The Big Bang Theory

Pilot | The Big Bran Hypothesis | The Fuzzy Boots Corollary | The Luminous Fish Effect | The Hamburger Postulate | The Middle-Earth Paradigm | The Dumpling Paradox | The Grasshopper Experiment | The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization | The Loobenfeld Decay | The Pancake Batter Anomaly | The Jerusalem Duality | The Bat Jar Conjecture | The Nerdvana Annihilation | The Porkchop Indeterminacy | The Peanut Reaction | The Tangerine Factor

Two brilliant ("with a combined IQ of 360") young physicists, Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) understand how the universe works.

But even with being gifted intellectually, they have difficulty interacting with people, especially women. Then Penny moves in next door.

Penny (Kaley Cuoco) is a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory and Leonard is immediately smitten with blonde, pretty Penny, but Sheldon has his doubts about a possible relationship.

The title refers to Sheldon's choice of high-fiber breakfast cereal. Sheldon and Leonard drop off a package at Penny's apartment and Sheldon, disturbed at how messy her apartment is (he calls it "chaos; a swirling vortex of entropy."), sneaks back later to clean it. The next day Penny yells at them because Sheldon left an organizational chart in her closet.

Leonard sees Penny kissing a guy out side of the apartment building which devastates him as he thinks that Penny really isn't interested in him.

The guys tell him to ask out a girl from work (Sara Gilbert in a recurring roll as Leslie Winkle) but she shoots him down. A despondent Leonard (he's considering buying a cat) is reminded by Sheldon (who wants no part of a cat in their apartment) that he hasn't asked Penny out, ergo, no rejection. He does ask her out and the date ends badly. "Fuzzy Boots" is the name Leonard is considering for his future cat.

The title refers to Sheldon's filling his time after losing his job by breeding bio-luminous fish (and weaving ponchos). Acerbic Sheldon gets fired after insulting his boss. With a depressed (and depressing!) Sheldon holed up in the apartment, Leonard calls in Sheldon's mother (Laurie Metcalf, another Roseann alumni) who gets Sheldon his job back by flirting with his boss.

When the guys eat at The Cheesecake Factory, they run into Leslie Winkle, Leonard's co-worker who decides to date him after all. Penny appears slightly sad about this as Sheldon was asking Penny what a necktie on Leonard's bedroom door meant. Later, Penny appears to be smiling after she consoles Leonard when Leslie dumps him.

The Middle-Earth Paradigm Penny is throwing a Halloween party and the guys are invited. They decline until costumes are mentioned. Leonard dresses up as Frodo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings for the party. After Penny's ex-boyfriend Kurt humiliates him, Leonard leaves.

Over at Sheldon and Leonard's apartment, Penny kisses him. The next day, Wolowitz asks where Raj went and finds out he went home and had sex with a girl he had met at the party, who found him to be a 'good listener'.

Penny's friend from Nebraska, Chrissy (Brooke D'Orsay) is visiting and falls for Howard. Because they are at Penny's apartment, she sleeps on Sheldon and Leonard's couch. With Howard's absence, Penny takes his place playing Halo (Sheldon is upset because she turns out to be a good player).

Because Sheldon thinks the group is falling apart, they go to Howard's house where Chrissy and Howard's mother are loudly arguing and Chrissy storms out. Howard turns to the guys and says "So, Halo night?" And the band of nerds is reunited.

Poor Raj is distraught because his parents have set him up on a blind date and he suffers from an inability to speak to the opposite sex.

Meanwhile, Penny is trying out her mixology skills as she has a new job as a part-time bartender. The group then discovers that Raj can speak to women but only when he's been drinking. The title refers to the drink Raj embibes all through the episode so he can speak comfortably with women.

Leonard finds a letter that Sheldon threw out inviting the two physicists to present research the pair had worked on. When Leonard says he wants to go, Sheldon refuses causing Leonard to attend the conference to present the paper on his own.

Sheldon shows up and tries to make Leonard's head explode (as in the cult film Scanners) and the two come to blows. Howard and Raj are watching from the sidelines and Howard is filming the confrontation with his cell phone so he can put it on YouTube.

In order for Leonard and Sheldon to avoid having to listen to Penny sing in Rent, Sheldon creates creates a non-existent drug addicted cousin named Leo (played by DJ Qualls), for whom the guys are planning an intervention and therefore they'll have to miss the play.

Sheldon becomes so preoccupied with the ruse that he actually has a fellow physicist ("who double majored in theatre") play the cousin in order to convince Penny that the lie is true. But Leonard ends up having to watch the tape of Penny's performance, so the lie didn't help after all.

When Penny returns from visiting her family in Nebraska, Sheldon freaks out because he is sure she brought germs and sickness back with her. Sheldon, of course, does become sick and after looking after him for a while, the guys hide out at the movies (a Planet of the Apes marathon) and stick Penny with Sheldon. Leonard tries to sneak back into the apartment, but Penny escapes leaving Leonard to care for Sheldon once more. Later, both Leonard and Sheldon are shown sitting on their couch feeling ill.

When Sheldon is shown up by a 15-year-old whiz kid, he decides to give up physics in order to try for the Nobel Peace Prize by creating peace in the Middle East by creating a "Nuevo Jerusalem" for the Jewish people in the Mexican desert.

The guys form a team called PMS (Perpectual Motion Squad) to compete at the physics bowl but kick Sheldon off the team when he becomes annoying. The title comes from the Batman cookie jar Leonard gives Sheldon when he is removed from the team. Sheldon of course strikes back with his own team called the Army Ants made up of the janitor, the lunch lady and her son.

When bringing a full-scale replica of the Time Machine from the 1960 film makes Penny late for work she snaps at Leonard for being childish. Leonard decides to sell off his extensive collection of comics, action figures and Darth Vader voice changer (Howard calls Leonard's collection "Nerdvana", hence the title). Sheldon reproaches Penny for her own Beanie Baby and Hello Kitty stuff, so Penny apologizes to Leonard who immediately starts collecting more nerd paraphanalia.

In this episode, Sheldon's pretty twin sister, Missy, is introduced. The other guys all try to date her but are denied by Sheldon. He relents when Missy discovers what he is doing and states "Missy can date whoever she wants" after being crotch-punched by Missy. Raj seems to have caught Missy's attention and after Raj takes part in a drug trial, he seems cured of his inability to speak with women. This drug worked, but Raj has some humorous side-effects (twitchiness). The title comes from Howard saying that he "would kill his rabbi with a pork chop to be with Missy."

Leonard's surprise birthday party is being planned by Penny and and Howard distracts Leonard by pretending to have an allergic reaction to a peanut bar and Leonard drives him to the hospital. While there, Howard does actually eat the peanut bar (causing him to "swell up like a brisket").

Leonard and Penny finally go out on a date. Sheldon meanwhile is learning Mandarin from Howard in order to confront the chinese food restaurant that they are passing off tangerine chicken as orange chicken (tangerine being a lesser fruit). Leonard says what he should be doing is asking them what they are passing off as "chicken". Sheldon's Mandarin is less than stellar and he confronts the owner saying "Show me your mucus!", "This is not a tangerine bicycle!", and "Oxen are in my bed! Many, many oxen!"

The Bad Fish Paradigm Howard and Raj eavesdrop on Leonard and Penny returning from a date. Penny wants to slow things down a bit because, as she explains to Sheldon, she didn't complete community college and she thinks that Leonard will eventually tire of her. She swears Sheldon to secrecy leaving Sheldon in a moral dilemma causing him to move out. Temporarily.

The Codpiece Topology After a day at the Renaissance Fair, the guys spot Penny with a new guy, and suggest Leonard go out with Leslie Winkle again. Leslie agrees, but after having a disagreement with Sheldon by supporting the concept of loop quantum gravity instead of string theory. When Leonard sides with Sheldon in favor of string theory, she decides that this is a "deal breaker" and walks out.

The Barbarian Sublimation Penny becomes addicted to playing Age of Conan with Sheldon while confiding in him about her poor love life recently. The group tries to help her with an online dating service (which fails terribly).

The Griffin Equivalency When Raj is included in People magazine's '30 Under 30 to Watch' list, the guys get a little jealous. Raj invites Penny to the People party (much to Leonard's chagrin) but when Raj over-indulges, hungover he is forced by Penny to apologize for his behaviour, which he squeaks out a "Sorry" (the first words he has been able to say to her). Charlie Sheen has a cameo in this episode.

The Euclid Alternative Because Leonard is forced to work nights, after mishaps with the other members of the cast, Sheldon is finally forced to get his drivers license. Sheldon decides to forgo actually driving and moves into his office until Leonard's experiment ends.

The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem When an obsessive student named Ramona Nowitzki insinuates herself into Sheldon's life, he realizes they are in a relationship. But when she tries to share credit for some of Sheldon's work (she suggests Sheldon's theorem be called the Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem) he throws her out.

The Panty Piñata Polarization Penny starts watching America's Next Top Model at Leonard and Sheldon's when her cable is shut off, but Sheldon bans her after a series of infractions. Meanwhile, Howard and Raj attempt to locate the Next Top Model house using government satellites and the internet and eventually do find the house filled with supermodels and enter posing as cable repairmen.

The Lizard-Spock Expansion Howard falls for Dr. Stephanie Barnett and sneaks her in to drive the Mars rover, which she gets stuck in a ditch. Howard destroys all evidence of their having been there, but it means he is left out of a major discovery. Meanwhile, Dr. Barnett is more interested in persuing Leonard, who has a difficult time letting Howard know. The title refers to Sheldon's modification of "Rock-Paper-Sissors."

The White Asparagus Triangulation Sheldon is uneasy because he finds Leonard's girlfriend, Stephanie "tolerable" so he tries to help their relationship along, making himself a nuisance. Believing that Leonard is losing Stephanie, runs to Penny, then Howard and Raj for advice. The title refers to the jar of white asparagus Sheldon insists Leonard open to impress Stephanie.

The Vartabedian Conundrum Stephanie has now moved in with Leonard and Sheldon and it turns out that no one has told her about Penny-Leonard's previous involvement. The title refers to Leonard's breakfasting with Mrs. Vartabedian on the third floor, and Sheldon questioning why he has never been invited ("What could I possibly have done to offend Mrs. Vartabedian?").

The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis Leonard begins assisting a gifted scientist who, unlike Leonard, is handsome and cool and who takes an interest in Penny. Penny gives Sheldon a Christmas gift and he now needs to get Howard and Raj's help in finding an appropriate gift for Penny.

The Killer Robot Instability The group loses Howard on the eve of an upcoming fighting robot tournament after Penny's comment sends him into a depression. Meanwhile, MONTE, the "killer robot" is destroyed in a pre-match before the competition.

The Friendship Algorithm Less than adept in the social graces, Sheldon attempts to apply scientific principles to making friends. Attempting to win computer time by replacing Raj with an influencial co-worker, Raj finds himself back in the group when Sheldon discovers that his "influencial" friend has no control over who uses the super computer.

The Financial Permeability Being short of money, Penny reluctantly agrees to borrow from Sheldon. Leonard confronts Penny's hulking ex-boyfriend Kurt, who owes Penny $1800. Kurt eventually pays Penny back, leaving her thinking him nice after all, much to the consternation of Leonard whose visit to Kurt remains unknown by Penny.

The Maternal Capacitance A visit from Leonard's mom, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter (Christine Baranski), a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She causes Penny to start crying moments after the two meet, while Sheldon hits it off with Leonard's mom immediately and are later seen playing Rock Band. Later, Leonard and Penny discuss his mother over dinner (Leonard built a hugging machine for physical affection - his father used to borrow it). They eventually almost end up in bed, but Leonard's interpretation of his mother's psychoanalysis of the two causes Penny to throw him out.

The Cushion Saturation Following a paintball game, Penny accidentially shoots Sheldon's couch cushion (his "only point of consistency in an ever-changing world"). They turn over the cushion by Sheldon soon notices an uncomfortableness and finds the paintball stain. The rest of the episode, Sheldon spends trying to find a new spot. Meanwhile Howard and Leslie Winkle have hooked up and Howard discovers he is Leslie's "arm candy" and reluctantly agrees to attend her sister's wedding.

The Terminator Decoupling Due to Sheldon's insistance that the group take the train rather than fly to San Francisco to attend a conference, the boys are surprised to see Summer Glau (playing herself) on the train. Raj surprising all, starts talking to the actress while Howard notices that what Raj had been drinking was non-alcoholic beer. When Raj is advised of this he stops talking again. Howard starts talking to Summer, but she is clearly not interested. In a funny subplots, all Sheldon's notes for Professor Smoot were left behind so he tries to have Penny retrieve them for him.

The Work Song Nanocluster Penny's home hair-accessories business becomes a complete nightmare when a caffeine-addled Sheldon takes over. Sheldon offers his advice of how Penny can make more money, and then Leonard, Howard, and Raj add their own ideas to mass-produce and sell the products, which are hair barrettes called Pennyblossoms. Everyone quits after getting a big order except Sheldon, who is hyper because he was given coffee by Penny. At the end of the episode, Sheldon in his The Flash costume runs out to get more coffee.

The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition Penny develops a rivalry with a sexy female neighbour (Valerie Azlynn) who threatens to become "The New Penny" in the building.

The Hofstadter Isotope While Stuart (Kevin Sussman), a fellow comic book-loving pal of the guys romances Penny, Leonard along with Howard and Raj venture out into the world of "Ladies' Night" at a local bar. Sheldon of course, interrupts Penny and Stuart's date by drawing Stuart into an arguement about whether Robin should succeed Batman in the event of Batman's death. Penny meanwhile falls asleep on the couch. Sheldon and Stuart slink out when Sheldon warns Stuart that if they wake her, Penny "would be all over him like a hungry wolverine." At the bar, only Raj has any success, while Howard and Leonard wait for the herd to be thinned out, and even then are, well, less successful than Raj.

Penny: No, I can't. Sheldon, honey, I don't want things to be weird between us.
Sheldon: Won't it also be 'weird' if I have to say hello to you every morning on my way to work and you're living in a refrigerator box and washing your hair with rainwater?

Leonard: You know what baffles me Sheldon?
Sheldon: Based on your academic record, I could guess any number of things

Sheldon: You won the Nobel prize, what, three years ago? So you must deal with a whole lot of "what has Smoot done lately?" My thought is we continue my research as team, you know, Cooper-Smoot, alphabetical. When we win the Nobel Prize, you'll be back on top
Dr. Smoot: With all due respect, Dr Cooper, are you on crack?
Sheldon: Fine, Smoot-Cooper, what a diva!

Sheldon: I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains
Penny: Who's Radiohead?
Sheldon [after twitching for a minute]: I have a working knowledge of the important things

Sheldon: You'll effectively be paying yor self 5.19 per day
Penny: A day??
Sheldon: There are children in sneaker factories in Indonesia that outearn you

Sheldon: It's very simple. Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and-as it always has-rock crushes scissors

Sheldon: I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion

Sheldon [to Penny]: I trusted you with my e-mail address, and you betrayed that trust by sending me Internet banality

Penny: Wait, Sheldon. This has gotten way out of hand. Okay, I've done some stupid things; you've done some stupid things. How about we just call it even and move on with our lives?
Sheldon: I've done no stupid things.
Penny: Look, you've got to meet me half way here.
Sheldon: I am meeting you half-way. I'm willing to concede that you've done some stupid things

Leonard: I don't think I can go out with [Penny] tonight.
Sheldon: Then don't.
Leonard: Other people would say, "Why not?"
Sheldon: Other people might be interested

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