- Penny wants to help her brother get a job with her company. Sheldon learns of a machine that will help him understand human emotions. Raj reunites some of his old girlfriends to figure out why he is still single.
- Sheldon is accused by his friends of being insensitive once again, this and most other times so accused because he doesn't read emotional cues in others. As Bernadette has heard that scientists at MIT are developing a machine that can accurately read the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger and excitement in people, Howard manages to get a prototype of the machine through his MIT contacts for Sheldon. Sheldon learns the machine does what it is intended to do, leading to him having mixed emotions about what it does for his life. The machine is the cause of an argument between Leonard and Penny over Leonard's decision on what to do with their spare bedroom, and Penny telling Leonard that Randall will be staying with them while she tries to get him a job with the pharmaceutical company. Meanwhile, Raj confides in his friends that the woman that he has been dating broke up with him for unspecified reasons. Feeling insecure, Raj decides to hold a focus group of sorts with some of his old girlfriends - deaf Emily, Emily the doctor, Lucy and Claire - to find out what went wrong in their respective relationships, the session against the advice of his friends who believe that all it will accomplish is oversensitive Raj being hurt by the criticisms. Beyond if Raj does get any useful information from the session, he may at least discover how determined he is to having a significant other in his life in the long term.—Huggo
- When the gang tells Sheldon he doesn't know how other people are feeling. so he gets a machine that can determine a person's specific emotion. When Penny tells Leonard her brother, the convicted drug dealer will be staying with them for undetermined amount of time, he says it's OK. But when Sheldon has the machine with him, says that Leonard is not OK with her brother staying with them which causes Leonard and Penny to have a spat. Raj needing to know why his relationships don't work out, decides to invite his exes over to tell him why.—rcs0411@yahoo.com
- Raj gets asked about his love life and he admits that he broke up with his girlfriends because she didn't want to see him anymore. Sheldon insults Raj by comparing him to a virgin Isaac Newton. Then Raj really starts to wonder why women don't really like him. Amy brings up the fact that a group at M.I.T. has developed a detector that correctly reads human emotional levels 85% of the time. Sheldon decides to borrow one to help test it and help him with human interaction though he wants to use it to determine the fears of his enemies so he can destroy them. Since Howard has influence at MIT, he offers to help get the machine for Sheldon.
The two apartment couples are discussing what to do with Sheldon's old room. Sheldon suggests a train room; an idea which no one else likes. Also, M.I.T. is sending Sheldon a prototype emotion detector to do a beta test. Raj wants to use it to understand why women keep dumping him. Howard suggests that he just send out a survey to them. Raj decides to invite them all over as a focus group which everyone else thinks is a bad idea. Also Penny announces that she invited her brother out to help him find a job at her dad's request without telling Leonard. Leonard is not happy and thinks that he'll just have a new market to sell his drugs in. Sheldon shows up with his emotion detector that reads human reactions and displays the results on his phone. It can only detect happy, sad, angry and excited. Raj tells everyone that he is going to have his ex-girlfriend focus group at his apartment to help improve himself. The rest think he is just going to get emotionally hurt. Sheldon uses the detector on Leonard explaining that he is angry about his brother-in-law staying with them which starts a fight with Penny. Leonard is angry that Penny decided to have her drug peddler, ex-convict brother stay with them without asking him. And if he gets a job, he may never move out. Penny retorts that she needs to help her family, she should not be needing Leonard's permission for the same and if her brother gets a job, he will get his own apartment, which Leonard doubts.
At Raj's apartment, he is meeting with deaf Emily (Katie Leclerc), Lucy (Kate Micucci), Emily (Laura Spencer) and Claire (Alessandra Torresani) with Howard interpreting for the first Emily. Lucy broke up with him because he forced her into uncomfortable situations like this one. Raj agrees that he can be insensitive about other people's boundaries. Claire broke up with him because she found him extremely needy and vain. Raj then makes a new rule of only one comment per girlfriend. Emily is not comfortable with sharing details about their relationship in front of Howard. It is implied that she had problems with him in bed. Raj told Howard to leave, though he didn't. Amy has made dinner and calls it beef loaf because Sheldon is unhappy with the non-specificity of meat loaf. Sheldon is not happy with the device. He has always had problems recognizing people's emotions, but the device made it so much more real. Sheldon admits that Amy is something of a sad sack, but he loves her just the way she is.
Deaf Emily being interrupted by Howard says that she thought Raj was great, but he was so dominated by his parents. Emily called him a "mama's boy"; however, Raj wrote down "loving son". Also, all the women found someone new and better and they learned from Raj what they didn't want in a man. Deaf Emily traded him in for a "Bruce Wayne", another rich guy. Emily also went through the same and met a great, loving and caring guy after breaking up with Raj. Even Howard says that he had to suffer through Raj to land Bernadette. Howard then came to Raj's defense, pointing that it is great that he is willing to improve himself. Lucy tries to console Raj, and Raj says that he is willing to take her back, when she had no intention of getting back together with him.
Sheldon returns to apartment 4A and is sorry that he started a fight between the Hofstadters. Penny has decided to tell her dad that it's not a good time for her brother to visit.
Raj thanks the women, but considers it a waste of time since he just ended up beating himself up. Howard says that that is his job. Howard suggests that if he breaks up with Bernadette that in thirty years the two of them can try to get together. They could attend all the gay pride parades together.
Title reference: Sheldon's machine prototype to reveal emotions.
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