Should you watch it, wiki it, or wait for the recap? Watch it.
When Raj introduces his girlfriend, Emily, to the group, she takes an immediate dislike to Penny. Meanwhile, the guys attempt to fund the reopening of Stuart’s comic book store. Will Penny discover the reason for Emily’s disdain towards her, and will the guys convince their significant others to let them invest money into Stuart’s new comic book store?
“The Hook-up Reverberation” is the fourth episode of the eighth season of The Big Bang Theory. We get to see Raj’s girlfriend, Emily (played by Laura Spencer), for the first time this season, and she injects a freshness into the series that is sorely needed. The appearance of her character gives us new conflicts and conundrums to play around with, and it’s just sad that she won’t be around for more episodes.
We also get to see Stuart again, although by now he’s clearly lost whatever it is that made him funny. Do you miss Stuart’s days of glory? I certainly do. In any case, we get to see a bit of maturity from the men in this episode, which is something we haven’t seen in a while. Sadly, there are no comic book references (apart from actual comic books). Come on, four guys here – couldn’t we have gotten a Fantastic Four reference in somewhere and have them argue who’d be the Invisible Woman?
Highlights
Emily vs Penny
Bernadette may be pretty, but Emily is prettier. I daresay that she’s as pretty as Penny, and she’s welcome eye candy here. Her grudge against Penny is also quite justified, as it’s rooted in appearance. So we have both a physical and emotional conflict between Emily and Penny, and it’s rare that we see Penny come up against someone with the same level of attractiveness as her. I’m not sold on the resolution of this conflict though – it lacked punch.
Plot direction
While the plot is ostensibly about Emily and Penny and then the comic book store, it takes a sudden veer into relationship talk between the boys and their girlfriends/wives. It’s not an artificial twist as there is an organic explanation for it, and the lack of predictability in this plot makes it a welcome one for this season.
The individual male-female relationships
Ironically, it takes Sheldon to trigger this reflection between all the couples. It’s fun to see how each couple handles their respective discussions, once again grounding the comedy in character and showing us that despite being geeks, they’re real live human beings like you and me.
Letdowns
Stuart
Stuart’s relationship with Howard’s mother is disgusting. Let’s drop it already. It’s overplayed and has long since gone into distasteful territory. Let’s give Stuart back his comic book store, and have him continue to have a mutual friendship with Howard’s mother, rather than this sugar mummy thing they have going on.
Lack of pop culture references (despite it revolving around the comic book store)
This is completely surprising. No pop culture references? Just a close up on the Aquaman comic that Leonard is reading? Why can’t they be a four man super team? The Ninja Turtles? OK, that’s Nickelodeon territory – but how about the Suicide Squad? Come on, throw us a bone here guys. What’s the point of a comic book store without some comic book store talk?
“The Hook-up Reverberation” is, hopefully, the start in an upswing in the quality of episodes. It has an interesting conflict, character development, and sets up the possibility of future plots with the episode’s story. Here’s hoping we see more geeky references in the next episode!
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