"The Fuzzy Boots Corollary" is an episode of The Big Bang Theory that first aired on October 8, 2007. Directed by Mark Cendrowski. Teleplay by Steven Molaro and Bill Prady, based on a story by Chuck Lorre.
The mailman has once again delivered Penny's mail to Apartment 4A instead of 4B. Leonard takes the opportunity to go see Penny, but is disappointed to see her kissing another man, Doug (Allan Nabors).
Maybe Leonard should instead try to go for a woman in his league, maybe someone like Leslie Winkle (Sara Gilbert). Leonard asks Leslie out but she decides instead they should skip ahead to the all-important first kiss. The two of them kiss, Leslie's unimpressed.
Now Sheldon worries that Leonard is going to get extremely sad and try to fill the void in his heart with over-emotional music and adopted cats. Before Leonard can go too far down that road, Sheldon points out that Penny has not actually rejected Leonard because Leonard has never asked her out.
Leonard tries to ask Penny out but she takes it as an invitation to dinner (or supper) with Leonard and Leonard's friends. Leonard and Penny go to a nice restaurant. Supposedly Howard and Raj couldn't come because they had to work, and Sheldon "had a colonoscopy and he hasn't quite bounced back yet."
Penny explains that her relationship with Doug is just a rebound after Kurt. Penny's going to have some 36 hours of meaningless sex with Kurt and not feel so good about it emotionally afterwards. Leonard pretends that he's knowledgeable about rebound relationships.
Leonard impresses Penny by spinning an olive in a glass. But then the olive falls out and Leonard bangs his head on the table trying to retrieve the olive. Aside from that, Penny had a good time. Back home, Penny asks "Leonard, was this supposed to be a date?" No, of course not. But when the guys ask how the date went, Leonard says it was awesome.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Physics: Leslie Winkle uses a 500kW oxygen-iodine laser to heat her Maruchan Instant Lunch soup in a few seconds, instead of putting it in an ordinary microwave oven. There are several problems with that:
- Even a 50kW oxygen-iodine laser would take up most of the lab.
- It would still take an hour to come close to heating the soup. Long before that could happen, the laser would drill a hole in the styrofoam cup, causing a leak.
- The goggles Leonard and Leslie wear look more appropriate for a wood shop than a laser lab. Appropriate laser goggles generally have dark or colored lenses and form an airtight seal on the wearer's face.
- The specified laser emits light outside the spectrum visible to humans, not a red beam, like a helium-neon laser would. But this one we can honestly chalk up as an artistic license rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of how lasers work.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Leonard makes a comment about Sheldon having asthma. Later in the series, Leonard would be the one with asthma.
- Going Postal, alluded to: When Penny says she's going to talk to the mailman, Leonard dissuades her. "Civil servants have a documented propensity to, you know, snap," Leonard tells her.
- Mundane Utility: Leslie Winkle is using a 500 kilowatt oxygen-iodine laser to cook ramen.
- Product Placement: Quizno's. Sheldon sometimes has Quizno's sandwiches for lunch and sometimes they're very filling, Leonard says.
- Second Episode Introduction: Leslie Winkle. Although she could have been a one-off character, she went on to appear in eight more episodes, almost all of them prior to Season 4, and she was a very important character in some of those episodes.
- Three Laws-Compliant: Comes up when Sheldon is asked if he would want to be told he was really a robot.Sheldon: Uh, let me ask you this: when I learn that I'm a robot, would I be bound by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?
Raj: You might be bound by them right now.
Howard: That's true. Have you ever harmed a human being or, through inaction, allowed a human being to come to harm?
Sheldon: Of course not.
Raj: Have you ever harmed yourself or allowed yourself to be harmed except in cases where a human being would be endangered?
Sheldon: Well, no.
Howard: I smell robot.
