The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization

Season 1 / Episode 9

 

 

Who wants to party at the topical conference of Bose-Einstein condensates? Everybody but Sheldon. It's Sheldon vs. Leonard as they spar over Sheldon's refusal to present a paper that the two have co-authored. Sheldon haughtily sniffs that his genius can't be appreciated, but Leonard pleads that he's the lead author and that they need to do this. "I was tossing you a bone," Sheldon sneers. A couple of yo mama jokes later the two aren't speaking.

 

Leonard decides to present anyway, despite Sheldon's face-scrunching attempts to blow up his roommate's head with his mind, all of which is made worse by Penny's unintentional slip that Leonard thinks Sheldon merely had a lucky hunch.

 

Howard, Raj and Penny accompany the corduroy-suited Leonard, spherical chicken opening joke in hand, to the Pasadena Mariott Rose Room which is packed. 20-25 people, Howard reckons. But when Leonard concludes his presentation, a hoodie-wearing heckler, in the form of Dr. Sheldon Cooper, emerges from the audience and, in short order, disparages Leonard, Isaac Newton and the conference attendees.

 

Leonard grows enraged when Sheldon once again attempts to, at the very least, give Leonard a brain aneurysm, and the two begin ineffectually flailing at the other and rolling about on the floor, all of which Howard captures with his cellphone. Later at the apartment the two are reconciled after they watch the featured video on YouTube, courtesy of Wolowizard, and are sobered by the ungainly spectacle of a badly dressed physicist tangling with a "flamingo on Ritalin."

 

by Check E. Light