The Friendship Algorithm

Season 2 / Episode 13

 

 

Sheldon struggles with the most perplexing concept of his entire career – how to make a friend. Needing access to the new open science grid computer, and believing that Barry Kripke controls the schedule, Sheldon attempts to befriend Kripke but his overtures are rebuffed with a scathing "I have no intewest in becoming your fwiend."

 

Sheldon attempts to unravel the principles of friend-making, but his research methodology tests the limits of his existing friendships when he burdens the guys and Penny with a three hour, 200+ item questionnaire designed to reveal why they like him. However the resultant data is compromised by apathy and drawings of well-endowed raccoons, somewhat giving validity to Sheldon's belief that "the social sciences are largely hokum."

 

Sheldon then decides he needs to read up on the available literature and he subsequently extrapolates the ideas set forth in the book he's acquired, "Stu the Cockatoo is New at the Zoo," into a flow chart on his whiteboard. He initiates testing in the form of a phone call to Kripke, and apart from a small flaw in his design that temporarily throws him into an infinite loop, the experiment has a positive outcome – he's going rock wall climbing with his pending friend.

 

In anticipation of successfully securing Kripke as a new friend, Sheldon, for whom friendship is a finite construct, decides he needs to drop one of his other pals, and Raj is summarily booted due to his shocking unfamiliarity with Sheldon's amino acid preferences. Ultimately though, the original lineup is restored when Sheldon learns that Kripke does not in fact control access to the computer, leading him to then blithely exclaim that "this entire endeavor seems to have been an exercise in futility."

 

 

by Check E. Light