The Big Bang Theory season 6 episode 23 review: The Love Spell Potential
Kaci's latest disappointed review finds The Big Bang Theory beating the same inaccurate, dull drum about girls and geeks...
This review contains spoilers.
6.23 The Love Spell Potential
On this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory, the girls join in on a game of D&D, Raj and Lucy take a step forward in their relationship, and Sheldon and Amy have a much-needed conversation.
Oh, Big Bang Theory. Just when I give you credit with a gushy review like last week’s, you turn around and fall right back into the same traps — “I’ve never played D&D with a girl before…” “Girls don’t have sex with boys who play D&D” etc etc. Jokes like that aren’t funny and more than that, they’re just not true. I’ve played D&D in an all-girl group before. I know hundreds of geeky girls who would love to play with — and date! — geeky boys. This show’s geek reality simply does not reflect the actual reality of the geek community and frankly jokes like that just aren’t funny to begin with.
So. With that out of the way, here’s your basic rundown of the plot: originally, the girls were headed off to Vegas and the boys were having a D&D game in their absence. However, fate conspires against this and Raj gets called away by Lucy while Amy gets put on a no fly list, leaving the girls to come back to the apartment and play D&D with the guys.
Raj pushes Lucy to break out of her shyness shell, which upsets her, but then they have a nice moment where he admits that he really likes her and they kiss through a chain link fence. It’s cute and quirky in the way that all Raj-and-Lucy things are turning out to be, and I think it’s one of those things like Zooey Deschanel — you either love that quirkiness or it’s too much for you and you can’t tolerate it — so I don’t blame any of you who are finding all this to be a bit twee. It works for me, though, and I thought it was a cute storyline that juxtaposes nicely with Sheldon and Amy’s storyline in the episode.
After being called out on the fact that they’re not likely to have sex anytime soon, Amy runs out of the room, upset. Sheldon is sent to comfort her and she finally confronts him, asking if they will ever be intimate. He tells her that for him, their relationship is extremely intimate, and while he never really answers her question (didn’t he tell Leonard and Penny that he was working on that? Or did I just dream that? If he did, I feel like he could’ve mentioned that to Amy, too, but continuity has never been this show’s’ strong suit, so I guess that’s asking for too much) but he does offer to have sex with her via their D&D game. Frankly, I think it’s a revelation that Sheldon is even willing to… well, for lack of a better term, “talk dirty” to her in that way, so maybe it’s more progress than I’m giving it credit for.
In Sheldon/Amy and Raj/Lucy, you have two very socially awkward couples who are trying, desperately, to find a way to relate to each other and work together. Their neuroses are different, sure, but it’s a nice parallel between two couples taking a step forward in emotional intimacy without achieving very much physical intimacy. I seriously doubt it was intentional on the part of the writers, but it’s interesting to see two very different takes on sexless intimacy.
Like a lot of this season, this episode was a mixed bag, but I mostly walked away with negative feelings after the “girls aren’t geeks/don’t like geeks” round of jokes left a bad taste in my mouth. No thanks, writers. Find a new dead horse to beat.
Read Kaci’s review of the previous episode, The Proton Resurgence, here.
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