"The Junior Professor Solution" is an episode of The Big Bang Theory that first aired on September 22, 2014, the same night as the Season 8 premiere. Directed by Mark Cendrowski. Teleplay by Jim Reynolds, Maria Ferrari and Tara Hernandez, based on a story by Steven Molaro, Eric Kaplan and Steve Holland.
Janine Davis (Regina King) from Human Resources has a solution for Sheldon's quandary: promote him to junior professornote so that he's not restricted to string theory.
But that means he'll have to teach a class. Sheldon begrudgingly agrees and schedules a class. But no one enrolls. According to the department secretary, Sheldon has "a reputation for being obnoxious." It could also be that the class was not added to the course catalog in a timely manner.
Howard decides to enroll. Instead of trying to teach Howard, Sheldon instead focuses on stumping Howard, who is actually more knowledgeable about physics than Sheldon expected. The situation gets out of hand, culminating with Howard shooting a spitball at Sheldon.
Meanwhile, Bernadette is annoyed that Penny seems to not be studying the materials Bernadette put together for Penny's first day at her new job as a pharmaceutical sales rep. Amy actually enjoys listening to Penny complain about Bernadette and Bernadette complain about Penny.
Tropes:
- Accidental Aiming Skills: Howard is very impressed that he managed to get a spitball right into Sheldon's mouth.Howard: Is that going to be on the test? Because I don't think I can do it again!
- And Your Reward Is Edible: In the end, the guys agree not to challenge each other's intellectual superiority anymore and play a science-related pop quiz where the (first) winner gets candy.
- Attack the Mouth: In a downplayed example, Howard shoots a spitball at Sheldon, who just happens to turn around at that very moment and it goes straight into his mouth. Naturally, it doesn't hurt him, but he does freak out about having Howard's spit inside him.
- Continuity Nod: Sheldon plans to bring some Fig Newtons to class just so he can point out that they're not named after Isaac Newton before throwing them away so that no one can eat them. Sheldon pointed out the same thing back in Season Three's "The Gorilla Experiment".
- Hard on Soft Science: The main conflict here is Sheldon thinking that Howard isn't smart enough to take his class because he's just an engineer.
- Interspecies Romance: Sheldon brings up Joseph Stalin tried creating half-ape half-man warriors by impregnating human women with gorillas. While everyone else finds this fascinating and adds in their own input onto this trivia, Penny while eating is disgusted of hearing this.
- However this is inaccurate for two reasons. One, it was actually the work of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, a Soviet scientist. And two the experiments where attempts to hybridize with chimpanzees as they’re genetically closer to us than gorillas.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Sheldon gets all of Howard's relatively difficult questions all related to engineering correct. Well, all except one...
- Sadist Teacher: Sheldon when he gets Howard as a student only wants to psychologically attack Howard and try to get him to admit that he's not as adept in physics as Sheldon. Howard retaliates by singing loudly and shooting a spitball into Sheldon's mouth. This gets Howard reported to Human Resources that he has to drop Sheldon's class.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Sheldon actually planned to do this with his class, which would have served as a Kick the Dog moment. He brought some Fig Newtons for his class and was going to ask them what scientist invented calculus and had a cookie named after him, expecting them all to answer Issac Newton and then tell them they were wrong and they are actually named after a town in Massachusetts and then throw them all away. He's dissapointed when nobody signed up for the class, meaning his cookies are wasted anyway.
