Panty Pinata Polarization

Panty Pinata Polarization
Panty Pinata Polarization
Writers	Bill Prady (Story), Tim Doyle (Story), Jennifer Glickman (Teleplay), Steven Molaro (Story)
Director	Mark Cendrowski
Starring	Analeigh Tipton as herself, Samantha Potter as herself
Air Date	10 November 2008
Vanity	Card #225
Guide	Episode #207
Quotes	Episode #207
Forums	Discuss Episode

Season 2, Episode 7 (0207)

Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem . . . << Panty Pinata Polarization >> . . . Lizard-Spock Expansion

Summary

When Penny's cable gets cut, she starts coming over to the guys' apartment to watch America's Next Top Model.

It becomes obvious that Penny has officially become one of the gang when Sheldon holds her to the same bizarre standards of behaviour that he requires of the rest of the guys and banishes her from their apartment for getting three "strikes". The guys advise Penny just to give in to Sheldon's demands the way they do, but Penny refuses to knuckle under and instead declares war.

The conflict between them escalates until Sheldon takes all of Penny's clean laundry and throws each piece out the window and over a telephone wire. Penny is about to retaliate once again, but Leonard gives her Sheldon's mom's phone number so she can "tell" on Sheldon. The end result is that Sheldon apologises to Penny and their relationship settles into an uneasy truce.

Meanwhile, Howard and Raj have made a discovery of their own. They realise that there is a group of supermodels all living in a house somewhere nearby for the television show America's Next Top Model and are determined to find the location. They use all of the technology at their disposal, including spy satellites "borrowed" from the military, and finally pinpoint it. They arrive at the house posing as cable guys and work their way in. The episode ends as we're left to wonder what happens next.

Episode Outline

I. Living room

• The guys play Klingon boggle. Penny enters and wants to watch America's Next Top Model (ANTM). Howard, Leonard and Rajesh become totally distracted from the Boggle game by the supermodels on TV.

Titles and opening theme

II. Living room, a week later

• The guys and Penny are watching ANTM again, while having dinner.
• Penny touches one of Sheldon's onion rings and learns that Sheldon hands out strikes. When she tries to take a stand against Sheldon she gets "banished".

III. hallway in front of apartments

• Penny storms off after "being banished". Leonard tries to talk to her but she refuses to "take Sheldon's class".

IV. Cheesecake Factory

• Howard and Rajesh have figured out the general area where the ANTM house is.
• Penny tells Sheldon that he is "banished from the Cheesecake Factory.
• Leonard tries to tell Penny not to get into a fight with Sheldon but she disagrees.

V. Cheesecake Factory

• Penny brings the guys their food.

VI. Living room

• Howard and Rajesh narrowed down the location of the ANTM house.
• Penny enters and shows them that Sheldon blocked her online access to punish her for touching his hamburger.

VII. hallway in front of apartments and Stairway, Saturday, 8.15 pm

• Sheldon walks to the basement to do his laundry while being followed by Penny.

VIII. Laundry room

• Sheldon finds out that all washing machines are in use.

IX. hallway in front of apartment and Living room

• A furious Penny asks Sheldon where her clothes from the Laundry room have gone. Sheldon points to clothes hanging up on the telephone wire outside the building.

X. Penny's apartment

• Leonard gives Penny a sheet of paper with Sheldon's kryptonite to "end the war".

XI. Living room

• Howard and Rajesh found the address of the ANTM house. Sheldon gets a phone call from his mother who tells him to apologise to Penny.

XII. hallway in front of apartments

• Sheldon apologises to Penny, hands back her laundry and tells her she's no longer banished, but warns her not to abuse her new knowledge by quoting Spider-Man.

XIII. ANTM house

• Howard and Rajesh gain access to the ANTM house by pretending to want to fix the cable access.

Resources

List of entries from this episode

IMDb page for this episode

video about the Top Models on the show

Timeline

This episode starts on an evening with Klingon Boggle and Penny watching America's next topmodel (ANTM). It continues a week later with the next episode of ANTM and the guys are having hamburgers, suggesting that it's supposed to be one of the weekend evenings. (On what day was ANTM shown in America during fall 2008?) There's some inconsistency about the following events. The events continue in the Cheesecake factory and Penny's internet access being disabled. The episode ends on Saturday evening (it's laundry night). The fact that everyone is still wearing the same clothes as in the Cheesecake Factory suggest that the guys hadn't gone their on a Saturday and it wasn't the usual Tuesday.

This in summary suggests that this episode takes place over three consecutive weekends.

Title

(edited from Wikipedia)

The title refers to Sheldon's suggestion that, to get her clothes off the wire, Penny should get a long stick and play "Panty Piñata".

Polarization, defined as "the grouping of opinions into two extremes" (Wiktionary), has been used to reference episodes involving arguments between characters, such as this one between Sheldon and Penny and the dispute between Sheldon and Leonard in the Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization.