The gang's having dinner at the Cheesecake Factory when Raj asks everyone if they're coming to his murder mystery dinner party since none of them have RSVPed yet. Leonard says he's coming, but Raj knows it's a lie because the party was actually a week earlier and no one came. Since everyone's tired of his dinner parties, Raj has a new idea: An MIT-style scavenger hunt. Everyone's in, even Sheldon. Which is good, because Raj makes the whole thing seem very exciting.
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| He's a master showman. |
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| He's not happy about it. |
The first puzzle is a picture puzzle of the comic book shop. Penny solves it quickly, but Sheldon refuses to go until they've assembled the entire puzzle. On the way to the store, Bernadette's hyper-competitive side comes out and she screams at Leonard not to slow down for birds because they can fly. Amy and Howard wind up alone together for the first time and struggle to find something they have in common; they both love Neil Diamond.
The second puzzle comes directly from the Riddler (or at least a standee version of him). Despite arriving third, Sheldon solves the puzzle first, while Bernadette and Leonard leave last, which really ticks her off. Nevertheless, two minutes after they arrive, everyone's gone.
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| Except Stuart. |
As the scavenger hunt goes on, Leonard wants to quit because he thinks he upset Penny, but Bernadette tells him not to because Penny thinks he's a pussy(which is something she made up just to motivate him). Amy and Bernadette sing a bunch of Neil Diamond songs. And Sheldon is vindicated as one of the puzzles leads to a bowling alley, and he brought his own ball.
The last puzzle leads to Sheldon's spot on the couch, but when they get back to the apartment, the coin's not there. Instead, they find a very smug Raj.
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| A smoking jacket and brandy makes everyone look smug. |
What I Liked
-Everyone bashes Princeton. Everyone always bashes Princeton. Except on Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
-Raj's smoke bombs. Smoke bombs make everything seem more exciting.
-One of the puzzles is a set of coordinates that leads to a bowling alley. They actually do lead to a real life bowling alley in Pasadena. I like when they don't just 555 something.
-Part of the reason Raj made everyone a winner was because he didn't know who would be on Penny's team.
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| It was Sheldon, and in the end he was the only one who felt like a winner. Good job, Raj. |
-Amy thinks Howard is too old to have Weird Al on his mp3 player. No one is too old for Weird Al.
-A whole bunch of Amy and Howard singing Neil Diamond songs. Ugh.
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| All the air kicks in the world can't make it better. |
I ran a small scavenger hunt during my second year of university. It wasn't nearly as involved as the big, fancy ones that have corporate sponsorship and whatnot, but it was still fun. The winner got a trophy I made out of garbage. It may not seem comparable, but I think it gives me a bit of insight into just exactly how much of a pain in the ass it can be to write clues. Even though the scavenger hunt itself wasn't real, the clues were. Good job, Big Bang Theory writers.
This episode stands as proof that it's totally possible to include every character in an episode that only has a single plot line. Hell, they even managed to include Stuart for a minute or two. The whole thing was a lot more cohesive than the show is when the do two or three plots. They still split everyone up into groups whose interactions weren't always related to each other, but there was a singular goal driving them all, and it made the show a lot more satisfying.
Of course, the episode wasn't as funny as the first two of the season were, but I'm not sure if that's a consequence of the plot, or just the fact that I don't think people singing along to Neil Diamond is funny. Regardless, this was still a better episode than last week, and still way the hell funnier than most shows on TV... even most sitcoms.
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