(Penny and Leonard’s apartment: living room)
Ellen (on TV): Have a seat, thanks for being here. I feel the same way about you.
Raj: This is nice. All my friends hanging out, watching Ellen. It's like, what am I gonna do with my other two wishes?
Amy: It's not nice. She's having on the scientists who are trying to steal our Nobel Prize.
Sheldon: Although I will enjoy watching her expose Pemberton and Campbell for the coattail-riding frauds that they are.
Leonard: That is Ellen's brand, gotcha journalism.
Penny: Yeah, you should've seen her take down John Krasinski last week. Got him to admit he loved his wife. It was brutal.
Ellen (on TV): All right, our next guests are a couple of physicists... Don't turn the channel. They've been doing some viral videos online about what it's like to be in the running for a Nobel Prize. Please welcome Doctors Greg Pemberton and Kevin Campbell.
Bernadette: Why does she even want to have scientists on?
Sheldon: Uh, silly question. Who else will give her audience causal explanations of natural phenomena?
Howard: I love you, honey, but think.
Ellen (on TV): So you guys have discovered something pretty amazing in the universe. Obviously, I understand, uh, high-level physics because I'm a comedian, but... Can you explain it to the audience?
Greg Pemberton (on TV): Well, I don't know, I'm not sure we're even smart enough to understand it.
Sheldon: Look, look, the audience is laughing at them. It's starting.
Amy: I hate to say it, Sheldon, but I think the audience likes them.
Sheldon: Well, that will all change when Ellen asks them how super-asymmetry explains the cosmological excess of matter over anti-matter and they panic, like Leonard trying to do a pull-up.
Leonard: Hey, what'd I do?
Penny: Not a pull-up.
Ellen (on TV): People have been loving your videos, especially the-the songs that you've been posting.
Greg Pemberton (on TV): Oh, thanks.
Kevin Campbell (on TV): Thank you.
Ellen (on TV): Uh, this may be pushing it, but I have to ask. Would you mind singing one of those for us right now?
Kevin Campbell (on TV): Oh, why not?
Greg Pemberton (on TV): All right.
Sheldon: Come on, Ellen, they're right there. Go for the jugular.
Kevin Campbell & Greg Pemberton (on TV): ♪ Let's get physicist, physicist - I want to get physicist - Let's get into physicist - Let me hear your boson talk ♪
Kevin Campbell (on TV): Come on, Ellen. ♪ Let me hear your boson talk... ♪
(Hotel)
Sheldon: Dr. Pemberton… Dr. Campbell… Doctors Pemberton and Campbell.
Greg Pemberton: Morning, buddy.
Sheldon: I am not your buddy.
Kevin Campbell: What's wrong?
Sheldon: I'll tell you what's wrong. You went on TV and were charming.
Kevin Campbell: Thanks, man. That's what my mom said.
Greg Pemberton: W-Why don't you come in and have some parfait?
Kevin Campbell: Yeah, we ordered it from room service; it cost, like, 12 bucks. It's just yogurt in a glass.
Sheldon: I don't want your yogurt.
Kevin Campbell: Then what do you want?
Sheldon: I want you to hold a press conference where you admit that you blindly stumbled into super-asymmetry and it was really our discovery.
Greg Pemberton: Oh. No, thanks.
Kevin Campbell: You know, just because we proved something by accident doesn't mean we didn't prove it.
Greg Pemberton: Yeah, I wasn't trying to prove that my wife was cheating on me when I came home early one Friday, but I'm still sleeping on his couch.
Kevin Campbell: I told you, you can do better than her.
Greg Pemberton: Thanks. It just hurts.
Kevin Campbell: And when you win that Nobel Prize, she's gonna realize that she was wrong, you are not a fraud.
Sheldon: She is not wrong.
Kevin Campbell: Wow, I can't believe you're siding with Linda.
Greg Pemberton: Shame on you.
(Caltech: mess)
Sheldon: Look at this. They posted another video. It's not even about science. They're on a celebrity bus tour.
Raj: Those are fun. I-I went on one and saw Tom Hanks talking to his gardener. He's even nice when you plant the wrong colour azaleas.
Leonard: Those guys are good at self-promoting, so what? No one ever won a Nobel for being nice.
Raj: Yeah, but if they did, do you know who would win one?
Howard: Are you gonna say Tom Hanks?
Raj: He picked up a shovel and helped the guy replant.
Siebert: Dr. Cooper, there you are. I just wanted to tell you not to worry about this Pemberton and Campbell publicity blitz.
Sheldon: Are you worried?
Siebert: Not at all. Not even a little bit. Look, I-It doesn't matter if they have popular support, we're gonna get the scientific community behind us.
Leonard: He's right, the Nobel Prize is about the work, and as your fellow scientists, we support you and Amy.
Siebert: That's great, Scooby Gang. Now, the university is gonna host a reception for you and Dr. Fowler where we invite as many academic luminaries as we can, uh, give them a chance to meet you, hear about your work.
Leonard: Uh, that's a great idea.
Siebert: Uh, yeah. Who needs to be likable when you have Nobel Laureates campaigning for you?
Sheldon: Oh, yeah... Wait a minute. Do you not think we're likable?
Siebert: That's what's great about you, you never stop asking the tough questions.
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: living room)
Howard: Hey. Kids asleep?
Bernadette: Nope. I've been trying to get them down for hours. Apparently, Halley's afraid of the dark now and I can't turn on the night-light 'cause it makes Michael cry.
Howard: Why doesn't he like the night-light?
Bernadette: Jot that down, we can ask him as soon as he learns to speak. We can also find out what's so damn funny about birds.
Howard: I'll go talk to her.
Bernadette: I don't know why she's suddenly so afraid of everything.
Howard: Honey, remember, she's my child, too.
(On baby phone)
Howard: Hey, sweetie, I heard you were afraid of the dark. I know someone else who was afraid of the dark once. Your daddy, when he was in space. And just like you, I was wearing a full diaper.
(Sheldon and Amy’s apartment)
Amy: Hey, good news. They're inviting several Nobel Laureates to our reception.
Sheldon: Oh, great, like who?
Amy: Uh... Makoto Kobayashi.
Sheldon: Da... Ooh.
Amy: What?
Sheldon: Well, I may have been less than kind to him about his Nobel Prize win.
Amy: Why?
Sheldon: I was jealous, angry and new to Twitter. It was a dangerous combination.
Amy: Okay, so scratch Kobayashi. Uh, George Smoot's on here.
Sheldon: We have a history.
Amy: Saul Perlmutter?
Sheldon: Aww.
Amy: What about Kip Thorne?
Sheldon: That was a misunderstanding. I didn't know he was right behind me.
Amy: So you've alienated everyone we need to help us?
Sheldon: Well, Amy, if I had known that someday we'd need them, I would never have insulted them.
Amy: Well, that doesn't make it better.
Sheldon: Oh. Well, it's also not true.
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: living room)
Stuart: Hey.
Bernadette: Hey.
Stuart: Oh, that's cute. Did Halley draw that at preschool?
Bernadette: I drew it.
Stuart: Well, good night.
Bernadette: It's supposed to be an astronaut.
Stuart: And I'm supposed to be living on my own at this age, but here we are.
Bernadette: Halley was scared and Howard told her the sweetest story about when he was in space and I thought I could turn it into a book for her and Michael.
Stuart: Oh, well, I mean, I am an artist. Uh, I-if you want, I could do the drawings.
Bernadette: Really? That'd be amazing.
Stuart: Yeah, it'd be fun. And a, a nice change of pace from what I usually draw.
Bernadette: What do you usually draw?
Stuart: Well, good night.
(Penny and Leonard’s apartment: kitchen)
Penny: Someone texting you?
Leonard: Uh, no, I just met my exercise goal for the day.
Penny: By doing the dishes?
Leonard: Hey, you have your goals, I have mine.
Amy: Hello.
Sheldon: What are you two doing?
Leonard: Mm, just finishing a workout.
Penny: What's up?
Amy: Do you have any cookie dough?
Penny: Uh, I think so. Let me see. Yeah, we've got, uh, chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin.
Sheldon: Oatmeal raisin? I know at least two things wrong with that cookie.
Amy: It's for the Nobel Laureates. We need them on our side, but unfortunately, Sheldon...
Penny: No. "Unfortunately, Sheldon..." that's all you got to say.
Leonard: Well, that's... so you need these people's support and you're sending them baked goods?
Penny: Yeah, they're pretty smart. Don't you think they're gonna realize it's just a bribe?
Sheldon: No, you'd think, but sometimes brilliant people can be painfully oblivious to social cues.
Penny: Thank you for pointing that out, Sheldon.
Sheldon: Anytime.
(George F. Smoot’s office)
George F. Smoot: "Sheldon Cooper"? Hmm.
(Kip Thorne’s office)
Kip Thorne: "Sheldon Cooper"? Pass.
(Frances H. Arnold’s office)
Frances H. Arnold: "Sheldon Cooper." Aw. Ugh, oatmeal raisin? Ugh.
(Sheldon and Amy’s apartment)
Sheldon: Oh, it's from Saul Perlmutter. He sent me a picture.
Amy: Ooh, let me see.
Sheldon: Oh, he arranged the cookies to spell out "thank you."
Amy: Sheldon, that word isn't "thank."
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: living room)
Bernadette: Hi. I got you a surprise.
Howard: What... Oh. What's the occasion?
Bernadette: I heard you tell Halley that story the other night, and I thought it was so sweet that Stuart and I turned it into a book.
Howard: The Frightened Little Astronaut?
Raj: That looks just like you. Look how tiny and scared you look.
Bernadette: And the best part is, Stuart showed it to a publisher friend of his, and they're interested in it.
Raj: That is so cool.
Howard: Absolutely not.
Bernadette: Why?
Howard: Because I don't want the whole world to know I was the frightened little astronaut!
Raj: Maybe you should've called it The Bitchy Little Astronaut.
(Penny and Leonard’s apartment: kitchen)
Leonard: You want to tell me what's going on?
Sheldon: Is my distress that obvious?
Leonard: Sheldon, please don't take this the wrong way, but when you're quiet even for a second, something's wrong.
Sheldon: Well, it's true. The fact is, I feel really bad for Amy.
Leonard: Well, we all do. But just for fun, why do you?
Sheldon: Well, she didn't do anything wrong, but she's paying for my mistakes.
Leonard: Wow.
Sheldon: What?
Leonard: No... I'm just honestly impressed. When did you start caring about other people's feelings?
Sheldon: Well, I laughed when Amy got a shock from the broken Christmas tree lights, so it was after that.
(Laundry room)
Penny: So none of them are coming to the reception?
Amy: I don't think so.
Penny: Okay, what did he say that was so insulting? Well, he may have suggested there was an inelegance to the quadrupole normalization of Smoot's data.
Amy: Damn.
(Penny and Leonard’s apartment: kitchen)
Sheldon: See, sometimes I wish I could invent a time machine, so I could go back and prevent myself from acting so rashly.
Leonard: Or moving forward, you could think before you speak.
Sheldon: I suppose so.
Leonard: But the time machine thing is probably more likely.
Sheldon: My problem is that I don't always know when I've gone too far.
Leonard: Well, uh, if you like, I could try to help you out. You know, and maybe let you know if you're crossing a line.
Sheldon: Oh, you mean, like, with a code word?
Leonard: Sure. How's "shut up"?
Sheldon: That's perfect. People say it to me all the time, no one will suspect.
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: living room)
Stuart: Hey, got a minute?
Howard: Sure. What's up?
Stuart: Uh, Bernadette said you weren't crazy about the book.
Howard: No. It's great. I just don't want anyone to ever see it or read it or know it exists.
Stuart: But this could be really good for me, you know? Finally get my artwork published. And-and come on, it's a, it's a cute story.
Howard: Oh, easy for you to say. No one's gonna think you're a coward.
Stuart: Are you kidding? The other day in the comic book store, a balloon popped and I threw up.
Howard: Can't you just take my name off it?
Stuart: No, uh, the only reason the publisher's interested is 'cause a real astronaut wrote it.
Howard: Well, look, what if we made a few changes?
Stuart: Uh, sure, yes. What-what do you have in mind?
Howard: Well, nothing major. But see here on the cover, where it says "frightened little," what if, I don't know, it didn't say that?
Stuart: So, it would just be The Astronaut?
Howard: Yeah, you're right. That doesn't quite pop. What about... The Brave Astronaut? See, that's got some zip to it!
Stuart: Okay.
Howard: And here on this page, where I'm crying. What if, instead, I'm... Punching a meteor into the sun with my bare fists?
Stuart: So you have superpowers?
Howard: I like the way you're thinking.
(Kip Thorne’s office)
Leonard: Professor Thorne?
Kip Thorne: Dr. Hofstadter.
Leonard: Uh, you know my wife, Penny.
Kip Thorne: Sure. Hi.
Penny: Hi.
Leonard: Uh, we wanted to talk to you about Dr. Cooper. Now, before you say no...
Kip Thorne: No.
Leonard: Well, then, after you say no.
Kip Thorne: No.
Penny: Okay, look, Sheldon's a pain in the ass. But Dr. Fowler's really nice. So if you average them out... Math... You got someone who's okay.
Leonard: But more than the person, the Nobel is about the work. You should understand that more than anyone.
Penny: Yes, because of your work on gravitational waves.
Kip Thorne: You know my work?
Penny: I do. But I'm-I'm really hogging this conversation. Leonard?
Leonard: Just give them a chance. Uh, science has a history of difficult people. Look at, uh, Newton, who was a jerk to Leibniz, and Leibniz, who was a jerk to everyone.
Penny: Yeah, you know, and I don't need to tell you that gravitational waves are disturbances in the curvature of space-time. Or that the... Hey, you worked on the movie Interstellar?
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: living room)
Howard: So what do you think?
Bernadette: I think if you were in space without a shirt on, you'd die.
Howard: Oh. No, I am wearing a shirt. It's just skintight, so you can see my pecs.
Bernadette: When did you get pecs?
Howard: Yesterday, when I made Stuart add them.
Bernadette: Howie, what I liked about the other story was that it was real. I mean, nothing in this actually happened to you.
Howard: So, it's a children's book. I mean, cats don't wear hats. And if someone gives you green eggs, it ends with you on the toilet trying to make a deal with God.
Bernadette: But the real story was so sweet. The little astronaut was afraid, but he still went to space, and that's what made him brave.
Howard: But in space, the other astronauts... Made fun of him, and that's a thing he doesn't want to relive.
Bernadette: I get that… I guess it would just take a really brave man to put an embarrassing story like that out into the world, just so it might help some frightened children not feel so alone.
Howard: Wow. That is quite the guilt trip… Are you sure you're not Jewish?
Bernadette: I'm just a wife that is so proud of her husband, and doesn't think that he has anything to be embarrassed about.
Howard: Oh. You're sounding less and less Jewish.
(Caltech: party)
Amy: Hey, we just heard that you're the ones who convinced the Nobel Laureates to come.
Sheldon: Thank you.
Penny: You are welcome.
Leonard: You guys deserve this.
Penny: Yeah, now get out of here, go talk to some smart people.
Leonard: Wait a minute.
Penny: Yeah, sorry. Sometimes I forget you're smart because you're so sexy.
Leonard: I can see that.
Penny: Yeah.
Siebert: Dr. Cooper. Dr. Fowler. I was just telling Professor Arnold how you came up with super-asymmetry at your wedding.
Frances H. Arnold: It's a wonderful story.
Amy: Ha, it really is.
Sheldon: I wouldn't say it was the highlight of the wedding, because I've been told not to for reasons I don't fully understand.
Siebert: Uh, but what he does understand is how the universe works, and that's what's important. Not what comes out of his mouth.
Penny: Uh-oh. I haven't been to a lot of parties like this, but what does a physics rumble look like?
Leonard: Kind of like angry chickens.
Penny: Hmm.
Leonard: Or-or-or-or like, uh, when-when puppets fight.
Greg Pemberton: Dr. Cooper, Dr. Fowler, good to see you.
Amy: What are you doing here?
Greg Pemberton: Professor Smoot invited us. We're Facebook friends.
Kevin Campbell: Smooty!
Amy: Well, this is our reception, so go away.
Sheldon: Actually, Amy, I think we should let them stay. Please, enjoy yourselves. Try some pigs in blankets. And yes, that is the plural.
Greg Pemberton: Great.
Kevin Campbell: Thanks.
Amy: What are you doing?
Sheldon: If they stay, everyone will see that their grasp on super-asymmetry is tenuous at best.
Amy: Oh. That's clever.
Sheldon: Yeah, I don't just know the plurals of things, Amy.
Leonard: Is this gonna be a problem?
Sheldon: Mm? No, no, no. We have a plan. Uh, Dr. Campbell and Pemberton, settle a bet for Dr. Fowler and me? We were just discussing, under what conditions the radiative corrections to super-asymmetry could cause time variation of alpha E.M.?
Amy: I say active galactic nuclei at cosmological distances show a part per million deviation. Dr. Cooper says this has been disproven recently with quasar observations.
Sheldon: What do you think?
Kevin Campbell: I agree with you.
Sheldon: Good answer.
Greg Pemberton: Hey, uh, if we haven't said it before, we just want to say... Thank you.
Kevin Campbell: Yeah. We couldn't have proven super-asymmetry without you.
Sheldon: Wait-wait. You all heard them say it. They didn't do anything.
Leonard: Sheldon. Shut up.
Sheldon: Yeah... Well, that's rude.
Leonard: No. Shut up.
Sheldon: Oh, the code word, thank you.
Greg Pemberton: You know, it's strange. A few months ago, nobody paid any attention to us, and now all of a sudden, we're getting all these accolades.
Kevin Campbell: Yeah, have-have any of you ever felt like maybe you didn't deserve it?
Sheldon: Leonard, there's something I need to say.
Leonard: Shut up.
Sheldon: Okay.
Greg Pemberton: It's crazy. We conclusively proved super-asymmetry, and yet somehow we, we still feel like imposters.
Kevin Campbell: There should be a term for that.
Amy: Oh, for crying out loud, there is a term for that! It's called "imposter syndrome" and you don't have it! Because you can't have it if you are imposters, and you are! We're the ones who discovered super-asymmetry! So if anyone's gonna feel like they have imposter syndrome, it's us, because we're not imposters! They are! You're imposters and you're frauds!
Sheldon: Is that what I would've sounded like?
Leonard: Yeah.
Sheldon: Yikes!
(Bernadette and Howard’s house: nursery)
Howard: Once upon a time, there was a little astronaut who was sitting in a rocket waiting to go to space."
Man: Three... Two... One...
Howard: And while all the other astronauts laughed and joked, he stayed quiet, because he had a secret. He was scared. He had another secret, too. He was only pretending to be scared to trick the alien king… Ha-ha!
Bernadette: Howie.
Howard: Fine. There was no alien… There was a bossy wife, though. We'll get to her later.
