Will watch later tonight. My big fear as that they'll make it an exposure show...

It's not that the exposure bothers me... A good entertainer can overcome that. I just wish Hollywood respected our art a little more... :-(

Yea the whole portraying it that close to the truth can be annoying.

They did acknowledge that the "dove pan" has a secret compartment, but didn't actually show it. Howard really should have checked that device before putting it away for so long!

This is the first time I've seen Howard actually doing magic (the other episode turned out to be a Sheldon-specific scam) and he's just not very good. He seems to have no presentation skills whatsoever!

Agreed. It was pretty consistent for his character.

I thought the whole prank thing was hilarious.

Oh yeah! I think one of the reasons they stay friends with Sheldon is that he's so much fun to mess with!

I laughed at the bit where the kid googled the milk pitcher while Howard was demonstrating it. That can be a real problem nowadays if a magician relies solely on store bought standard effects.

This is about the 4th Big Bang Theory episode that shows Howard doing magic.

On another episode in the past, Howard did a cane to silk (mishandled, for comedy purposes I assume), and also silk from TT. The silks had messages on them. He was asking a girl on a date (Sheldon's twin sister, Missy).

On a different episode, he produced a chain of silks from his sleeve or mouth. Either that, or he talked about it.

This was in addition to the episode where he did the card trick so he could stump Sheldon (and Sheldon came up with his own solution... a scanning wand).

And in addition to this recent episode where he did the magic show for his nephew, and used a dove pan, milk pitcher, and bare-handed card productions in various parts of the episode.

- Donald

Oh, and he also did a square circle (without any reveal) at the very beginning of the episode, to produce a jar with a goldfish in it.

- Donald

No reveal, but again it was very badly done. Howard's like a 9-year old who just got his first magic kit.

Which fits his character. I actually couldn't stand that character until he got with Bernadette. I hope they stay together.
Breaking them up would be about as stupid as whoever decided to cancel Dhani Tackles the Globe.

Well its personal... but I feel this show is going nowhere and is a lot less geeky than before.
Maybe those characters were not meant to have girlfriends...

I have quickly become a big fan of this show. It's one of the funniest in a long time to appear on a major network.

Same people who brought you 2 1/2 men.

Killer premise. The idea that the "wacky" neighbor is just normal and the meat of the cast is "wacky" is pretty cool take on the sit com.

I hope they live past the 5 year curse of people wanting more money that does in most good sit coms. They just become too expensive to produce after that.

I like Blossom as Sheldon's girlfriend thing. Her reaction to the tiara in this episode was priceless.

I want to give Howard some credit here. Sure, he may not be on par with professional magicians, but of all the characters on the show, he's the only one who's pursued the hobby of magic well into adulthood.

It's likely that all the friends (Leonard, Sheldon, Rajesh, and Howard) dabbled in magic tricks when they were younger, but Howard was the only one to stick with it. Through the years, Sheldon became resentful of magic, in that despite his great intelligence he is unable to explain away Howard's illusions, and he covers up that resentment by mocking the magician's profession. Rajesh seems to fit the role of an ideal spectator in cheering Howard on and never trying to hide his own amazement. And as for Leonard, on the surface he might seem a little indifferent towards magic, but he may just be one of those spectators who tries not to reveal his amazement (which is more appreciated than a Sheldon-like spectator, but not as fun as a Rajesh-like one).

Howard might not (yet) be a professional magician, but he can (and does) amaze his friends (including Sheldon, which Sheldon is loathe to admit), inevitably resulting in friends and family members requesting that he do kid's shows. And Howard occasionally obliges, since he enjoys displaying his skills and instilling a sense of wonder in his audience.

The only sense of wonder that Howard instills in his audience is that he leaves them wondering what he is doing. (The whole point of the joke is that he has NO skill at magic.)