Genshiken 09
Slow episode but a good character focus on Madarame and to a lesser extend, Saki. The episode follows the simple setup of Madarame and Saki being alone in the Genshiken club room, with Madarame trying every which way to start an conversation with Saki and keep her from cracking.
Saki, on the other hand, doesn’t really notice Madarame’s attempts at social conversation as she’s pretty much just reading some manga to kill time. What followed was Saki actually enjoying the manga (and gasp, in a sense slowly become part of Genshiken) while Madarame royally messes up time and time again. It’s interesting to note that only at the end of the episode, where Saki accdentially punched Madarame does she sort of warm up to him… only for him to “run away” as stomach problems and his view on Saki stop any further development of friendship.
Madarame, our basic star of the episode, was without an doubt funny as hell! The highlight has to be when he kept imagining life as an dating sim, with simple two choice answers. SD Saki and “cool” Madarame were also hilarious to see (this is all in the dating sim “world”), but also kind of scary too. I say scary because I can totally relate with Madarame as I’ve played an dating sim or two (or ten) and do something think of how “simple” the world would be with pre-determined answers for you. This also relates to how just how social-inept Madarame really is, as he only has dating sims to sorta fall back on to try to foresee how his actions might make Saki react. Of course, none of them would happen in reality 
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode as it hit the otaku in me, but I can see how others might not like this one as much compared to other previous episodes. Also, if one is not a fan of either Madarame or Saki a lot of people will probably skip this episode entirely; probably only Genshiken fans or “hard-core” otakus will really enjoy this one. All I can say is, if one has been enjoying Genshiken so far consider continuing and watch this episode… if one is looking for the usual Genshiken cast hijinks, unfortunately it will not be found much in this installment of the series. However, if one is looking for something different from the norm and can enjoy two person(s) only stage time give this episode a shot. Who knows, one might come out as a Madarame fan afterwards