the singer may have faded with time.  But with the impact of her murder, she became one of Barry’s obsessions in life.

And that would be why he wanted to sing “Volare” at Sheldon and Amy’s wedding.  (When the couple finally did wed, Barry snuck in and sang as they left the makeshift chapel.  But since he knew that they objected to “Volare”, he chose a different song – “At Wast”.  I mean, “At Last”.)

This post is dedicated to Catrin Jones, who inspired it.


BCnU!

No comments: