I think this episode would have been a lot better if the Raj/Howard plot had been logically merged with the earworm plot.

For a brief moment, I honestly thought it was that. The tune is similar enough that hearing the opening credits was jarring.

Both the romantic and friendship-oriented "official" pairings tend to be the least watchable — in addition to the couples mentioned, pretty much all the gold has been mined from the Howard-Raj friendship and the Leonard-Sheldon "friendship".

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw the Penny/Sheldon plot as unnecessary. I prefer when they snipe with playful but still very pointed barbs, not when it's just the story going "Awww, their friendship is soooo unlikely!"

A late comment, having just watched the episode.

Yeah, the plane line was bad — what we should have had, either before or instead of the department-store cell conversation, is a flashback to her childhood on the plane with her dad. That would have started a nice emotional arc concluding with dying dad saving her life at the end.

False, Mr. Greene! But I also think this movie is underrated. Probably because I'm a sucker for time travel movies, even as I've never seen one whose plot I found entirely satisfying.

Jumping in quite late here, but I think the vast prevalence of joking-as-excuse-for-bigotry is why shambolic reacted that way. People who tell racist jokes often act like "racism" and "humor" are somehow non-overlapping. Like, if something is an attempt at humor then it "wasn't racist", hence the argument that "I was…

I don't think any of the in-universe Sherlock fans are particularly insulting, though I might change my mind on a re-watch. Perhaps the most annoying one to me is Anderson as a quasi-fan in The Empty Hearse, because I preferred him as a foil.

I'm amazed no one caught this, so belated or not, I must do my duty. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons are NOT single-sex schools, that's only in the movie. Students of the "opposite" sex at each school are explicitly mentioned in the book, if only in passing.

I'm not crazy about the character but I still found the death problematic. Badly or not, she's still a stand-in for the fandom.