S01E04 - The Luminous Fish Effect
No: 4 |
Season: 1
Episode: 4 |
Air Date: 2007-10-15 |
Runtime: mins
Summary
Sheldon's mother is called to intervene when he delves into numerous obsessions after being fired for being disrespectful to his new boss.
Director and Writers
Director: Mark Cendrowski
Writers: Story by: Chuck Lorre & Bill Prady / Teleplay by: David Litt & Lee Aronsohn
Script
Script: S01E04 - The Luminous Fish Effect
Quotes
Mary: I tell you, I love the boy to death but he has been difficult since he fell outta me at the K-Mart.
Penny: How come you didn't go into work today?
Sheldon: I'm taking a sabbatical, because I won't kowtow to mediocre minds.
Penny: So you got canned, huh?
Sheldon: Theoretical physicists do not get canned... but, yeah.
Mary: (Laying out a pair of pants) You put those on.
Sheldon: What for?
Mary: Because you're going to go down to your office, you're going to apologise to your boss and get your job back.
Sheldon: No.
Mary: I'm sorry, did I start that sentence with the words "If it pleases your highness"?
Dr. Gablehauser: (Hinting to Sheldon that he got his job back) Sheldon, shouldn't you be working?
Penny: Oh, my God, this is the best cobbler I've ever had.
Mary: It was always Sheldon's favorite. You know what the secret ingredient is?
Penny: Love?
Mary: Lard.
Sheldon: The last department party, Professor Finkleday cornered me and talked about spelunking for 45 minutes.
Leonard: Yes, I was there.
Sheldon: Do you know what's interesting about caves, Leonard?
Leonard: What?
Sheldon: Nothing.
Sheldon: I'm not going to apologize. I didn't say anything that wasn't true.
Mary: (Firmly) Now you listen here, I have been telling you since you were four years old, it's okay to be smarter than everybody else, but you can't go around pointing it out.
Sheldon: Why?
Mary: (All but yelling) Because people don't like it! Remember all the ass-kickings you got from the neighbor kids?
(Drops a pair of shoes down)
Mary: Now let's get crackin'! Shower, shirt, shoes, and let's shove off!
Sheldon: How's this: Pleased to meet you, Dr. Gablehauser. How fortunate for you that the University's chosen to hire you despite the fact that you've done no original research in 25 years and instead have written a series of popular books that reduced the great concepts of science to a series of anecdotes, each one dumbed down to accommodate the duration of an average bowel movement... mahalo.
Leonard: Mahalo's a nice touch.
Sheldon: There's some value to taking a multivitamin, but the human body can only absorb so much. What you're buying here are the ingredients for very expensive urine.
Mary: (tucking Sheldon into bed) I'm very proud of you, honey; you showed a lot of courage today.
Sheldon: Thanks, Mom.
(she starts to leave)
Sheldon: Mom.
Mary: Mm-hm?
Sheldon: Is Dr. Gablehauser going to be my new daddy?
Mary: We'll see. Sleep tight.
Mary: Leonard, the Lord never gives us more than we can handle. Thankfully He blessed me with two other children who are dumb as soup.
Mary: He gets his temper from his daddy. He's got my eyes. All that science stuff, oh, that comes from Jesus.
Mary: You know how your daddy used to say that you can only fish for so long before you gotta throw a stick of dynamite in the water?
Sheldon: Yes.
Mary: (Opens Sheldon's wardrobe and starts to get his clothes out) Well, I'm done fishing.
Sheldon: You know, I've been thinking about time travel again.
Leonard: Why? Did you hit a roadblock with invisibility?
Sheldon: Put it on the back burner. Anyway, it occurs to me, if I ever did perfect a time machine I would just go into the past and give it to myself, thus eliminating the need for me to invent it in the first place.
Leonard: Interesting.
Sheldon: Yeah, it really takes the pressure off.
Leonard: (He and an older woman come upstairs) Thanks for coming on such short notice.
Mary: (Quietly) You did the right thing calling.
Leonard: I didn't know what to do. He's lost all focus. Every day he's got a new obsession.
(They enter the apartment and see Sheldon at work at a loom)
Leonard: This is a particularly disturbing one.
Sheldon: (He turns around on that and is shocked to see her) Mommy?
Mary: (Walks up and hugs him) Hi baby!
(as she does, Sheldon looks at Leonard and mouths, "You called my mother?" to which Leonard has a guilt look on his face)
Leonard: Howard brought a date?
Sheldon: A plausible explanation is that his work in robotics has made an incredible leap forward.
Mary Cooper: You know what the secret ingredient is?
Penny: Love?
Mary Cooper: Lard!
Mary Cooper: That looks awful fancy. What is that?
Sheldon: It's my idea of what DNA would look like in a silicon-based life form.
Sheldon: But intelligently designed by a creator, right?
Howard: Hey, what up, science bitches?
Sheldon: The thing about tomatoes - and I think you'll really enjoy this - is they're shelved with the vegetables, but they're technically a fruit.
Penny: Mm, interesting.
Sheldon: Isn't it?
Penny: No, I mean what you find enjoyable.
Leonard: So... fish.
Sheldon: I read an article about Japanese scientists who inserted DNA from luminous jellyfish into other animals and I thought, hey, fish night lights.
Sheldon: I can't believe he fired me.
Leonard: Well, you did call him a glorified high-school science teacher whose last successful experiment was lighting his own farts.
Sheldon: In my defense, I prefaced that by saying, "with all due respect."
Sheldon: Let me do the math for you. This car weighs, lest say 4000 pounds. Now add 140 for me, 120 for you.
Penny: 120?
Sheldon: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I insult you? Is your body mass somehow tied into your self-worth?
Penny: Well, yeah.
(to Raj)
Mary: I made chicken. I hope that isn't one of the animals that you people think is magic.
Koothrappali: Oh, God, look at this buffet. I love America.
Leonard: Don't they have buffets in India?
Koothrappali: Of course, but it's all Indian food. Try and find a bagel in Mumbai to save your life. Schmear me.
Leonard: What happened to your scrambled egg research?
Sheldon: Oh, that was a dead end. Scrambled eggs are as good as they're ever going to be.
Sheldon: There are a lot of advantages to buying in bulk. For example, I noticed that you purchase your tampons one-month supply at a time.
Penny: What?
Sheldon: Think about it. It's a product that doesn't spoil and you're going to be needing them for at least the next 30 years.
Penny: You want me to buy 30 years worth of tampons?
Sheldon: Well, 30, 35... When did your mother go into menopause?
Penny: I'm not talking about this with you.
Sheldon: This is a natural human process, and we're talking about statistically significant savings. Now, if you assume 15 tampons per cycle and a 28-day cycle... Are you fairly regular?
Leonard: Here comes our new boss. Be polite.
Dr. Gablehauser: (approaching) Hi, fellas. Eric Gablehauser.
Howard: (shaking hands) Howard Wolowitz.
Dr. Gablehauser: Howard. Nice to meet you.
(turning to Sheldon)
Dr. Gablehauser: And you are?
Sheldon: (shaking hands) An actual real scientist.
(turning to Leonard)
Sheldon: How was that?
Mary Cooper: I remember one summer when he was 13. He built a small nuclear reactor in the shed and told everybody he was gonna provide free electricity for the whole town. Well, the only problem was, he had no what you call fissionable materials. Anyway, when he went on the internets to get some, a man from the government come by and sat him down real gentle and told him it's against the law to have yellow-cake uranium in a shed.
Penny: What happened?
Mary Cooper: Well, poor boy had a fit. Locked himself in his room and built a sonic death ray.
Leonard: A death ray?
Mary Cooper: Well that's what he called it. Didn't even slow down the neighbor kids. It pissed our dog off to no end.
Summer: (to Howard, after he introduces her to the others as his 'special lady friend") I told you, touching is extra.
Leonard: Hey, how did it go?
Sheldon: I got my job back.
Leonard: Really? What happened?
Sheldon: I'm not quite sure. It involves a part of the human experience that has always eluded me.
Leonard: That narrows it down.
Mary: (praying before dinner; aside to Raj and Howard) Now, after a moment of silent meditation, I'm gonna end with "In Jesus' Name," but you two don't feel any obligation to join in. Unless, of course, the Holy Spirit moves you.
Sheldon: (reluctantly apologizing to Dr. Gablehauser) As you know, several weeks ago in our first encounter, we may have gotten off on the wrong foot when I called you an idiot. And I just wanted to say that I was wrong... to point it out.
Mary: Honey, why did you get a loom?
Sheldon: I was working with luminous fish and I thought... hey. Loom.
Sheldon: Mom, what are you doing here?
Mary: Leonard called me.
Sheldon: I know, but why?
Leonard: Because one of the great minds of the 21st Century is raising glow-in-the-dark fish and weaving serapes.
Sheldon: This is not a serape. This is a poncho! A serape is open to the sides, a poncho is closed, this is a poncho! And neither is a reason to call someone's mother!
Penny: When one door closes another one opens.
Sheldon: No it doesn't. Not unless the two doors are connected by relays or there are motion sensors involved.
Notes and Trivia
Mary Cooper, Sheldon's mom, reveals Sheldon was born in a K-mart.
On Dr. Gablehauser's shelf are two photographs. One is of him shaking hands with Bill Clinton. The other shows him talking to President George Bush.
Sheldon weaving on the loom is mentioned again in The Toast Derivation (2011), where it is revealed that he made matching serapes for Leonard, Howard and Raj, the latter most of which who still wears it when the weather gets cold.
This is the first look into Sheldon's bedroom. The main items seen include: Red lightning print, framed, to the left of the closet; Green and black photo or image, framed, to the left of the bedroom door; Seville laundry sorter behind the bedroom door; Building the Golden Gate Bridge poster behind the bedroom door; Golden Gate Bridge 3-D metal rendering on the dresser; Wicker basket on the dresser; Media drawers on the dresser; Triple Deception (1956) posters over the dresser/bookshelf; Sterilite black storage crates on the bookshelf; Apogee desk lamp on the nightstand; Blue Brentwood bedrest/reading pillow on the bed; Comic: Green Lantern #8 (1961) over the bed; Comic: Strange Adventures #140 (1962) over the bed; Comic: Superman #197 (1967) over the bed; Comic: DC Special #17 featuring Green Lantern (May 1975 issue) over the bed; Comic: Batman #592 (December 1993), in the bins on the shelf; Comic: Superman: Man of Steel #29 (January 1992 issue), in the bins on the shelf; Above the bed: blueprint of the Golden Gate bridge.
Title Reference: Sheldon produces glow-in-the-dark fish in this episode.
Goofs
None
Cast
| Johnny Galecki | Leonard Hofstadter |
| Jim Parsons | Sheldon Cooper |
| Kaley Cuoco | Penny |
| Simon Helberg | Howard Wolowitz |
| Kunal Nayyar | Raj Koothrappali |
| Laurie Metcalf | Mary Cooper |
| Mark Harelik | Dr. Eric Gablehauser |
| Sierra Edwards | Summer |
