S11E13 - The Solo Oscillation

No: 244  |  Season: 11   Episode: 13  |  Air Date: 2018-01-11  |  Runtime: mins

Penny: You know what's blowing my mind? Somebody thought about putting cheese in this crust.

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Summary

Sheldon kicks Amy out of the apartment to work solo, and she and Leonard end up bonding during a series of science experiments; Howard is replaced by Bert in Footprints on the Moon.

Director and Writers

Director: Mark Cendrowski
Writers: Story by: Chuck Lorre & Steve Holland & Anthony Del Broccolo / Teleplay by: Eric Kaplan & Maria Ferrari & Jeremy Howe

Script

Script: S11E13 - The Solo Oscillation

Quotes

Penny: So it's sort of like a guitar string, but instead of making an actual sound, each vibration is a different particle.
Sheldon: Precisely. And when you express it in eleven dimensions, Einstein's relativity equations pop out. Does that sound like a coincidence?
Penny: It does not.
Sheldon: Yup. That's what I think.
Penny: So... so, did we do it? Did we just solve string theory?
Sheldon: (with a chortle) Oh. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but this is not the sort of thing we can figure out in a night. People have been stuck on this for decades.
Penny: What, decades? Really? It's... it's a string. How hard can it be? It-it... it's straight, it's in a loop, it gets knotted up with other strings. Uh...
Sheldon: Well, actually, there are no knots in anything greater than four dimensions. Ooh, unless we get around that by considering them as sheets. You know, topologically speaking, that has a lot of interesting possibilities.
Penny: See? How long did that take me, like a minute?

Sheldon: I have a confession. When I berated Leonard, it was a clever ruse to conceal the fact that I'm not working on anything.
Amy: Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say
(sarcastic)
Amy: No!
Sheldon: The truth is I have nothing of interest to pursue.
Amy: Well, maybe this is the perfect opportunity to take some time for yourself and re-focus. I'm sure you'll find something you're excited about.
Sheldon: Thank you, Amy. I don't know what I'd do without you.
Amy: (cut to her entering the other apartment) Hey, can I stay here? Sheldon kicked me out.
Penny: Well, is everything okay?
Amy: Yeah. He just wants some alone time to work.

Raj: Hey! Look what I got everybody.
Leonard: Newspapers? Did you find a portal back to the 1990s?
Penny: No. If he had that, he'd be trying to prevent *NSYNC from breaking up.
Raj: Oh, please, I'm glad they broke up. Otherwise, Justin would never have brought sexy back.
Sheldon: One thing you can't get on an iPad, the smell of ink and paper. One more reason iPads are better.

Raj: You guys do anything fun after dinner?
Leonard: Uh, actually, Amy came back over and we hung out. Did you know that we were both spelling bee champs? We stayed up for hours trying to stump each other.
Raj: Who won?
Leonard: Uh, well, she thought she had me with "appoggiatura", but I shut that down expeditiously. E-X-P-E-D-I-T-I-O-U-S-L-Y, expeditously.
Raj: Wow. I bet that made Penny take off all of her clothes. Put her pajamas on and then go to bed early.
Leonard: At, like, 9:00, yeah.

Sheldon: The answer is one in 18 million.
Mary Cooper: What is?
Sheldon: The odds of you running into Mr. Watkins.
Mary Cooper: Oh, Shelly, I have bad news. Mr. Watkins passed this morning.
Sheldon: Oh. Oh, I'm... I'm sorry.
Mary Cooper: I know. What are the odds of that?
Sheldon: (getting an idea) Call you back.

Raj: They reviewed my planetarium show. Yeah. It's on page three of the Arts and Leisure section.
Sheldon: (everybody opens their newspapers) Oh, look, they still have "Far Side". Oh, I don't get that one.
Amy: Oh, he's pushing when he should be pulling.
Sheldon: Hmm. I don't think he belongs in that gifted school, then.

Amy: Okay, how do you want to play this? Do you want to pretend like nothing's bothering you and blow up later, or do you just want to be a maniac right now?
Sheldon: Nothing is bothering me.
Amy: Fine. Be that way. If you want to talk, I'll be flushing my sinuses.

Penny: What got you excited about dark matter in the first place?
Sheldon: Well, I left string theory, which I'd been working on for a long time, and everyone was talking about how cool dark matter was, and I thought "Well, sure, I'll give that a whirl."
Penny: So it's your rebound science?
Sheldon: What's that?
Penny: Well, not the science you spend the rest of your life with, but the one you use to make yourself feel pretty again.

Leonard: What are you doing?
Penny: Making a boat. When I was a kid, my dad showed me how.
Leonard: Boy, you'll do anything to avoid reading.

Sheldon: If I'm being honest, I never forgot about string theory. I mean, it's remarkable. It's the closest we've come to a theory of everything, something even Einstein couldn't figure out.
Penny: Well, if he couldn't figure it out, maybe it's just wrong.
Sheldon: But it's so elegant. I mean, look.
(getting up and drawing on his white board)
Sheldon: String theory posits that the fundamental particles we see in three dimensions are actually strings embedded in multidimensional space-time.
Penny: Interesting. So that would mean... that...
(pause)
Penny: Can't do this by myself, buddy.

Mary Cooper: Hello again.
Sheldon: Who did you see at the barbecue festival?
Mary Cooper: Mr. Watkins.
Sheldon: Really? You called me and interrupted my work to tell me that you ran into somebody you could plausibly run into? I'm sorry, mother, I really need to focus here. I will speak to you next week.
Mary Cooper: Okay, sweetheart. I'll talk to you then.
(he hangs up; after a moment of looking at his white board, he dials his phone)
Sheldon: I thought Mr. Watkins moved to Florida.
Mary Cooper: He did. He was back visiting his son.
Sheldon: Oh, gosh darn it, that is interesting. Was it Tommy or Joe? I bet it was Joe, 'cause he and Tommy had a falling out over that timeshare.

Penny: I brought pizza.
Sheldon: Oh, thank you. I have been working pretty hard. I... I could use a break.
Penny: What's that?
Sheldon: Oh, yeah, that is an experiment to see how many parallelograms I could draw while holding my breath.
Penny: (seeing a parallelogram with a squiggly edge) Is that where you blacked out?
Sheldon: (pointing to a spot behind the couch) No, actually, that's where I blacked out.
Penny: And this?
Sheldon: That is a list of all the different types of natural disasters.
Penny: Firequake?
Sheldon: I made that one up. Which I shouldn't have, because now I'm scared of it.

Howard: (after annoying Bernadette) Good news! I'm back in the band!
Raj: So, Bernadette doesn't mind?
Howard: It was her idea!

Penny: Hey, I thought you were working on actual science.
Sheldon: I am. I'm trying to come up with a new approach to dark matter, but people keep distracting me. First, my mother kept answering the phone when I called, even though she knew I was busy. And now you show up with my favorite shape of food: a circle made of triangles served in a square box.

Penny: (knock knock knock) Sheldon?
Penny: (knock knock knock) Sheldon?
Penny: (knock knock knock) Sheldon?
Sheldon: (opens door) It's annoying when you do it.

Sheldon: And then I was thinking about inventing a new dark matter particle to evade the omega baryon contraints, but that just seems like something anyone could come up with.
Penny: (not listening) Mm. Agreed. You know what's blowing my mind? Somebody thought about putting cheese in this crust.
Sheldon: I just wish I could find something that excites me.
Penny: You... you do understand that crust doesn't normally come with cheese in it?

Sheldon: Hello, mother.
Mary Cooper: Hi there, Shelly. You will never believe who I ran into at the barbecue festival.
Sheldon: I am right in the middle of some very important work. I don't have time for this right now.
Mary Cooper: Then why did you answer the phone?
Sheldon: Because you raised me to be polite. Now stop bothering me!

Leonard: Thought you were getting us dinner.
Penny: Sorry. I had to stop at Sheldon's and help him solve string theory.
Amy: (dumbfounded) What?
Penny: Yeah, turns out the answer's knots.
Leonard: That's cute, but you can't have knots in more than four dimensions.
Penny: (heading towards the bedroom) Mm... you can if you consider them sheets. Good night.

Penny: Oh, Amy, you're here. Again.
Amy: Yeah, Sheldon said he needed another night to work, so I said I've give him some space.
Penny: So what's all this?
Leonard: Well, Amy and I were talking about old science fair projects and how fun it would be to re-create them.
Amy: We're making hot ice.
Leonard: It's pretty... cool.
Amy: (high-fiving) Oh, nice one.
Leonard: Turns out we both did this as our science fair projects in ninth grade.
Amy: Do you remember any of your high school projects?
Penny: Uh... well, I remember telling Jenny Runyon that I would teach her how to flirt with boys if she put my name on her project. I got an "A", she got pregnant.
Amy: Girls like you are why I had to come straight home after school.

Amy: This is fun. Playing with popsicle sticks, exploring ways to store kinetic energy. It's like preschool all over again.
Leonard: Except now if I eat paste, it's because I want to, not because Craig Schultz is making me.
Amy: Hey, can I ask you a question?
Leonard: Is it "Where was the teacher"? She was in the bathroom smoking, that's where.
Amy: It wasn't, but I'm glad to see you've moved on. I was gonna ask if being married felt any different.
Leonard: Oh. Uh... not really. Sorry. That probably wasn't the answer you were looking for.
Amy: No, actually it is. I mean, Sheldon and I are in a really great place right now, and I just... I don't want anything to mess that up.
Leonard: Mm-hmm. You do remember you're here because he kicked you out of your apartment?

Raj: Hey, uh, what do you think we should open our show with? Uh, "Thor and Dr. Jones" or "Let's Get Astrophysical"?
Howard: I think we should start with something that gets them up on their feet. Maybe "Sherlock Around the Clock".
Raj: Great, yeah. Uh, let's give it a try.
(they start playing)
Bernadette: (over the baby monitor) Halley's napping! Keep it down!
Howard: (into his own end) Right. Sorry.
Raj: (turning his amp down) It's cool. We don't need volume to rock. Instead of blowing the roof off this place, we can gently lift it off and set it quietly down in the back yard.

Bert: Hey, you want to hear one of my geology songs?
Raj: So it's about rocks?
Bert: Better. It's about a boulder.
Raj: Isn't that the same thing?
Bert: Far from it. A boulder has a diameter greater than 25.6 centimeters.
Raj: Is that fact in the song?
Bert: No... Yes. It's sung from the viewpoint of the boulder that chases Indiana Jones.
Raj: That's right up our alley. Let's hear it.
Bert: Alone in my temple in the middle of Peru/ A giant stone ball with nothing much to do/ But if you steal my idol, I will roll right over you.

Notes and Trivia

The Far Side comic panel that Sheldon and Amy refer to is a real one that features a child pushing a door that has a large sign that says "Pull." There is a sign in front of the building that says "Midvale School for the Gifted."

Title reference: Sheldon vacillates (oscillates) between working solo and working with Penny.

When Howard and Raj are rehearsing their music in Howard's living room, on the bookcase behind them are the Howard and Bernadette dolls that Howard made in The Cooper/Kripke Inversion (2013).

Goofs

None

Cast

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