"The Leftover Thermalization" is an episode of The Big Bang Theory that first aired on March 12, 2015. Directed by Mark Cendrowski. Teleplay by Eric Kaplan, Jim Reynolds and Steve Holland, based on a story by Steven Molaro, Maria Ferrari and Jeremy Howe.
An article about Leonard's superfluid theory in Scientific American only mentions Sheldon. Amy explains to Sheldon that this will make Leonard feel bad. It's not easy to get Sheldon to feel empathy, but Amy gets Sheldon there. But despite that empathy, when Sheldon tells Leonard, Sheldon actually makes matters worse.
Meanwhile, Bernadette and Howard go to the late Mrs. Wolowitz's house, where Stuart (Kevin Sussman) tells them there was a power outage, and power might not be back until tomorrow. Now the last food Mrs. Wolowitz prepared is now defrosting, and taking it to another freezer will not help. The food must be prepared now or else discarded. Obviously Howard can't eat it all by himself.
Thus, Howard decides to invite everyone for a candlelit dinner. Raj helps Bernadette and Howard reheat the food. At the dinner, Amy suggests the event is like an 18th century French salon, which Sheldon condescendingly explains to Penny "is a gathering where intellectuals entertained each other with sparkling conversations about issues of the day."
But the salon almost devolves into a food fight between Leonard and Sheldon. Bernadette takes Leonard and Sheldon aside and tries to scream some sense into them. Howard notices his wife screaming sounds kind of like his mother.
At the end, everyone is unified by horrific heartburn. The news of an article about the superfluid theory in Physics Today that does mention Leonard is overshadowed by the news Bernadette found some more Tums.
Tropes
- Analogy Backfire: Sheldon tries to ease into revealing to Leonard that only his name is in the article by pointing out that only Leonard's name is on the electric bill. Leonard reminds him that in fact only Sheldon's name is on the electric bill. Sheldon doesn't complete the analogy because that makes it a disaster.
- Call-Back to "The Troll Manifestation": In which Leonard formulated a theory of the universe as a superfluid and Sheldon worked out the math.
- Shout-Out:
- Sheldon guesses that Amy means "We're all Groot?".
- Amy reminds Sheldon how sad he got when Disneyland let some kid pull the sword out of the stone instead of him.
- Sheldon knows about The View, but only because Whoopi Goldberg, who played Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, had been a co-host on The View since 2007 through the time this episode first aired and afterwards.
