"The Big Bang Theory": Cooperisms from Season 4 Quiz

Answer: His first date

Sheldon dropped a bombshell on the rest of the gang in "The Robotic Manipulation" when he announced that he was thinking of having a child with Amy Farrah Fowler through in-vitro fertilization. The idea came from Amy, who pointed out that their combined genetic material possessed "the potential of producing the first in a line of intellectually superior benign overlords to guide humanity to a brighter tomorrow". When Penny suggested that Sheldon should consider spending more time getting to know the future mother of his offspring, Sheldon decided to take Amy out on a date. "Is this your first date?" asked Penny, as she drove Sheldon to pick up Amy. "That depends," he replied. "Does square-dancing with my sister at a Teens-for-Jesus Fourth of July hoedown count as a date?" When Penny answered in the negative, Sheldon confirmed her suspicions. "Then this is my first date."

The evening went so well that Sheldon felt comfortable proceeding with their plan to gift humanity with their progeny. "In these uncertain times," he rationalized, "doesn't humanity deserve a gift?" Penny decided that enough was enough, and told Sheldon that she would tell his mother on him if he conceived a child with Amy. "Well, that's no threat," said Sheldon. "My mother's always wanted a grandchild." Penny put it into context for him. "Really? Your deeply religious, born-again Christian mother wants a test tube grandbaby born out of wedlock?" A concerned look formed over Sheldon's face, as he realized that Penny was right. "Curses," he muttered.

Answer: He created a generous endowment in his name at the university.

Sheldon was concerned that he wouldn't live long enough to be able to transfer his consciousness to a machine and achieve immortality, so he resolved to extend his lifespan by any means necessary. He changed "Pizza Night" to "Cruciferous Vegetable Night", but this proved to be short-lived after his dinner of Brussels sprouts gave him gas. (Naturally, Sheldon thought that he had cholera.) Next, Sheldon tried to go jogging with Penny, but he experienced difficulty stretching, and then tripped and fell down the stairs.

He concluded that his body was "too fragile to endure the vicissitudes of the world", so he confined himself to his bedroom and chose to interact with the rest of the world through a "mobile virtual presence device", which was essentially a remote-controlled LCD monitor on wheels.

He only emerged from the secure confines of his bedroom when he attempted to get Steve Wozniak to autograph his Apple II console, but in his haste he ended up falling down the stairs (again), breaking the console in the process.

The episode ended with Penny singing "Soft Kitty" to Sheldon's virtual presence device.

Answer: His spot on the couch

When Sheldon was interviewed by the FBI as part of a background check on Howard, he let slip that Howard had crashed the Mars Rover while attempting to impress a woman. After Sheldon fessed up to Howard about his indiscretion, Howard couldn't forgive him for setting his career back at least two years. A downcast Sheldon tried to drown his sorrows at the Cheesecake Factory, but he kept spitting out the shot that Penny tried to pass off as a Rosewater Ricky because he couldn't taste the cherries.

Sheldon eventually got Howard to forgive him when he presented him with a large brown object. "You're giving me a couch cushion?" asked Howard, after looking into the bag. "No, the cushion is merely symbolic. I'm giving you my spot on the couch," explained Sheldon. "But you love that spot," Howard replied. "No," Sheldon clarified. "I love my mother. My feelings for my spot are much greater. It is the singular location in space around which revolves my entire universe. And now it's yours." Howard was so moved that he forgave Sheldon, but he only got to sit in Sheldon's spot on the couch for 94 seconds, before Sheldon changed his mind and demanded his spot back.

Answer: A movie theater

The guys were planning on catching a midnight screening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with 21 seconds of previously unseen footage restored, but the night got off to a rocky start when they ignored Sheldon's advice to get to the theater early, stopping for dinner instead.

The gang ended up at the tail end of an extremely long queue, and matters were only made worse with the arrival of Wil Wheaton and his entourage. Despite Sheldon's best attempts to get the actor to join the back of the queue ("No cuts, no buts, no coconuts!"), Wheaton used his celebrity status to get him and his three friends into the movie ahead of everyone else.

The line eventually started moving, but the theater ran out of seats just as Sheldon and the gang reached the head of the queue.

Sheldon got back at Wheaton by sneaking into the theater through the back door and stealing the film canisters containing the movie from the projection booth. "If I can't see it, no one else can see it," cried a maniacal Sheldon before taking off on foot, with the heavy canisters in tow.

Answer: Superman

In "The Justice League Recombination", Penny got back together with Zack just so she wouldn't be alone on New Year's Eve. This turned out to be fortuitous timing, as Sheldon needed Zack to help realize his dream of winning Stuart's annual costume party contest as the Justice League of America. "It occurs to me that we might have an opportunity to finally snare Best Group Costume if we shore up our weak link, which is clearly Leonard as Superman," explained Sheldon. "Let's ask ourselves, is there anyone we know who would make a more manly and convincing son of Krypton?" The guys came up with unhelpful answers, like Leonard in high-heel boots, and Howard's mother in high-heel boots.

Sheldon motioned to Zack, as he said, "I was thinking specifically of the gentleman over there, moving his lips as he enjoys the latest exploits of Betty and Veronica." Howard supported the idea, noting that Zack was the only person they knew with actual muscles, but Leonard had objections. "You can't replace me with Zack," he complained. "Why not?" queried Sheldon. "Penny did it."

Answer: Acting lessons

In "The Thespian Catalyst", Sheldon was crushed when the university's doctoral candidates made less-than-glowing comments and tweets about his lecturing skills. Of course, it didn't help that he was his usual conceited and condescending self during the class. He poured his heart out to Amy after the humiliating experience. "Do you realize that teaching is the first thing I have failed at since my ill-fated attempt to complete a chin-up in March of 1989?" he said. Amy suggested that he should try improving his socialization skills so that he could communicate more effectively with others. "In its essence, teaching is a performance art," Amy explained. "In the classroom paradigm, the teacher has the responsibility to communicate, as well as entertain and engage." Amy postulated that Sheldon may be able to connect better with his students if he took up acting lessons, an idea that Sheldon embraced, as he thought it might help if he could act as if he cared about his students.

Sheldon approached Penny for some acting lessons, and she was quick to point out that for once, she knew more about something than he did. "Does this mean you are done mocking my acting career?" she asked him triumphantly. "Oh, I'm sorry," replied Sheldon. "I thought making the transition from actor to acting teacher was the signal that one's career had reached the end of the road." Despite her better judgment, Penny agreed to give Sheldon some acting lessons, but she was forced to call his mother to 'fix' him, after an emotional scene-reading left Sheldon's adolescent alter ego sobbing for Spock not to take him to the future.

Answer: A card trick

When Sheldon dismissed Howard's magic trick as "childish" and "designed to confuse and intrigue simpletons", Howard challenged him to figure out how the trick was done. Initially, Sheldon tried to be aloof about the whole matter, but his curiosity quickly got the better of him. Sheldon sat in stony silence with nothing but a bewildered expression on his face as he watched Howard correctly guess the cards picked by Raj and Penny over and over again. He tried unsuccessfully to reverse engineer the card trick by measuring residual heat levels on the cards with infra-red cameras and by passing a barcode scanner off as a wand, to no avail. Even his attempts at procuring a radioactive tracer were stymied. ("Apparently, you can't hack into a government supercomputer and try to buy Uranium without the Department of Homeland Security tattling to your mother.")

To add insult to injury, Penny managed to figure out Howard's secret, which only infuriated Sheldon more. It turned out that Howard was not actually guessing the cards picked by the others correctly; everyone was in on the ruse, and were simply confirming Howard's wild guesses in order to exasperate Sheldon. The con was almost revealed when Sheldon insisted that Howard perform the card trick on him, so that he could "make sure there's no monkey business". Luckily, Raj was sitting next to Sheldon and was able to signal Sheldon's card to Howard by holding up two fingers to his chest. "Two of Hearts", announced Howard with a flourish. "I hate you," Sheldon replied.

Answer: That Bernadette was going to propose to Howard

This rumor-filled episode began with Amy informing Sheldon that Bernadette was thinking of breaking up with Howard. Sheldon expressed disapproval over Amy engaging in idle gossip, but this didn't stop him from telling Leonard about it. Amy proposed a social experiment to Sheldon which would allow them to test a meme theory hypothesis, which provided that "items of gossip are like living things that sought to reproduce by using humans as their host".

The pair would concoct a "tantalizing piece of gossip", and track its progression amongst their group of friends. Amy started the ball rolling by informing Penny that she had engaged in sexual intercourse with Sheldon.

It wasn't long before the piece of news spread from Penny to Raj, and from Raj to Leonard.

When Sheldon received confirmation that the rumor was spreading faster than they anticipated, he could hardly contain his excitement. "I must say, Amy, pretending to have intercourse with you is giving me a great deal of satisfaction," he said.

The episode ended with Amy telling Penny that she was carrying Sheldon's baby and walking down a flight of stairs, only to encounter Leonard, who was reading a text message he had just received. "You're pregnant?" he asked her incredulously.

Answer: With Sheldon placed in quarantine at the hospital

When Sheldon accidentally took a sip of Leonard's water during dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, his grave concerns were casually dismissed by Leonard. "Do I really need to connect the dots for you?" Sheldon said indignantly. "The backwash into this glass has every pathogen that calls your mouth home-sweet-home, not to mention the visitors who arrive on the dancing tongue of your sub-tropical girlfriend." Sheldon then tried to rid himself of the germs with his napkin, but he had to run to the bar to sterilize his mouth with alcohol when he discovered that the napkin also belonged to Leonard.

Later on, Sheldon's mysophobia was severely tested when he was guilt-tripped into accompanying the rest of the gang to visit Howard's mother at the hospital. When his calls to be taken home to use the bathroom went unfulfilled, he was forced to use the one at the hospital - no mean feat considering that he did so without touching any of the intervening doors with his hands. On the way back, a coughing patient was wheeled out on a gurney past Sheldon, forcing him to back hurriedly into a room without noticing that it was marked "Caution: Biohazard". A mortified Sheldon was confronted by a bedridden patient surrounded by hospital staff wearing bio-suits. The episode ended with Sheldon being quarantined in an isolation room at the hospital playing "The Mystic Warlords of Ka'a" with Leonard, Howard and Raj in bio-suits.

Answer: A revolving standby letter of credit to cover his share of the rent

When Leonard and Priya's lovemaking drove Raj out of his own apartment, he sought a good night's sleep at Sheldon and Leonard's place. Sheldon was more than happy to accommodate Raj on the living room couch, but the use of Leonard's bed was an entirely different story. "This is a form indemnifying me from your use of Leonard's bedroom," Sheldon said, as he passed the paperwork to Raj. "Sign here indicating that I tried to stop you, and did so using a stern facial expression." He also took Raj through the apartment's safety procedures, an emergency fire drill and a refresher CPR course.

Naturally, more documents were involved after Raj and Leonard agreed on a more permanent arrangement. "This says you can make end-of-life decisions for me," Raj said, as he flipped through a modified roommate agreement for a temporary houseguest, and a living will and durable power of attorney. "As your friend, let's hope it doesn't come to that," Sheldon replied. Leonard convinced Raj to sign the documents by pointing out that there was a reciprocity clause, so Raj could "pull the plug" on Sheldon too. The execution of the documents made it official. "If you have any questions, here's the FAQ sheet, or if you prefer the human touch, I do a live webchat called 'Apartment Talk' on Tuesday nights," said Sheldon. "No backsies," said Leonard, after spotting the concerned look on Raj's face.