S05E21 - The Hawking Excitation

No: 108  |  Season: 5   Episode: 21  |  Air Date: 2012-04-05  |  Runtime: mins

Summary

Sheldon uses any and all means to meet his hero, Dr. Stephen Hawking.

Director and Writers

Director: Mark Cendrowski
Writers: Story by: Bill Prady & Steven Molaro & Steve Holland / Teleplay by: Chuck Lorre & Eric Kaplan & Maria Ferrari

Script

Script: S05E21 - The Hawking Excitation

Quotes

Leonard: A word of caution: I would not do your Steven Hawking impression in front of him.
Howard: (wiggling his lips to sound like Hawking) You're right. I suppose that could be considered offensive.

Mrs. Wolowitz: Sheldon! I need your help!
Sheldon: What is it now, Mrs. Wolowitz?
Mrs. Wolowitz: It's this dress! When I put my front in, my back pops out! When I put my back in, my front pops out! It's like trying to keep two dogs in a bathtub.
Sheldon: What do you want me to do?
Mrs. Wolowitz: We're gonna have to work as a team! Get in here, grab a handful and start stuffing!
Sheldon: I'm not sure how to do this.
Mrs. Wolowitz: It's easy. Just pretend you're puttin' away a sleeping bag.
Sheldon: Sleeping bags don't usually sweat this much, but okay.
Mrs. Wolowitz: Now zip me up.
Sheldon: Oh, if we squeeze you any tighter, you might turn into a diamond.
Mrs. Wolowitz: You're right. Who am I kidding? You shoulda seen me when I was young, Sheldon. The fellas used to line up and bring me boxes of candy. Why did I eat it all?

Howard: Sheldon, you're a condescending jerk; why on Earth would I want to do something nice for you?
Sheldon: Um, to go to Jewish heaven?
Howard: Jews don't have heaven.
Sheldon: Well, to avoid Jewish hell?
Howard: Have you met my mother? I live in Jewish hell!

Howard: So, I got the craziest e-mail this morning.
Raj: I don't mean to burst your bubble, dude, but those penile enlargement pills do not work.
Howard: Believe me, I know.

Sheldon: Professor Hawking, it's an honor and a privilege to meet you, sir.
Stephen Hawking: I know.
Sheldon: I want to thank you for taking time to see me.
Stephen Hawking: My pleasure. I enjoyed reading your paper very much. You clearly have a brilliant mind.
Sheldon: I know.
Stephen Hawking: Your thesis that the Higgs boson is a black hole accelerating backwards through time is fascinating.
Sheldon: Thank you. It just... came to me one morning in the shower.
Stephen Hawking: That's nice. Too bad it's wrong.
Sheldon: What do you mean, wrong?
Stephen Hawking: You made an arithmetic mistake on page two. It was quite a boner.
Sheldon: (frantically flipping through his paper) No, no... th-th-th-that can't be right. I... I don't make arithmetic mistakes.
Stephen Hawking: Are you saying I do?
Sheldon: Oh, no! No, no, of course not. It's just, I was thinking... Oh, gosh, golly. I made a boo-boo. And I gave it to Stephen Hawking.
(faints)
Stephen Hawking: Great. Another fainter.

Sheldon: Howard, please. This is Steven Hawking! Perhaps my only intellectual equal.

Sheldon: You don't think I'm condescending, do you?
Penny: Well...
Sheldon: Oh, I'm sorry. Condescending means...
Penny: I know what it means!

Howard: I'll give your paper to Professor Hawking.
Sheldon: Great. Thank you. Oh, that's terrific!
Howard: But... in exchange, I'd like you to do a few things for me.
Sheldon: What kinds of things?
Howard: Are you familiar with the 12 labors of Hercules?
Sheldon: Of course.
Howard: You should be so lucky.

Sheldon: (wearing a French maid costume) What are you all staring at? Did you ever see a man try to get a meeting with Stephen Hawking before?

Sheldon: Alright! What would you like me to do first?
Howard: I thought I'd start you off by polishing my belt buckles.
Sheldon: Ooh, by all means. When I was a boy, I would polish my mee-maw's silver, then, she would entertain me with stories about growing up in Oklahoma. Interesting woman. You know, she once killed a prairie dog with a gravy boat.
Howard: That's nice.
(Pours out all his belt buckles from inside a container)
Sheldon: That's a lot of belt buckles.
Howard: Funny thing is, I only have one belt.

Bernadette: Sheldon doesn't know when he's being mean because the part of his brain that should know is getting a wedgie from the rest of his brain.

Howard: All right, Sheldon, there's only one thing left I want you to do. Don't worry, it's an easy one.
Sheldon: Okay.
Howard: Give me a compliment.
Sheldon: Fine. You have very tiny hands.
Howard: No. About my job. I want you to tell me I'm good at what I do.
Sheldon: You're obviously good at what you do.
Howard: Well, then why are you always ripping on me?
Sheldon: Ah, I understand the confusion. I have never said that you are not good at what you do. It's just that what you do is not worth doing.
(pause)
Leonard: It's nicer than anything he's ever said to me, I'd take it and run.

Leonard: That's Crazy!

Raj: (to Howard) You can make him do anything you want.

Sheldon: Try to put yourself in my place. Imagine, you're the sole human being living on a planet populated with nothing but dogs. And then it turns out there's another human being.
Howard: Hang on, are you saying the rest of us are dogs?
Sheldon: Oh okay, I see you're gonna take this the wrong way. Let me try again. Imagine you're the sole human being living on a planet populated with nothing but chimps.

Bernadette: Why are you doing that? You're being mean to him.
Howard: He's mean to me all the time. You've heard him tease me about not having a doctorate.
Bernadette: If you don't wanna get teased about that, then get a doctorate. I have one, they're great.

Howard: Maybe a different language would help. Russion: nyet, Chinese: bu, Japanese: iie, Klingon: qo', binary coded ascii: 0110111001100111.
Sheldon: It's actually 0110111...
Howard: No!

Sheldon: Howard, please! I'm begging you!
Leonard: Raj, you're our group historian. Has Sheldon ever begged before?
Raj: Three times: he begged the Fox network *not* to cancel Firefly; he begged the TNT network *to* cancel Babylon 5; and when he got food sickness at the Rose Bowl parade, he begged a deity he doesn't believe in to end his life quickly.

Penny: Why are you washing Howard's man panties?
Sheldon: Because if I don't, he won't give my paper to Stephen Hawking. He's a famous physicist.
Penny: Yeah yeah, I know. He's the wheelchair dude who invented time.
Sheldon: That's close enough.

Raj: Oh boy, well, Sheldon's going to freak out!
Leonard: Yeah, he worships Hawking.
Howard: I was actually thinking of bringing him along when I go over there so he can meet the great man.
Raj: It's really nice of you, Howard.
Howard: It's no big deal.
Leonard: Boy, a restraining order from Stephen Hawking. It'll look so nice next to the ones he's already got from Leonard Nimoy, Carl Sagan, and Stan Lee.
Sheldon: Leonard, do you recall when I said that I was going to revolutionize humanity's understanding of the Higgs boson particle and you said "Sheldon, it's 2 a.m., get out of my bedroom!"?
Leonard: Like it was 10 hours ago. What about it?
Sheldon: Well, I believe I've done it. Now, I'm only saying "believe" to sound modest, because Sweet-Sam-Houston, I did it.
Leonard: Really?
Raj: That's incredible! Oh, here! Breakout the math.
Sheldon: Oh, okay, let me see this.
(Starts writing)
Sheldon: Alright! So, this particle here, is the boson, moving forward in time. Now, I was thinking...
(pauses)
Sheldon: Howard, you go ahead and eat. This isn't going to make any sense to you.
Howard: Sheldon, I have a working understanding of Physics.
Sheldon: Yeah, good for you! Don't stop working on it.
Raj: You still going to tell him about you-know-who?
Howard: Yep.
Leonard: Still going to introduce him?
Howard: Not on your life!

Sheldon: Do you understand how important Hawking is to me? When I was 6 years old, I dressed up as him for Halloween.
Howard: You're kidding.
Sheldon: No sir. I took my dad's desk chair, attached a Speak & Spell to it and made my sister push me up and down the block to trick or treat.

Notes and Trivia

Jim Parsons revealed that the writers originally wanted him to enter the university restaurant while wearing a metal bikini like Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). He said that he would only do it if they gave him six months and a personal trainer, so they conceived of the French maid costume instead.

Stephen Hawking's original singularity theorems from the 1960s and '70s were written up on the whiteboards on set.

Goofs

None

Cast

Johnny GaleckiLeonard Hofstadter
Jim ParsonsSheldon Cooper
Kaley CuocoPenny
Simon HelbergHoward Wolowitz
Kunal NayyarRaj Koothrappali
Melissa RauchBernadette Rostenkowski
Carol Ann SusiDebbie Wolowitz
Stephen HawkingStephen Hawking