S01E09 - The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization

No: 9  |  Season: 1   Episode: 9  |  Air Date: 2008-03-17  |  Runtime: mins

I admit, that spherical chicken joke, that was hilarious. But it was straight downhill from there.

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Summary

Leonard and Sheldon's friendship is put to the test when Leonard wants to present a paper they co-authored at a physics convention, but Sheldon doesn't.

Director and Writers

Director: Joel Murray
Writers: Story by: Bill Prady & Stephen Engel / Teleplay by: Chuck Lorre & Lee Aronsohn & Dave Goetsch

Script

Script: S01E09 - The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization

Quotes

Leonard: Hang on. Hang on. Do you not realize what we just did?
Penny: Yeah, you turned your stereo down with your laptop.
Leonard: Ah, no, we turned our stereo down by sending a signal around the world via the internet.
Penny: Ohhhh. You know, you can just get one of those universal remotes from Radio Shack. They're really cheap.

Leonard: What is this letter doing in the trash?
Sheldon: Well, it may be that a trashcan spontaneously formed around the letter, but Occam's Razor suggests that someone threw it away.

Penny: (as Sheldon and Leonard fight) Is this usually how these physics things go?
Howard: More often than you'd think.

Leonard: Are there any questions?
Sheldon: Yeah. What the hell was that?

Leonard: You can not blow up my head with your mind.
Sheldon: Then I'll settle for an aneurysm.

Penny: So you and Leonard, huh? A little misunderstanding?
Sheldon: A little misunderstanding? A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...

Penny: What is this?
Leonard: Oh, that is the bottled city of Kandor.
Penny: Uh-huh.
Leonard: You see, Kandor was the capital city of Krypton, until it was shrunk by Braniac before Krypton was destroyed. It was then rescued by Superman.
Penny: Oh. It's nice.
Leonard: It's a lot cooler when girls aren't looking at it.

Howard: Gentlemen, I am now about to send a signal from this laptop through our local ISP, racing down fibre-optic cable at the speed of light to San Francisco, bouncing off a satellite in geosynchronous orbit to Lisbon, Portugal, where the data packets will be handed off to submerged transatlantic cables terminating in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and transferred across the continent via microwave relays back to our ISP and the X10 receiver attached to this
(clicks mouse, lamp switches on)
Howard: lamp.
(the others cheer and clap)
Howard: .

Penny: Howard, would you like to explain to me why your Facebook page has a picture of me sleeping on your shoulder captioned "me and my girlfriend"?
Howard: Uh-oh, here comes "the talk".

Sheldon: You know, in the future, when we're disembodied brains in jars, we're going to look back on this as eight hours well wasted.
Raj: I don't want to be in a jar. I want my brain in an android body... eight feet tall and ripped.
Howard: I'm with you. I just have to make sure if I'm a synthetic human, I'd still be Jewish. I promised my mother.
Raj: I suppose you could have your android penis circumcised... but that's something your rabbi will have to discuss with the manufacturer.
Sheldon: Not to mention, you'd have to power down on Saturdays.

Leonard: See?
Penny: No.
Sheldon: Someone in Sichuan province, China, is using his computer to turn our lights on and off.
Penny: Oh, that's handy. Here's a question... Why?
Boys together: Because we can.

Penny: (At their mailboxes) . Get anything good?
Sheldon: Uh, just the latest copy of Applied Particle Physics Quarterly.
Penny: Oh, you know, that is so weird that yours came and mine didn't.
(Sheldon looks confused)
Penny: It was a joke.

Sheldon: I wonder if I've been experiencing physiological manifestations of some sort of unconscious emotional turmoil.
Penny: Wait, what?
Sheldon: I couldn't poop this morning.

Sheldon: Was the apple falling on Newton's head, was that just an anecdote?
Leonard: You are not Isaac Newton.
Sheldon: No, no, that's true. Gravity would have been apparent to me without the apple.
Leonard: You cannot possibly be that arrogant.
Sheldon: You continue to underestimate me, my good man.

Howard: I just checked the house, there must be twenty, twenty-five people in there.
Leonard: Wow.
Penny: Is that good?
Leonard: In physics, twenty-five is Woodstock.

Penny: Oh, wow, a paisley shirt.
Leonard: Uh-huh, it goes with my corduroy suit.
Penny: If you mean it should end up in the same place, then I agree.

(after Leonard and Sheldon's brawl)
Howard: You won't believe it.
Raj: Someone got the whole thing on their cell phone and put it on YouTube.
Leonard: What?
Sheldon: Well, who would do that?
Howard: That would be me.

Leonard: You know what? I am tired of your condescension. Maybe I didn't go to college when I was eleven, like you. Maybe I got my doctorate when I was twenty-four instead of sixteen. But you are not the only person who is smarter than everybody else in this room!
(Sheldon nods pointedly at the audience)
Leonard: No offense. And I am clearly not the only person who is tormented by insecurity and has an ego in need of constant validation.
Sheldon: So you admit you're an egotist?
Leonard: Yes!
(turning to the audience)
Leonard: My name is Dr. Leonard Hofstadter and I could never please my parents, so I need to get all of my self-esteem from strangers like you. But *he's worse*!

Penny: (picking out clothes from Leonard's closet) Okay. Well, let's just see what else you have. Okay, here, take this, and this, and this, and these...
Leonard: Is this all stuff you want me to try on?
Penny: No, this is the stuff I want you to throw out. Seriously, don't even give it to charity; you won't be helping anyone.

Leonard: We have to do this.
Sheldon: No, we have to take in nourishment, expel waste and breathe in enough oxygen to keep our cells from dying. Everything else is purely optional.

Sheldon: I'm the lead author.
Leonard: Come on, the only reason you're the lead author is because we went alphabetically.
Sheldon: I let you think we went alphabetically to spare you the humiliation with dealing with the fact that it was my idea. Now to put too fine a point to it, but I was throwing you a bone. You're welcome.
Leonard: Excuse me, I designed the experiment that proved the hypothesis.
Sheldon: It doesn't need proving.
Leonard: So the entire scientific community is just supposed to take your word?
Sheldon: They're not supposed to, but they should.

Notes and Trivia

As Penny (Kaley Cuoco) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) are walking up the stairs, and they discuss Sheldon's disagreement with Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Penny asks Sheldon "How do you feel?". Sheldon looks a bit confused and states "I do not understand the question". This is in homage to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), the computer used to retrain Spock's mind asks him the exact same question ("How do you feel"), which Spock likewise responds "I do not understand the question".

Sheldon says that Occam's Razor suggests that someone threw the letter in the trash can. Occam's Razor is the principle developed by the philosopher William of Occam in the fourteenth century that states that of many competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is likely to be the correct one.

The 30 second video shot by Howard "Physicists Gone Wild!" is a real video which was available on YouTube.

The swelling music Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj are pantomiming to when Penny walks in, commonly referred to as the "Theme from '2001: A Space Odyssey,'" is the introduction to the 1896 tone poem "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," by Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949), inspired by the novel of the same name by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900). The introduction is also known as "Hymn to the Sun," from the beginning of "Zarathustra's Prologue". However, the guys' pantomiming indicates they're referencing 2001.

This was the first episode written after the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike. During the hiatus enforced by the strike, CBS officially renewed the series for a second season.

Goofs

None

Cast

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