"Blonde Ambition and the Concept of Zero" is an episode of Young Sheldon that first aired October 20, 2022. Directed by Shiri Appleby. Teleplay by Steven Molaro, Jeremy Howe and Connor Kilpatrick, based on a story by Steve Holland, Eric Kaplan and Nadiya Chettiar.
Brenda (Melissa Peterman) talks to George Sr. about Billy failing math. The boy's having trouble with negative numbers and fractions. Brenda can't afford a tutor for her son, so he will likely be held back in the sixth grade. George tries to convince Sheldon to tutor Billy; Sheldon initially doesn't want to, but caves after George uses reverse psychology.
Sheldon starts tutoring Billy, and to Sheldon's surprise, Billy makes progress. However, Billy eventually asks Sheldon whether zero is real or not, and Sheldon doesn't have an answer. Sheldon, Dr. Sturgis (Wallace Shawn), and Dr. Linkletter (Ed Begley Jr.) then try to figure out whether zero is real,note and they can't reach a conclusion.
Later, thanks to a suggestion from Billy, Sheldon realizes that as long as one accepts zero as real, they can do all of modern mathematics with it, and therefore, he should just accept zero, like how Christians accept God. He also realizes that since the Universe originally came from nothing, that makes zero (not God) the ultimate creator. He then prays to zero alongside Billy.note
Meanwhile, Missy is having trouble with Kevin, a boy at school who she likes. Missy won't talk to Mary about it, and so she talks to Connie, who tells Missy to ask her friend Heather to find out whether Kevin likes her. However, this backfires after Heather asks out Kevin.
Missy goes to see Connie again. Mandy (Emily Osment), who is now living with Connie since the previous episode, gives Missy some advice. Mandy tells Missy that she should have asked one of Kevin's friends, or slipped a note in his locker.
Missy then asks for advice on how to deal with Heather, and Mandy encourages her to continue being her friend in order to find out embarrassing things about her. Missy really appreciates Mandy's advice, and the two of them start going out and doing this together, as Mandy is like an older sister to Missy; Mary and Connie are both jealous of this.
Missy compliments Mandy's looks and wishes she could be blond herself. Mandy tells Missy about how very few women are naturally blonde, as most of them dye their hair, and so Missy decides to do that (by herself); this ends disastrously. Missy tries to hide it from the rest of the family, but they soon find out, thanks to Connie.
In The Tag, old Sheldon explains that Billy passed math and advanced to 7th grade, where he remained for several more years.
Tropes
- Held Back in School: Billy is going to be held back in sixth grade if he doesn't pass math. In The Tag, adult Sheldon informs us that he miraculously passed to the seventh grade... where he stayed for several years.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Missy says that Connie is "kind of old", when Connie is in the next room over.
- Locked in the Bathroom: Missy locks herself in the bathroom after her disastrous attempt to dye her hair and refuses to come out.
- My Hair Came Out Green: Missy tries to dye her hair blonde, but it comes out multicolored.
- Potty Emergency: George needs to use the bathroom, but Missy has locked herself in after her bad dye job. In the end he decides to just go do his business outside.
- Previously on…: We're reminded that in the previous episode Mandy moved in with Connie.
- Reverse Psychology: George says maybe Sheldon's not cut out for teaching. Sheldon is well aware that his father is using reverse psychology to convince him to tutor Billy in math, but he winds up tutoring Billy anyway.
- Shout-Out:
- To Madonna and her Blonde Ambition Tour: Mandy tells Missy that Madonna's not a natural blonde. Missy's mind is blown.
- To Parmenides: Quoted by Sheldon as saying "Nothing cannot exist, because to speak of something is to speak of something that exists."
- Stress Vomit: Not being unable to explain what zero is makes Sheldon, Sturgis and Linkletter vomit.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: We see Sheldon puke into a refuse bin, then Sturgis, then cut as soon as Sturgis hands the bin to Linkletter. At no time is any vomit itself shown.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Sheldon tutoring Billy about negative numbers leads Sheldon and soon after Sturgis and Linkletter to a ridiculous existential crisis about the number zero, all based on a bit of pure sophistry that Billy stumbled upon.
- Sturgis has the right reaction at first. "You're being silly," he says to the young genius, "zero is a number, like every other number." In response, Sheldon confronts Sturgis with division by zero, though he phrases it by asking "can you divide with it?" (emphasis added). Although no number is divisible by zero, neither Sheldon nor Sturgis have any similar unease about −1 and 1 being divisible by all numbers, including 0, which divided by any nonzero number is 0 (e.g., 0 divided by 3 is 0). It is only dividing by zero that leads to the paradox of a directionless infinity that is neither positive nor negative. So yes, you can divide with zero, just as long as it's the dividend, not the divisor.
- Linkletter gets drawn into this nonsense when Sturgis asks him to "prove it, tough guy." Maybe Linkletter, on account of not specializing in pure mathematics, can be forgiven for not thinking of this simple proof of zero's existence: if we accept the existence of a positive number x and the existence of addition and subtraction, then we must also accept x + x = 2x and x − x = 0.
- None of these two and a half men of science thought to consult a mathematics professor at the university to help them resolve this quandary.
- Despite being a physics prodigy, Sheldon seems to not know about the so-called imaginary and complex numbers, which play a very important part in the physics of electricity. Surely an even younger Sheldon would have no problem solving an equation like x^2 − 6x + 7 = 0, one solution of which is x = 3 − √2, the other is x = 3 + √2; one can obtain a reasonable approximation of either solution with a calculator. On the other hand, a typical calculator might have trouble with x^2 − 4x + 7 = 0, one solution of which is x = 2 + √(−3) — you can guess the other solution. That involves taking the square root of a negative number. Centuries ago, such numbers were derided as imaginary, and consequently one solution to the equation x^2 + 1 is notated i (for "imaginary") and the other solution is notated −i. But science nevertheless progressed by pretending that such numbers exist, as Billy suggests Sheldon should do with zero. To be fair to the writers, however, most of their viewers would have been as lost as Billy if the plot involved imaginary numbers, and even Sheldon might have never encountered imaginary numbers in a high school math classroom.
- Going by mathematical terminology, zero is not just real, it is purely real, it is also purely imaginary, and we can even go nuts and say it's purely complex. This is because 0 is between the aforementioned −i and i, which are labeled as purely imaginary, just as it's between −1 and 1, which are labeled as purely real.
- Praying to zero, Sheldon credits that number with "the null set, [the] Fibonacci sequence, binary language" and the ability to proceed ad infinitum. This is not quite right either.
- By "binary language," Sheldon probably means binary numeration, which uses only the digits 0 and 1. Zero by itself is insufficient for binary numeration. Aside from the number 0 itself, the digit 0 has significance only in context with at least one digit 1 to its left.
- Also, 0 by itself is insufficient to generate the Fibonacci sequence, the number 1 is also necessary here. The formula for the Fibonacci numbers is typically given as F(n) = F(n − 2) + F(n − 1), with F(0) explicitly defined as 0 and F(1) explicitly defined as 1. From there, we can get 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. This can also be extended to negative numbers as well as other real, imaginary and complex numbers.
