The Hawking Excitation

"The Hawking Excitation" is the 21st episode of the fifth season of The Big Bang Theory that first aired on CBS on April 5, 2012.

After learning that Stephen Hawking is coming to lecture at Caltech, Howard (Simon Helberg) is hired to maintain his wheelchair equipment.

The final scene of the episode features a cameo appearance by cosmologist Stephen Hawking, the third high-profile guest star in season 5.

For his second task, Sheldon is forced to wear a French maid costume, that Howard originally bought for his girlfriend Bernadette, in the cafeteria at Caltech.

[5] Hawking has appeared on comedy television shows previously: he did the voice-over for cartoon versions of himself in Futurama,[6][7] and in four episodes of The Simpsons.

[8][9][10][11] On March 9, 2012, Bill Prady announced that a "super-secret, super-cool guest star" would appear on the show.

[16] Hawking was a fan of The Big Bang Theory and requested to watch a rehearsal of the episode after filming his scene.

[19] Hawking is the third high-profile guest star to appear in season 5,[16] after Mike Massimino[20] and Leonard Nimoy.

Hawking was shown in a pre-recorded video segment at the Big Bang Theory panel at Comic-Con 2013.

[26] It aired at 8 p.m. alongside American Idol on Fox, Missing on ABC, NBC's Community and a repeat episode of The Vampire Diaries on The CW.

Sava complimented Hawking's line, "it was quite a boner", calling it "the big pay-off of the story" and enjoyed the scene with Bernadette.

However, Sava also said the "personal slave" storyline was a "classic sitcom plot" and noted that it was "the second episode in a row with no Amy".

Shaffer described the final scene with Hawking as "fun" and "effective", although claimed some of the subplots "were only so-so".

Pierson thought Helberg "did a nice job showing vulnerability" as Howard, but that the episode overall was "one utterly predictable, unimaginative joke after another.