Chapter Four Data Analysis
4.1 Nerds as social underachievers
4.1.3 Failure to adapt to social norms
4.1.3.2 Lack of popular culture knowledge
In this sitcom, nerds are characterized as people who are ignorant about general
popular culture except the sci-fi genre. After the departmental physics ball, Penny
decides to test Leonard and Sheldon on the basic knowledge on general American
popular culture:
Example 17 (from 113)
TC 35
Penny (entering): Okay, new contest.
Leonard: What are you doing?
Penny: I’m settling once and for all who is the smartest around here. Okay, are you ready?
Sheldon: Absolutely.
Leonard: Bring it on.
TC 36
Penny: Okay. Marsha, Jan and Cindy were the three daughters of what TV family?
(They stare at her.) (laughter) The Brady Bunch. Okay, (laughter) TC 37
Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth as the lead singer in what group?
(Leonard and Sheldon look at each other in confusion) (laughter) Sheldon: The Brady Bunch? (laughter)
Penny: Van Halen. TC 38 Alright, Madonna was married to this Ridgemont High alum. (pause) (laughter) Oh my God, Sean Penn!
Leonard: How do you know these things? (laughter)
Penny: I go outside and I talk to people. (laughter) TC 39 Alright, here, what actor holds the record for being named people magazine’s sexiest man alive?
Sheldon: William Shatner. (laughter) Leonard: Wait, I don’t think it’s Shatner.
Sheldon: Then it’s got to be Patrick Stewart. (laughter) Penny: No.
Sheldon: Formal protest. (laughter)
TC 40
Penny: Alright, singer who sang “Oops I Did It Again.” (Sheldon starts involuntarily twitching again.) (laughter) Okay, Tweety Bird, taught he taw a what?
Sheldon: (after they pass a smug look between each other) Romulan. (laughter)
Penny: Yes. He taught he taw a Romulan. (laughter) (Sheldon and Leonard do a victory hand slide.) (laughter)
The questions posed by Penny are fairly easy for Americans who are familiar
with mainstream popular culture. However, it seems that Leonard and Sheldon know
nothing about The Brady Bunch (a popular American television sitcom in the 1970s),
Van Halen (an American hard rock band who shot to the fame since late 1970s),
Madonna and Sean Penn’s much-publicized and tumultuous romance and marriage in
the 1980s, Britney Spears (pop idol in the 2000s), and Tweety (a canary in Looney
Tunes cartoon franchise), and judging from the answers they give, they are only
familiar with the segment of sci-fi in the pop culture: William Shatner, Patrick Stewart,
and Romulan. William Shatner is the actor who portrays James T. Kirk (one of the
main characters) in the Star Trek enterprise since the 1960s, and he focuses
entertainment career in the sci-fi genre, with other ventures in sitcoms and television
drama. Shanter is regarded as a cultural icon in sci-fi fandom, but he is not considered
as “sexy” in any way during his long and successful career. Patrick Stewart is
originally a Shakespearean actor, and joins the Star Trek franchise in the 1980s to play
Jean-Luc Picard, also one of the main characters. It is not surprising that Leonard and
Sheldon are only familiar with actors within Star Trek universe, since sci-fi genre is
usually the only pop culture segment that nerds are interested in.
Finally, Tweety is a canary, thus it does not speak as humans do. The reason why
they think it is Romulan is because that is a (constructed) language spoken by
Romulans, a fictional race of alien humanoids in the Star Trek franchise. Leonard and
Sheldon think that they are listening to a language that is similar to alien’s language,
thus they make this conclusion without knowing that Tweety only talks in
onomatopoeia, since it is a canary. Penny cannot believe they do not get any correct
answer, and ironically says they are correct, but Leonard and Sheldon fail to perceive
that this is an irony, which indicates that nerds are not familiar with general popular
culture, nor are they able to process irony.
Nerds, who are into sci-fi, are not necessarily social underachievers, but in this
example, one can see that Leonard and Sheldon are fairly ignorant of what is
considered common knowledge in mainstream society.
Example 18 (from 113)
TC 11
Scene: Sheldon is on his laptop. Leonard enters.
Sheldon: Leonard, excellent, I want to show you something.
Leonard: Can it wait, I need to talk to you.
Sheldon: Just look. I’ve designed the perfect uniforms for our team. The colors are based on Star Trek, the original series. The three of you will wear
support red, and I will wear command gold. (laughter)
=> Leonard: Why do they say AA?
=> Sheldon: Army Ants. (laughter)
=> Leonard: Isn’t that confusing? AA might mean something else to certain people.
=> Sheldon: Why would a physics bowl team be called anodized aluminum?
(laughter)
Leonard: No, I meant (pause) never mind.
The departmental physics bowl is just around the corner, and the four guys
decide to enter this competition. Sheldon is enthusiastic and is managing everything,
including the team T-shirt and the name of the team. He decides that the team name is
AA, which stands for Army Ants. However, in the U.S., AA is widely known as
Alcoholics Anonymous, a fellowship support group destined to treat people with
alcoholism without hurting their self-esteem by staying anonymous. This is a taboo
and is not good for a team name because alcoholism is a kind of addictive disorder.
The humor lies in that Sheldon is completely unaware of this coincidence, not even
after Leonard’s reminder, and claims that AA could also stand for anodized aluminum.
At this point, Leonard gives up.
Later in the episode, Sheldon has a fight with the three other guys, and leaves the
team. They have to recruit another teammate because there must be four members in
each team in the physics bowl. Leslie Winkle, one of their colleagues, is called for
help. Sheldon hires three other people (i.e. a departmental janitor, a cooking lady and
a man who is either her son or her butcher) who know nothing about physics to form
the new AA, while Leonard reveals the new team name on the spot.
Example 19 (from 113)
TC 19
Dr. Gablehouser: Okay, if everyone could please take your seats.
(Leslie and Sheldon stares at each other)
=> Leonard: Here’s your T-shirt. (Hands her a T-shirt with PMS on it. Takes jacket b off to reveal a similar one.) (laughter)
=> Leslie: PMS? It’s a couple of days early. (laughter)
=> Leonard: No, it stands for Perpetual Motion Squad.
=> Leslie: Oh, right, of course, what was I thinking? (laughter)
The new team name is revealed as PMS. Although Leonard says that it stands for
Perpetual Motion Squad, the most relevant understanding to it is “premenstrual
syndrome,” a kind of physical/psychological/emotional discomfort that some women
suffer from before menstrual cycles. It is also a kind of taboo (i.e. qualifies as a kind
of disease) and is not suitable for a team name. However, Leonard fails to perceive the
irony in Leslie’s response, “Oh, right, of course, what was I thinking?” From these
two segments, the humor lies in that Leonard and Sheldon are both unaware the taboo
that lies in initialism. The humor adds up when the physics bowl becomes a direct
challenge between AA and PMS.
4.1.3.3 Eccentricity
Among the four nerds, the character of Sheldon stretches the stereotype of
inflexibility to the fullest. For non-nerds, the humor lies in that he tends to react
exaggeratedly to the situation.
Example 20 (from 219)
=> Sheldon: Penny, please, we’re facing a far more serious problem than stray arachnids.
Leonard: Sheldon, it’s not that bad.
=> Sheldon: Not bad? It’s horrible. I mean, you hear stories about this sort of thing, but you never think it’ll happen to you.
Leonard: So they steamed your dumplings, get over it. (laughter)
Sheldon is extremely picky about his diet. Throughout the series, he has strict,
specific, and nuanced requests on take-out foods. Sheldon proposes that they have a
big problem facing them. Leonard thinks otherwise, but Sheldon refuted him by
stating that the problem is so horrible that you hear about them, but never thinks that
it will happen to you. Finally, Leonard reveals what the serious problem is: the
restaurant steamed Sheldon’s dumplings. The audience expects a big problem because
Sheldon preludes it as if the problem is too complicated to solve, or too much to
handle. But if you ask the restaurant to not steam your dumplings, but they eventually
did, you can still eat the dumplings, even if they are not prepared as you would like
them. If you insist on not eating steamed dumplings, you can solve the problem by
returning the dumplings and tell them to make new ones, or buy new dumplings that
are not steamed. From every point of view, it is as easy as it can be to solve this
problem. The audience laughs because Sheldon has blown this event out of
proportions.
Example 21 (from 210)
At Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment. Stephanie is checking Sheldon’s throat with a tongue depressor.
TC 16
Stephanie: Oh, no.
Sheldon: (with a tongue depressor in his mouth) Wha:::? (laughter)
Stephanie: You were right. Your larynx is terribly inflamed. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. (laughter)
Sheldon: (with a tongue depressor in his mouth) I knew it! What do I do?
Stephanie: You’re going to need to stop talking immediately. (laughter) Sheldon: For how=
(Sheldon waves to Leonard, makes some gestures and runs into his room) (laughter)
Leonard: What’s going on?
=> Stephanie: I just performed a Sheldonectomy. (laughter)
Leonard: Careful, if you don’t get it all, it’ll only come back worse. (laughter) Stephanie: Gotcha.
In this episode, Leonard is dating Stephanie, a doctor. Sheldon likes to hang out
with Leonard and Stephanie, to the extent of being bothersome and intrusive for them.
Sheldon likes to express his opinions on everything during the date between Leonard
and Stephanie (where he should not have shown up in the first place), and he also asks
her to perform physical checkups on him because he suspected that he is sick (without
solid proof). Stephanie finally agrees to check up on Sheldon, and she lies about his
larynx inflammation. The audience can tell this is a lie because Sheldon’s voice has
always been fine. Now that Sheldon learns that he has serious larynx inflammation, he
stops talking altogether, and simultaneously solving their problem. Stephanie refers to
this white lie as a “Sheldonectomy.” The word is a blending between proper name
Sheldon and the suffix –ectomy, meaning “to surgically remove of.” Stephanie blends
the two morphemes to describe the fact that she successfully removes one of the
annoying habits: speak when he is not asked to do so. Leonard obviously understands
the meaning of this new blending word, and reminds her that she should perform it
completely. If Sheldon finds out that this is a trickery, he will become angry and will
not stop nagging.
Example 22 (from 301)
TC 8 (cont.)
Howard: Sheldon, you remember the first few weeks we were looking for
magnetic monopoles and not finding anything and you were acting like an obnoxious, giant dictator?
Raj: I thought we were going to be gentle with him.
=> Howard: That’s why I added the -tator. (laughter)
sub-TC 8 [omitted]
sub-sub-TC 8 [omitted]
sub-TC 8 (cont.) [omitted]
sub-sub-TC 8 (cont.)
Sheldon: (angrily) You tampered with my experiment?
Howard: We had to.
=> Raj: It was the only way to keep you from being such a huge Dickensian.
(laughter) You see that? I added the -ensian. (laughter)
Howard and Raj are quite discontented with Sheldon when they spent three
months at the North Pole doing research together. Howard accuses Sheldon of being
“an obnoxious, giant dictator.” Raj comments that Howard is too harsh, and Howard
responds him with “That’s why I added the –tator.” The audience laughs because there
is no etymological relationship between the word “dictator” with Howard’s intended
comment on Sheldon, which is the slang usage of “dick,” meaning an abrasive,
repugnant, and annoying man. The added element “-tator” is not an affix, thus it
cannot be attached to another stem, making it a false analysis of words. The humor of
the wordplay lies in the knowledge of the script writers and the audience of English
morphology.
Raj tries to imitate Howard by commenting on Sheldon that he is “a huge
Dickensian” and acknowledges that he adds the “-ensian.” But the laughter appears
right after “Dickensian” because “a huge Dickensian” does not make sense at all.
Since it is meaningless, it does not reach the affect of dictator/dick made by Howard.
Also, Raj makes this comment after a sub-TC. To be more precise, he picks up where
Howard left off, but the same punchline wears off the novelty and freshness.