WeBuiltThePyramids

No, he didn't do anything bad intentionally. He just doesn't know how to behave or when to sound sensitive or when to draw the line.

geoizz545

I don't think this episode was bad or good. It was different. It was nice to have a Raj/Howard-centric episode. And the few scenes with Sheldon looked even funnier if you think about it.

I wish this girl really liked Raj and not for his money. I feel a little bad for him. First Penny, then Bernadette, now this girl. I hope he'll have his chance before the end of the season.

Charlone

I think she liked him in the beginning because she realized about "his money" after when they had a date. I mean, he was her first interest.

Pomita

I thought that whole storyline was pretty weak, actually. As you say, she must have initially liked him before getting to know he's so rich, or else why would she be seeing him, but then at the end she was made out to be totally a gold-digger.

Or maybe it's just that I'm (like Penny) not quite comfortable with the idea of a person with a disability being portrayed as such a negative character!

SargeantFuzzyBoots

Personally, I liked how they portrayed Emily as not being so nice even though she had a disability. I liked them not going with the stereotype there. Though I felt very bad for Raj, it was kinda refreshing to see.

WeBuiltThePyramids

Yeah, it was kinda nice. And I liked that interview with Katie where she actually said she liked that they weren't going with that stereotype. It was definitely refreshing.

Fercita

I liked this episode so much!! It had some great duos and some great interactions and characterizations D This is, I think, the episode that had the most insight on the characters ever.

The Raj/Emily thing was refreshing to see. It's nice to see something different from the usual stereotype. And Emily, while not talking, felt so alive to me. Was it me or the moment Raj said "Hi" after Penny told him she was deaf, the gasps from some of the audience were so...acute? I gasped there too.

I love Kunal's sweet but clueless portrayal of Raj in this episode. I think I just might love him more that Jim here, and that's saying something.

Howard was amazing this episode. When it's not about himself, he can be utterly insightful, sweet and tactful. That he knows sign languages is a very nice touch to his character.

Sheldon using the dice for "trivial" things was a really nice touch or edge to his overall character premise. It just made it ironic to him being the least spontaneous person ever, and I liked that he opened up to every possibility, instead of giving up and going nuts, he just went with it.

The Raj/Penny moments were really sweet. I liked that even though nothing happened, they could forge a friendship that looks simply adorable and sweet and soft. Even Raj saying Penny was hitting on him was so sweet and fun. The moment Raj was crying on Penny's shoulder was fantastic. I could take a picture of it and stare at it.

This was fun to watch, you could just FEEL how much they all enjoyed the filming of the episode. I laughed merrily and overall happily, and it made me just remember why I stick with this sitcom, I hope future episodes are like that.

My only pet peeve was Leonard "loving his girlfriend so vastly much" and Penny "he is cuter now that I know he is rich" but I will take is more like a joke than an outright very serious consideration on their part.

ETA: Everywhere I go, people is just disliking this episode. Why is that? The first thing that came to mind after watching this was the fact that the actors and characters themselves seemed to enjoy and bounce off each other. But everyone has been so self- absorbed either on the own ship bias or conceptions about the characters that everything else just becomes invisible to one's interest. Even in the AV Club, where I thought I read the smartest and most honest, least self-absorbed comments have become victim of Community fans hating on TBBT because they have more views than the "better show". Even the reviewer there sounds just so bitter and bias :/

Or am I thinking backwards?

Sursonica

I did enjoy this episode a lot, even if I liked Pulled Groin better last week, but as I said, I really enjoyed Raj & Howard specially, they were amazing, specially Kunal . The last scene had me totally. "Don't cheap out on the tip, we know you're loaded now" and Bernadette's: "a little birdie told me he's in the placebo group" were my favourite lines of the night.

And I know what you mean about the reviewers I don't really know what's going on there TBH, and this TBBT hating by Community fans really pisses me off. You can enjoy your show or try to promote it without bashing another show only because it has more viewers...

marcopolo5

Being mean, selfish, greedy, obnoxious, naive or miserable are all part of good comedy according to Chuck, the comedy writer. I agree with him on that.

But I don’t agree with disgusting humor like the scene in Howard’s room with his mother in the toilet. To me, no no no that was GROSS! This episode is a lot better than the last one.

Another favourite of Chuck is dirty jokes. He had Howard up with this task but currently it’s Amy’s. I never appreciated this line of humor, others find it funny, I don’t, I think it’s cheap comedy. Howard was my least favorite and now Amy. I remember my brother been persuading me to watch 2.5 men for like 3 years now, well to be honest, I did watch an episode, the one with Charlie’s funeral.

and I think it’s ok for people to hate, I mean who wants life without a little drama? It’s boring.

fetch

Whatever, I loved this episode. The D&D scene in the beginning was awesome.

One thing that kind of bugs me is that they kind of switched Raj and Howard. Raj could never talk to girls but he wasn't a jerk, Howard was more of the inappropriate one, and now he's getting married and Raj gets that role.

Sage_

Poor episode IMO.

You've got Raj dating a deaf chick and not knowing what he's doing, when he's already dated a deaf chick in the past. (Although in retrospect he could have been lying about it in the other episode I guess.)
I would of imagined Raj would just not have to talk to her, rather than talk infront of her freely knowing she can't hear it. I mean if you imagine his condition is a serious phobia or something, it doesn't really make sense for it to be freed just by Penny (who is sometimes dishonest) telling him that she's deaf.
What would happen if someone told him another girl was deaf but she actually isn't?
Would he just play along? I doubt it.

Raj shouldn't act the way he does when talking with Emily. The original gag was that he had have a drink before talking to girls but there was a downside of him being promiscuous and maybe a little sleazy. He should of been all different when talking to a girl without being drunk.

Doesn't really make sense how Penny introduces Emily to Raj at her workplace. She usually tries to pretend she doesn't know the guys & tries to avoid them there. (Often giving them a hard time even)

Penny gets Howard to help her out with communicating with Emily.
Usually Penny dreads being alone with Howard, doesn't even like being around him when she's with the group.
She doesn't hesitate or really care that she's with him, it's a bit odd.

Emily doesn't really seem to have a personality whatsoever.
She's just a miscellaneous deaf girl. Which I don't mind that she's deaf or has a disability at all, but usually every character in the show has an interesting personality which conflicts humorously with the awkward main cast.
I suppose "deaf." is her personality, I don't like that. Doesn't anyone think it's a little insensitive?
I'm bugged that there's not much to it, but I imagine other people could he bothered that it's the only thing about her in this.

I would expect Sheldon to say something smartass about deaf people, or being deaf. He doesn't comment at all on it.

Then you got Sheldon dropping his OCD habits & patterns which is too out of character for my liking. (without any influence, maybe if something happened to cause it that wouldn't be so bad.)
Plus I thought Sheldon always orders the exact same food, the first thing he uses to the dice to decide is his lunch order. That stuck out pretty clearly for me.

And there's the gag at the start where Sheldon takes a shot at nerds, wtf was that? Sheldon wouldn't do something like that unless it's ironically against himself.

Howard doesn't seem normal either, doesn't seem perverted to me.
But like other people said in previous posts, it's possible his relationship with Bernadette has changed him.

You've got the out-of-nowhere Raj is rich & Howard knows fluent sign language.

When sheldon says he's rich, I was thinking maybe Raj isn't aware of it, but then everyone on the show assumes he does know about it. (Sheldon could of taken over and done the banking document thing without Raj. Sheldon is known for paying more attention to things than other people.)
Not really that bad, but that's my thought on that. Would of been forgiven if they showed Raj admit it to the guys, they could of thrown a couple jokes into that situation aswell. (Though I suspect they'll explain why Raj kept it secret in the next episode, aswell as why he got the money so suddenly.)

And Penny acts like a complete c***, it bugs me.
Like I thought she didn't care about having meaningless relationships. I dunno why she gets so caught up in it.

and Penny saying "you know you can do better", comeon, she's pretty hot and has no weird habits. (It's hardly even established that she's intentionally "gold digging")
Raj hasn't really been with a girl in a lasting relationship, it's implied that they are good for eachother with the whole deaf/can't talk thing. What's Penny's beef? and shouldn't Penny talk directly to Emily at all? Maybe they're not good friends but she could have tried considering they probably crossed paths atleast once during the few weeks.
I mean she contacts Raj's parents before talking to Emily? Seems messed up to me.

and then Penny is crying with Raj? Wtf. She wanted them apart didn't she?
Penny's usually fairly heartless towards the guys, this seems out of character to me.

All the inconsistencies aren't really worth the result, like someone said before we already had an episode with Howard dating a gold digger.
and the deaf jokes were cheap IMO.

The mustache gag was too similar to the goatee gag to get any amusement out of me.

I'm sick of the sexual jokes with Amy, seems too cheap.
There's no shock or substance to them anymore, she's just the character who makes awkward sex jokes now.

I'm not liking the concept of every one of the guys needing to have a girl, doesn't feel relatable to me.
The guys don't seem pathetic at all in this episode, when they do seem pathetic it really adds to the humor.
I wanted to see Sheldon or Leonard complain about something, it just makes a different atmosphere when they do that atleast once.

I much prefer when the main storyline is something that would only be suited to the characters.
The storyline is basically Raj dating a deaf girl, doesn't matter that it's Raj with the things that happen.
(Also doesn't matter that it's someone Penny knows, doesn't matter that Howard has to translate everything.)
This story could of been madlibbed from another show. I think that's the main thing that bugs me.

One last complaint, I think Emily was too attractive to be believable. She's almost hotter than the other particularly good looking women in other episodes where their good looks effects the storyline. (Sheldon's sister & Priya most notably.)

Excuse the wall of text (there's things I left out btw), I wanted to mention a couple things wrong with the episode but then kept thinking of more.
I didn't really mind that the episode was centered around Raj, and I can excuse some inconsistances in the series, but this episode certainly did annoy me.

WeBuiltThePyramids

I could respond to evey single one of your points, but I'm choosing a few that, no offence, I don't think makes much sense.

His selective mutism would go away if he knew she couldn't hear. He's not afraid to be around them, he's afraid to talk, if she can't hear it, then it's almost as if he's not talking. And why would Penny lie about that? What reason would she have?

I've always wondered why Penny doesn't get in trouble for talking to the guys so much when she's working. She's always over there with them, and when Sheldon took their order instead she got upset about it. I've never seen anything (she may have made a comment or two, but actions are louder than words) that showed that she pretended she didn't know them.

So because Howard's not her favorite guy, she was supposed to get Leonard or Sheldon, who don't know sign language, to help her? And she's gotten along with Howard more recently. She still doesn't like him as much as say Leonard, but if she needs him to communicate I don't think she'd go without him.

She was in one episode. She doesn't talk, so that eliminates us being able to hear her voice ("was she signing it sarcastically?") and know how exactly she speaks. A lot of the characterization of one episode guest stars comes from their voice, so her not talking would eliminate that.

Howard hasn't been that perverted for a while. Not to mention, he was looking at other women and saying it didn't matter where he got his motor running as long as he parked at the right garage? How is that not a little bit perverted?

That word offends me greatly, and technically there's a rule that says that you cannot use asterisks to hide words like that. It's called "going around the filter." Also, Penny has meaningless sex. I don't know of a single meaningless relationship aside from her rebound guys, but they're just 36 hours of sex anyway.

My friend once dated a guy who I thought was bad news. I wanted them apart. When they broke up, she was heartbroken because he used her. What was I supposed to do? What is Penny supposed to do? We supposed to laugh in their faces? If friends are sad, even if it's because they did something we don't agree with, we have to sympathize with them. And Penny makes a few dry comments, and lets them know when they've gone too far, but she does care about them.

Too attractive to be believeable...about what? That she'd like Raj? Raj is not ugly. She doesn't know Raj is a too big of a nerd because of the censoring that Howard did with the ASL, and pretty girls like nerdy guys. Penny likes Leonard, Missy liked Raj pretty much right away, and Priya does have an issue with Leonard being so nerdy, but it's not like she dumped him because of it.

Pomita

I have to say I agree with all of Nicole's points in her long reply (this is @WeBuiltThePyramids, right?)
The amount of nitpicking in the previous post about any episode of my favourite show really bugs me, though of course everyone is entitled to their opinions.

About this:

That's certainly one way to look at it. I think my problem wasn't with her being portrayed as 'not so nice' per se, but because the chain of events seemed to indicate that she initially did like Raj and was willing to date him (without knowing he's so rich), but then somehow she 'turned' into a gold-digger and dumped him when she knew he was going to be cut off by his parents. There seemed to be a bit of inconsistency there.

Anyway, I'm going to re-watch the episode again today, and hopefully will like it more.. as I said, I watched it when I was just back from my trip last night, dog-tired and nearly falling asleep.

topherkraz78

This is why I never dissect a TV show to death! I did not enjoy this episode like most others but it still did entertain me and for that alone the show deserves credit (to me anyway.) I don't care about the technical side of an episode. I don't care about the timeline differences. I don't even care about the little continuity mistakes. As long as the show doesn't make blatantly obvious mistakes which for me they don't. I laugh, I go into hysterics, I smile and I get happy when this show graces my screen. Isn't that enough? Well, for me it is. That is why you never see detailed critiques from me.

ennaxor

I was surprised at a lot of the dislike towards this episode. It's not one of my favorites, but I enjoyed it all around, and there are definitely a handful that I've liked a lot less. It almost makes me wonder if I'm liking it because of Katie, but then my favorite parts generally weren't directly related to her (like I said earlier, I really enjoyed Howard this week).

I honestly didn't even think of it being similar to the golddigger storyline involving Howard back in season 1 until it was pointed out by others. It's been implied before that Raj's family is well off, so I don't think it's any sort of cheat by the writers to reveal that he's rich. And Howard speaks a number of languages, so I'm fine with one of those being sign language.

Ideally, I would have liked to see the plot last a little longer, maybe stretched out over a couple of episodes instead of squeezed into one. But I still have no real complaints for how it ended up being done.