‘The Big Bang Theory’ review: Words with Stephen Hawking

Who ever knew that “Words with Friends” and Stephen Hawking would come together for a good “Big Bang Theory” episode? It was definitely entertaining, even if it did not really get us anywhere in regards to many of its characters. While Hawking (who was actually not present in physical form throughout the episode) was busy engaging in the popular game, we quickly found out instead that this episode was really all about Leonard and Penny instead.

The basic framework of this story was simple: Penny had finally decided to change up her life and go back to school, and Leonard quickly found a way to get himself all involved in her business when he didn’t need to. To be honest, this story was not really that funny mostly in that it was a road frequently traveled on the show already: we already know that Penny is insecure about her intelligence, and Leonard likes to “help” when he is really just trying to make himself feel better.

As for the Hawking story, there was a little bit of comedy here, even if most of it was about such obvious things as him having a voice box, with the one humor wrinkle here being that Hawking hates to lose, and Sheldon ended up throwing the game in order to ensure that their friendship found a way to stay intact. It was a new dimension of Dr. Cooper’s character, as he was forced to actually be nice to someone else for a change.

What did you think about this episode, and did you wish that there was more in the way of an actual appearance from Hawking?