Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization
| Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization | |
 Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization | |
| Writers | Bill Prady (Story), Stephen Engel (Story), Chuck Lorre (Teleplay), Lee Aronsohn (Teleplay), Dave Goetsch (Teleplay) |
|---|---|
| Director | Joel Murray |
| Starring | Chin, Talbott as Chinese Leonard, Chan, Howard as Chinese Sheldon |
| Air Date | 17 March 2008 |
| Vanity | Card #196 |
| Guide | Episode #109 |
| Quotes | Episode #109 |
| Forums | Discuss Episode |
| Season 1, Episode 9 (0109) |
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| Grasshopper Experiment . . . << Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization >> . . . Loobenfeld Decay |
|---|
Contents |
Summary
(Edited from Wikipedia:)
Leonard discovers a letter in the trash, inviting him and Sheldon to present some research they had done together at a physics conference. Sheldon threw the letter away, saying that does not believe in such things and that if he won't go, no one can. Leonard defies him and says he will go and present the findings on his own. This causes a rift between the two which Penny tries to mend, but accidentally makes worse. At the conference Sheldon appears and not only tries to "blow up" Leonard's head with his mind a la the movie Scanners, but has a physical altercation with Leonard. In the end, the fight is captured by Wolowitz on his cell phone and put on YouTube.
Episode Outline
Titles and opening theme
Stairway and hallway before apartments
Hallway in front of the Rose Room of the Pasadena Marriott
Rose Room of the Pasadena Marriott
- After Leonard finished his talk Sheldon appears and they start an argument which turns into a physical altercation.
- Howard records the fight on his cell phone.
Somewhere in China
- A Chinese Sheldon and Chinese Leonard watch the video on YouTube when their lights are turned on and off by "someone in Pasadena, California, called Wolowizard".
Resources
List of entries from this episode
Jim Fanning's blog about attending the taping of the show
YouTube video: Physicists Gone Wild! as uploaded by Howard Wolowitz
Timeline
This episode starts on an evening, features talks between Leonard and Penny as well as Penny and Sheldon on day (directly or a few days) later and finishes with the evening of the conference talk. For the purpose of our "real world" timeline it could be assumed that all events take place within one week.
Title
The title refers to the disagreement between Leonard and Sheldon.
The term polarization, in many disciplines, suggests the tendency to be located close to, or attracted towards, one of the two opposite poles of a continuum. Thus, Sheldon and Leonard are on two opposite sides of the spectrum.
Notes and Trivia
- This episode is full of little references to the "geek world" the guys live in.
- Besides the frequent reference to the movie Scanners, we learn that Leonard owns a model of the bottled city of Kandor and a Battlestar Galactica flight suit. Sheldon's answer "I don't understand the question." to Penny's question "How do you feel?" is a reference to his beloved character Spock from Star Trek. Sheldon uses Occam's razor as well as Galileo and Boolean data type ("libido:1, truth:0") in his talks.
- The music in the beginning is Thus Spake Zarathustra. Its best known occurence is in the Sci-Fi movie 2001:A Space Odyssey.
- In the end scene, the "Mandarin" that the two "Chinese" speak is fair in pronunciation, but is far from authentic in grammar. Clearly they (or say, these two actors) are not native Mandarin speakers.
- The episode was taped on the evening of Tuesday, February 26th, 2007.
