S01E16 - The Peanut Reaction

No: 16  |  Season: 1   Episode: 16  |  Air Date: 2008-05-12  |  Runtime: mins

Something he wouldn't buy for himself. Something fun. Something like... oh, an 802.11n wireless router.

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Summary

When Penny learns that Leonard has never had a birthday party, she and the rest of the guys plan a surprise party for him.

Director and Writers

Director: Mark Cendrowski
Writers: Story by: Bill Prady & Lee Aronsohn / Teleplay by: Dave Goetsch & Steven Molaro

Script

Script: S01E16 - The Peanut Reaction

Quotes

Nurse Althea: Oh, I understand, but unfortunately, this hospital is not equipped to treat stupid.

Leonard: Say what you will about the health care system in this country, but when they're afraid of lawsuits, they sure test everything.
Howard: I really don't think the colonoscopy was necessary.

Howard: Okay, I get it. I know how the world works. How 'bout if I were to introduce you... to the man who freed your people?
Nurse Althea: (shows a five-dollar bill) Unless my people were freed by Benjamin Franklin and his five twin brothers, you are wasting your time!

Leonard: Look, I am in the "Halo" battle of my life here! There's this kid in Copenhagen; he has no immune system, so all he does is sit in his bubble and play "Halo" 24-7.
Howard: Can't you play him some other time?
Leonard: Not if you believe his doctors.

Leonard: I don't celebrate my birthday
Penny: Shut up. Yeah, you do.
Leonard: It's no big deal. It's the way I was raised. My parents focused on celebrating achievements and being expelled from a birth canal was not considered one of them.
Penny: That's so silly.
Sheldon: It's actually based on very sound theories. His mother published a paper on it.
Penny: Well, what was it called? "l Hate My Son and That's Why He Can't Have Cake"?
Sheldon: It was obviously effective. Leonard grew up to be an experimental physicist. Perhaps if she'd also denied him Christmas, he'd be a little better at it.

Sheldon: The entire institution of gift giving make no sense. Let's say that I go out, and I spend 50 dollars on you, it's a laborious activity, because I have to imagine what you need, where as you know what you need. Now I could simplify things, just give you the 50 dollars directly, and you could give me 50 dollars on my birthday, and so on, until one of us dies, leaving the other one old and 50 dollars richer. And I ask, is it worth it?

(Penny is trying to convince Sheldon to buy Leonard a gift)
Howard: Try telling him it's a non-optional social convention.
Penny: What?
Howard: Just do it.
Penny: It's - it's a non-optional social convention.
Sheldon: Ah, fair enough.
Howard: He came with a manual.

Sheldon: I think a birthday party's a terrible idea. I envy Leonard for growing up without that anguish... Year after year, I had to endure wearing comical hats while being forced into the crowded, sweaty hell of bouncy castles. Not to mention being blindfolded and spun toward a grotesque tailless donkey as the other children mocked my disorientation.

Leonard: How did you know my birthday's Saturday?
Penny: I did your horoscope, remember? I was going to do everybody's until Sheldon went on one of his typical psychotic rants.
Sheldon: For the record, that psychotic rant was a concise summation of the research of Bertram Forer, who, in 1948, proved conclusively through meticulously designed experiments that astrology is nothing but pseudoscientific hokum.
Penny: Blah, blah, blah, a typical Taurus.

Sheldon: We might as well stop. It's a stalemate. You're beating me in "Tetris," but you have the upper strength of a Keebler elf.
Raj: Keebler elf? I've got your Keebler elf right here!
Raj: (grunts; tries to pull harder, with both hands, but Sheldon doesn't budge) Okay, it's a stalemate.

Leonard: (why he doesn't celebrate his birthday) It's just the way I was raised. My parents focused on celebrating achievements, and being expelled from a birth canal was not considered one of them.

Penny: Okay, here's the deal: you either you help me throw Leonard a birthday party, or so help me, God, I will go into your bedroom, and unbag all of your most valuable, mint-condition comic books and, on one of them, you won't know which, I'll draw a tiny little happy face in ink.
Sheldon: You can't do that! If you make a mark in a mint comic book, it's no longer mint.
Penny: Sheldon, do you understand the concept of blackmail?
Sheldon: Well, of course I... Oh... Hey, I have an idea: let's throw Leonard a kick-ass birthday party!

Penny: (to Leonard) This is the saddest thing I've ever heard.
Howard: You think?
Howard: (to Leonard) Go ahead - tell her about your senior prom.

Sheldon: Leonard made it very clear he doesn't want a party.
Howard: Did someone say "party"?
Penny: He just doesn't know he wants one because he's never had one.
Howard: I suppose that's possible. But, for the record, I've never had a threesome, yet I still know I want one.

Howard: We're in a hospital right now.
Penny: Why? Is Leonard okay?
Howard: Leonard's fine. I'm fine, thanks for asking, by the way.
Penny: Okay, I don't need your attitude. Listen, just hold him there a little longer.
Howard: Look, I've done my best, but he wants to go home and I don't know how to stop him.
Penny: Okay. How about this? You keep him there a little longer and when you get to the party, I'll point out which of my friends are easy.
(Howard remains silent, unsure what he just heard)
Howard: Don't toy with me, woman.
Penny: I got a hot former fat girl with no self esteem, I got a girl who punishes her father by sleeping around, and an alcoholic who's two tequila shots away from letting you wear her like a hat.
Howard: Thy will be done.
(Howard hangs up and pulls the peanut-filled granola bar out of his back pocket)
Howard: (to his groin) I'm doing this for you, little buddy.

Notes and Trivia

Howard tries to bribe the nurse with "the man who freed your people", i.e. Abraham Lincoln, meaning a $5 bill. She responds with a demand for "Benjamin Franklin and his five twins". Franklin is on a $100 bill, so she wants $600.

Howard tries to lure Leonard out of his apartment by inviting him to a new "definitive cut of Blade Runner (1982) with 8 seconds of previously unseen footage", that supposedly "completely changes the tone of the film". This is a stab at the fact that there are at least five different versions of Blade Runner (1982) (including a Director's Cut that the director wasn't fully satisfied with, leading to a Final Cut). One of the most notable additions to later versions was a brief dream sequence of about 20 seconds that has since become the subject of intense fan debate about the exact meaning of the film.

Sheldon's statement about horoscopes being hokum is based on the work of Bertram Forer, a psychologist from UCLA. His classic 1948 experiment involved administering personality tests to groups of subjects, and then giving each subject the same exact personality evaluation (copied from a newspaper astrology column) and asking them to evaluate the accuracy of the results on a scale of 1 to 5. The average accuracy was rated at an incredible 4.2, indicating that people are generally willing to accept generalized descriptions of themselves because they WANT them to be true. This experiment has been repeated hundreds of times by various researchers; always with almost exact results, giving us "The Forer Effect" or "subjective validation".

The ER nurse, Althea (Vernee Watson), is the same person (or at least the same actress) as the waiting room nurse in the sperm bank from the Pilot (2007).

The man in the D-Link Wireless Network Adapter box is director Mark Cendrowski.

This is the third time that Penny (Kaley Cuoco) kisses Leonard (Johnny Galecki). She first kissed him after her Halloween party in The Middle Earth Paradigm (2007) and in The Nerdvana Annihilation (2008), although only in a dream but she did kiss him on the cheek just before her date Mike came up the stairs.

Goofs

None

Cast

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