S02E18 - The Work Song Nanocluster

No: 35  |  Season: 2   Episode: 18  |  Air Date: 2009-03-16  |  Runtime: mins

I believe I'm hearing some negativity on the factory floor.

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Summary

Sheldon's assistance with Penny's home-based business leads to chaos.

Director and Writers

Director: Peter Chakos
Writers: Story by: Bill Prady & Lee Aronsohn / Teleplay by: Dave Goetsch & Richard Rosenstock

Script

Script: S02E18 - The Work Song Nanocluster

Quotes

(Sheldon delivers a package to Penny)
Sheldon: (Presents clip board) Excuse me! You have to sign this.
Penny: What is it?
Sheldon: When I signed for the package, I was deputized by the United Parcel Service and entrusted with its final delivery. I now need you to acknowledge receipt of the package so that I am fully indemnified and no longer liable.
Penny: Sheldon, it's just a box of rhinestones!
Sheldon: Well, the contents are irrelevant. A legal bailment has been created. Does that mean nothing to you?
Penny: It means nothing to anybody!

Penny: (about the website Leonard designed for Penny's business) It seems a little juvenile. It looks like the MySpace page of a thirteen year-old girl.
Leonard: No it doesn't!
Howard: Dateline could use it to attract predators.

(Leonard, Howard, and Raj are playing "Secret Agent LASER Obstacle Chess")
Howard: Hey! You know what would be a great idea? We get some girls over here and play LASER obstacle strip chess.
Leonard: Believe me, Howard, any girl who would be willing to play that you don't want to see naked.
Howard: You underestimate me.

Leonard: All right, what's wrong with it?
Sheldon: What's wrong with it?
Leonard: Not from you!

Sheldon: Look at Planck's Constant. People say it's arbitrary. It could not be less arbitrary. If it varied even slightly, life as we know it would not exist. Bam! Now, now, let's reconsider the entire argument, but with entropy reversed and effect preceding cause, so you are thinking of a universe that's not expanding from the centre, no, it is retreating from a, from a possibility space. Bam! This is a space where we are all essentially Alice through the looking glass, standing in front the Red Queen, and we're being offered a cracker to quench our thirst. Bam! Of course, in another universe, let's call it universe prime, there's another Sheldon, let's call him Sheldon prime...
Penny: We should have let him go to bed.
Leonard: Bam.

Sheldon: (after timing how long it took Penny to make a decorative hair barrette) Based on your cost in materials and your wholesale selling price, you'll effectively be paying yourself five dollars and nineteen cents a day.
Penny: A day?
Sheldon: There are children in a sneaker factory in Indonesia who out-earn you.

Sheldon: (to Penny) Are you familiar with the development that resulted from Honore Blanc's 1778 use of interchangeable parts?
(long pause)
Sheldon: The assembly line, of course.

Sheldon: Coffee's out of the question. When I moved to California, I promised my mother that I wouldn't start doing drugs.

Sheldon: (How Sheldon knocks on Penny's door, without a pause: knock-knock-knock) Penny!
(knock-knock-knock)
Sheldon: Penny!
(knock-knock-knock)
Sheldon: Penny!

Sheldon: (Talking about Penny's proposed home-based business) If you took advantage of modern marketing techniques, and you optimized your manufacturing process, you might be able to make this a viable business.
Penny: And you know about that stuff?
Sheldon: (patronizing) Penny - I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains.
Penny: Who's Radiohead?
Sheldon: (with facial tic) I have a working knowledge of the _important_ things in the universe.

Leonard: I'm sorry guys, but secret agent laser obstacle lunch is just stupid.

Penny: Look, I started a business.
Sheldon: Obviously not a cleaning business.

Raj: You know if I wanted to spend my Saturday nights doing this, I could have stayed in India.
Leonard: Oh, stop with the fake Third World crap. Your father is a gynecologist, and you had a house full of servants.
Raj: He only had four servants, and two of them were children.

Sheldon: Camouflaging bald spots is primarily a male concern. Perhaps we could expand our market.
Penny: How are flower barrettes gonna appeal to men?
Howard: We add Bluetooth!
Sheldon: Brilliant! Men love Bluetooth!
Penny: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You want to make a hair barrette with Bluetooth?
Sheldon: Penny - Everything is better with Bluetooth.

Sheldon: Before we set up a marketing and distribution infrastructure, we should finish optimizing the manufacturing process. To start with, she has a terrible problem with moisture-induced glitter clump.
Penny: Yeah, it's a bitch!
Howard: (Inspecting bottle of glitter) Ah, I've seen this before.
Penny: Where?
Howard: It's a common stripper problem: they dance, they sweat, they clump.
Penny: Eww.
Leonard: Are you thinking of adding a desiccant like calcium sulfate?
Howard: Actually, I'm thinking about this one stripper named Vega.

Sheldon: Let's begin with the premise that everything you've done up to this point is wrong.
Penny: Oh, imagine that.
Sheldon: Sarcasm. Good bye.
Penny: No, sorry, wait, please come back, come back.

Penny: Okay, you know what, if I'm not allowed to be snide, you are not allowed to be condescending.
Sheldon: That wasn't a part of our original agreement, and I do not agree to it now!

Howard: Leonard died again, Sheldon. You're up.
Sheldon: Despite my deep love of chess, lasers, and aerosol disinfectant, I must forfeit.
Leonard: Why?
Sheldon: Because it's almost 11:00.
Leonard: So?
Sheldon: So Penny has a "don't knock on my door before 11:00 or I punch you in the throat" rule.

Penny: If this takes off I won't have to be a waitress anymore.
Sheldon: But then who will bring me my cheeseburger on Tuesday nights?
Penny: Another waitress?
Sheldon: What's her name?
Penny: I don't know.
Sheldon: And you're going to let her handle my food?
Penny: Nancy. Her name is Nancy.
Sheldon: I think you're just making that up!

Penny: How the hell are we gonna make a thousand Penny Blossoms
(Penny's hair product)
Penny: in one day?... I'm gonna have to call them and cancel that order.
Sheldon: Excuse me, but was this not your goal? Financial independence through entrepreneurial brilliance and innovation? My brilliance and innovation, of course, but still.
Penny: I just don't see how we can pull this off.
Sheldon: That, right there! That equivocation and self-doubt. That is not the American spirit. Did Davy Crockett quit at the Alamo? Did Jim Bowie?
Howard: They didn't give up, they were massacred! By like a gazillion angry Mexicans!

Sheldon: (Talking about Penny's home business) Ten dollars a day times five days a week times 52 weeks a year is 2,600 dollars.
Penny: That's all?
Sheldon: Before taxes.
Penny: Well, I don't have to pay taxes on this stuff.
Sheldon: I believe the Internal Revenue Service would strongly disagree.

Notes and Trivia

A Penny Blossoms website was created as described.

Although it went unnoticed during this episode's initial airing and for several years afterward, Penny's last name is actually revealed here. On the box's address that Sheldon delivers to Penny in the opening scene reads: "Penny Teller." A reference to the magician duo, Penn & Teller. Teller later appeared on the show, playing Amy's father. Contrary to other reports. According to a Looper interview: Prop master Scott L. London said the name "Penny Teller" came from the show's co-creator, Bill Prady, who wanted a pun off of Penn & Teller. Prady added, "I had assurances it wasn't going to be seen, that Scott just needed it for the visual shape of the block of type. But emphatically, Penny's last name is not Teller."

Howard (Simon Helberg) mentions that some type of cyanoacrylate would make a better adhesive. Cyanoacrylate adhesives are more commonly known as Super Glue or Crazy Glue.

Penny (Kaley Cuoco) is seen wearing the Penny Blossom in the next episode The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition (2009). She later wears one to Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch)'s wedding in episode 5.24, The Countdown Reflection (2012).

The fast-paced rhythm-tune to which the boys play Secret Agent Laser Obstacle Chess is from "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturyan.

This was the first episode in this second season not to be directed by Mark Cendrowski.

Goofs

None

Cast

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