Stuart Fails To Save The Universe Season 1 Episode 6 Recap & Review: “Corn Is Delicious”

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has spent its first season dropping its heroes into increasingly ridiculous alternate realities, but Season 1 Episode 6, “Spoiler: Corn Is Delicious,” may pull off the show’s strangest trick yet: putting Stuart Bloom somewhere he’s genuinely happy.

Sure, it’s a universe where humans evolved from cows, everyone has four stomachs, grass is food and romantic conversations can be interrupted by chewing cud.

But for Stuart (Kevin Sussman) and Denise (Lauren Lapkus), it’s close enough to normal that they’re ready to stop running.

Unfortunately, the multiverse isn’t prepared to let Stuart retire quite yet.

Episode 6 also brings Kunal Nayyar’s Raj Koothrappali back into the Big Bang Theory universe, strands Bert (Brian Posehn) and Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie) in an endless free fall between realities and, most importantly, finally forces Stuart to decide whether he’s willing to become the hero everyone keeps telling him he needs to be.

Welcome To The Cow Universe

Episode 5 ended with Denise casually eating a leaf, which turns out to have been our first clue about what’s different in the gang’s latest reality.

Human beings here evolved from cows.

They have four stomachs. They eat grass. They chew cud. There are other little differences — including a world without the designated hitter in baseball — but compared with the apocalyptic, authoritarian and magical realities the group has already survived, this one is remarkably ordinary. 

And Stuart is perfectly fine with that.

So is Denise.

For the first time in a while, the two can imagine simply living their lives instead of bouncing from one increasingly dangerous universe to another.

The absurdity reaches its peak when Stuart and Denise lie in bed discussing their future while simultaneously chewing their cud. Sussman and Lapkus have even described it as one of their most grounded scenes despite being instructed to convincingly regurgitate food into their mouths while performing it. 

That’s also where Stuart Fails to Save the Universe finds the heart underneath the joke.

Stuart doesn’t want greatness. He doesn’t particularly want adventure.

He wants Denise and a life that isn’t constantly trying to kill him.

And here, against all odds, he’s found both.

Stuart And Denise Decide They Could Stay

For Stuart, the Cow Universe is good enough.

That’s an important distinction.

He hasn’t repaired the multiverse. He hasn’t found the perfect reality. He hasn’t completed the mission everyone keeps insisting belongs to him.

He’s simply found somewhere he could be happy.

Stuart even proposes to Denise, albeit while regurgitating cud, because apparently romance works differently when your digestive system comes with four stomachs. 

It’s ridiculous visually, but emotionally it works.

After everything Stuart and Denise have experienced, settling for a universe that’s 99 percent normal doesn’t seem like cowardice. It feels almost reasonable.

Bert and Kripke disagree.

They aren’t willing to spend the rest of their lives eating grass, so they decide to leave Stuart and Denise behind and find another reality.

That goes extremely well.

Bert And Kripke Take The Long Way Down

Bert and Kripke activate the device without Stuart and Denise and promptly find themselves falling through what appears to be an endless void.

And they keep falling.

And falling.

The sequence gives Posehn and Bowie plenty of room to play off one another while suspended between realities, with Bert’s ability to annoy Kripke apparently surviving even the possible collapse of existence.

Behind the scenes, the sequence was considerably less relaxing.

Bowie told TVLine that the extensive wire work tossed him around far more aggressively than Posehn, including one drop of approximately 23 feet. Parts of the sequence were later reshot weeks afterward with additional dialogue and jokes. 

The result is exactly the sort of thing this spinoff has learned to do well: take characters who once spent most of their time standing around a comic book store or Caltech and throw them into completely absurd science-fiction set pieces without fundamentally changing who they are.

But while Bert and Kripke are falling, Stuart gets a visitor.

And he’s familiar.

Raj Returns To The Big Bang Theory Universe

Kunal Nayyar returns as Raj Koothrappali in “Corn Is Delicious,” despite the version of Raj we met in the series premiere being killed.

Welcome to the multiverse.

This universe’s Raj is very much alive — and he’s become something of a doomsday survivalist. 

More importantly, he has evidence that the multiverse catastrophe is getting worse.

Galaxies and star systems are beginning to disappear from the edges of existence. According to Raj’s calculations, the entire universe could cease to exist in only a few hundred years. 

It’s the perfect Stuart Fails joke.

In a conventional superhero story, someone announces that the universe is dying and our hero immediately springs into action.

Stuart hears “hundreds of years” and essentially realizes that this probably isn’t going to become his personal problem.

He’s not going to be around.

Neither is Denise.

Problem solved.

It’s incredibly selfish and also remarkably understandable.

If Raj had said they had three days, Stuart would probably act. Tell a tired middle-aged comic book store owner that existence will end centuries after he’s dead, however, and suddenly saving the universe doesn’t feel quite as urgent.

But Raj isn’t the only person who comes looking for Stuart.

Why Is Stuart The Only Person Who Can Save The Universe?

Another version of Stuart appears and finally gives our Stuart a clearer explanation of why all of this keeps falling on his shoulders.

Stuart Prime became quantum-entangled with the original incident that fractured reality.

That connection binds him to the machine.

Which means Stuart isn’t merely one possible person who could fix everything.

He’s the only one who can.

The other Stuart can’t take his place because he’s merely a projection from a reality that’s already collapsing.

Our Stuart isn’t thrilled by the revelation.

He’s spent much of his life viewing himself as a failure, and hopping through alternate universes has seemingly provided cosmic confirmation of that insecurity.

Everywhere he goes, some version of him still owns a comic book store.

Stuart isn’t Superman.

He isn’t Captain America.

He’s a broke former artist who runs a comic shop and somehow wound up responsible for all of existence.

Which, of course, is precisely why he’s such an interesting choice to save it.

Denise Finally Gets Through To Stuart

Denise doesn’t tell Stuart that he’s secretly extraordinary.

She gives him something better.

She changes his definition of a hero.

Being heroic isn’t about having powers or being destined for greatness. It’s about choosing to make life better for somebody else.

For Stuart, “somebody else” just happens to mean everyone who currently exists — and everyone who might ever exist — across every remaining universe. 

And Stuart finally gets it.

Not because suddenly he believes he’s special.

Because being ordinary doesn’t relieve him of responsibility.

That’s an important distinction, and it’s probably the strongest character moment Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has given its title character so far.

The series began by making Stuart the hero because that was funny.

Six episodes in, it’s beginning to make the argument that Stuart might actually become one.

Stuart Fails To Save The Universe Episode 6 Ending Explained

So how do you save existence when you've lost the machine capable of jumping between realities?

Apparently, you order another one from the back of a comic book.

The alternate Stuart suggests obtaining a replacement, and delivery man Gary (Tommy Walker) eventually arrives with what turns out to be a quantum echo of the original device. 

Stuart and Denise can continue the mission.

Even better, their next jump intersects with Bert and Kripke's seemingly endless fall, allowing the four members of the group to reunite and escape together.

They land safely.

The surroundings look normal.

After everything they've endured, perhaps they've finally reached a universe without some ridiculous reality-altering catch.

Of course they haven't.

Everyone in this universe can read everyone else's minds.

The group realizes it almost immediately when Kripke's private thoughts become public, setting up another wonderfully uncomfortable reality for Episode 7. 

And with that, Stuart's brief attempt at retirement is officially over.

He's back to saving the universe.

Whether he's any good at it remains another question entirely.

“Corn Is Delicious” Finally Makes Stuart The Hero

“Corn Is Delicious” works because the Cow Universe itself isn't particularly threatening.

That's the point.

After spending five episodes watching these characters desperately escape one bizarre reality after another, the show finally gives Stuart something much harder to leave:

a good life.

That makes his eventual decision matter.

If Stuart were escaping another apocalypse, continuing the mission would simply be self-preservation. Here, saving the universe requires him to voluntarily walk away from safety, happiness and a future with Denise because people he'll never meet need him to do it.

That's heroism on an appropriately Stuart-sized scale.

The episode doesn't suddenly transform him into a fearless action hero, either. He's still insecure. He's still selfish. He's still looking for the easiest possible way out.

But Denise helps him understand that heroism doesn't require him to stop being Stuart.

It only requires him to choose differently when it matters.

The return of Raj is fun fan service, Bert and Kripke's endless free fall is appropriately ridiculous, and the Cow Universe may be one of the show's funniest concepts yet.

But the best thing Episode 6 accomplishes is considerably simpler:

It finally makes the title Stuart Fails to Save the Universe feel less like a foregone conclusion.

Maybe Stuart can actually do this.

“Corn Is Delicious” balances some of the show's most absurd comedy with its strongest Stuart and Denise material yet. Kunal Nayyar's return is a welcome bonus, but Stuart finally choosing to accept responsibility gives the episode its real weight.

What Happens Next In Stuart Fails To Save The Universe?

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe Season 1 Episode 7, titled “Spoiler: Dexys Midnight Runners Get a Royalty Payment,” premieres Thursday, September 3 exclusively on HBO Max. 

After landing in a reality where everyone can read minds, keeping anything secret may be considerably harder than finding another universe.