S08E23 - The Maternal Combustion
No: 182 |
Season: 8
Episode: 23 |
Air Date: 2015-04-30 |
Runtime: mins
Summary
Personalities collide when Leonard and Sheldon's mothers meet for the first time. Bernadette reaches her limit with Howard and Stuart.
Director and Writers
Director: Anthony Rich
Writers: Story by: Steven Molaro & Tara Hernandez & Jeremy Howe / Teleplay by: Chuck Lorre & Jim Reynolds & Maria Ferrari
Script
Script: S08E23 - The Maternal Combustion
Quotes
Bernadette: Okay, I don't know when I became the mother to three lazy teenagers, but it stops today. You guys are cleaning the kitchen top to bottom.
Raj: Hey, I don't even live here.
Bernadette: Yes or no, do you have clothes in my laundry right now?
Raj: I do. And some of it's wool, so dry flat if possible.
Howard: For a while everything was all vampires, now it's zombies. I wonder what the next big monster fad will be?
Raj: We haven't had a good invisible man in a while.
Stuart: Clearly you haven't seen me try to talk to a woman.
Amy: It's so nice both of your moms are coming in to see you guys get an award.
Sheldon: Well, my mother's been there for every honor I've won since I beat out my twin sister for the Did It on the Potty trophy.
Leonard: Even with your mother here, you are deliberately hogging all the attention from my mom. You're like one of those elephant seal pups that steals the milk from two mothers!
Sheldon: Do you mean what marine biologists refer to as "super weaning"?
Leonard: Yes, you are a super weaner!
Sheldon: Well, now I have to correct you. As a bit of an elephant seal buff, the more accurate comparison would be when two mother seals actively seek to nourish the same pup. So I believe the term you're looking for is a double mother suckler
Leonard: Yeah, you're right. That is the term I'm looking for. You are a dirty double mother suckler!
Sheldon: Okay, well, now that we have the terminology straightened out, how dare you?
Mary Cooper: Interesting. You can believe that, but God filling an ark with animals two-by-two is nonsense.
Sheldon: What did they feed the lions, Mother?
Mary Cooper: The floating bodies of drowned sinners, of course.
Leonard: I change my answer. It's amazing. It's hot. We can barely keep our hands off each other.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: Seems odd to try and impress your mother with your sexual prowess. But then, you always did have that unresolved Oedipal complex.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: Come to Mommy.
Penny: It's okay. Go ahead.
(Beverly hugs Leonard awkwardly)
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: Oh, my son.
Leonard: Oh, my mother.
Penny: Oh, my God.
Penny: Leonard, what time does your mom's plane get in?
Leonard: I don't know. Sometime tomorrow morning.
Penny: Don't you want to know for sure?
Leonard: No need to. As soon as she flies into California airspace, I'll feel a disturbance in the Force.
Penny: You know, your mom's never been too thrilled with our relationship. Maybe I should get her something so she warms up to me.
Leonard: If you could run out and get a PhD, that might make her like you.
Penny: Really? It didn't work for you.
Amy: Sure, his mom gets roses. When I want them, they're a "bouquet of severed plant genitals."
Sheldon: You act like I didn't get you that mushroom log on Valentine's Day.
Amy: He's right. Roses die, but a moist rotting log will pump out mushrooms for two or three magical years.
Howard: It's time for me to act like an adult in this marriage. Starting with my husbandly duty of taking out the trash.
(as he picks up the garbage bag, it breaks, spilling all the trash on the floor)
Howard: Bernie, I made a mess!
Mary Cooper: Well, I would have to say when he was thirteen and he tried to build a nuclear reaction in the tool shed.
Sheldon: Ooh, this is a good one.
Mary Cooper: Now, the first thing you need to know about Shelly is, ever since he was a little boy, he was always concerned with the well-being of others. And he didn't think it was fair for people to pay for electricity, so he was gonna power the entire town for free.
Sheldon: Tell her about the uranium! Tell her about the uranium!
Mary Cooper: Oh, well. Well, this is adorable. When he arranged to get some yellow-cake from Chad, I thought he was talking about twinkies from one of his friends.
Sheldon: Yeah. But I wasn't, because I didn't have any friends.
Mary Cooper: No. It turns out this little scallywag was trying to use my Visa card to buy uranium from an African warlord in the country of Chad.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: I'm terribly sorry that I upset your mother.
Sheldon: Oh, it's all right. She'll forgive you. She has to or she goes to hell.
Leonard: Mom, tell Mary the story of how I made a Van der Graff generator out of our vacuum cleaner.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: All right. He broke the vacuum cleaner.
Sheldon: Leonard's mom is a renowned psychiatrist and woman of science. Can you please keep the Bible babble to yourself while she's here?
Mary Cooper: Are you ashamed of me?
Sheldon: Of course not. I love you. I'm just embarrassed by the things you believe, do and say.
Mary Cooper: Well, I love you, too, my little bowl of lion chow.
Mary Cooper: When your mom gets back, I'm gonna need to apologize for the way I spoke to her.
Penny: Well, come on, she did kinda start it.
Mary Cooper: Doesn't matter. A good Christian would have turned the other cheek. On the other hand, a good Texan would have shot her, so I'll just split the difference.
Leonard: Not once did my mother ever give me any love or affection for just being myself. I always had to earn it.
Mary Cooper: Oh, Leonard, I'm sure she loves you very much. In her own cold godless way.
Penny: Yeah, and you certainly don't have to earn my love.
Leonard: Thank you.
Penny: Of course you already knew that when you bought me this princess-cut drill bit.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter: It's a mother's job to make sure her child's self-esteem is not dependent on anyone's approval.
Raj: How old is this Jell-O?
Stuart: Well, it's carrots, so I'm gonna say very.
Notes and Trivia
Howard, Raj, and Stuart sing "Hard Knock Life" from the musical Annie (1982) while cleaning the kitchen.
There were plans to have Mary Cooper and Beverly Hofstadter meet as early as season 6, but it didn't happen until this episode because Laurie Metcalf and Christine Baranski weren't available at the same time any sooner.
Title Reference: The title refers to the friction that occurs between Dr. Beverly Hofstadter and Mary Cooper during their mutual visit.
Goofs
None
Cast
Johnny Galecki | Leonard Hofstadter |
Jim Parsons | Sheldon Cooper |
Kaley Cuoco | Penny |
Simon Helberg | Howard Wolowitz |
Kunal Nayyar | Raj Koothrappali |
Mayim Bialik | Amy Farrah Fowler |
Melissa Rauch | Bernadette Rostenkowski |
Kevin Sussman | Stuart Bloom |
Laurie Metcalf | Mary Cooper |
Christine Baranski | Dr. Beverly Hofstadter |