The Wheaton Recurrence

"The Wheaton Recurrence" is the 19th episode of The Big Bang Theory's third season. It aired on April 12, 2010.

Summary
One night after making love, Leonard surprises Penny by saying "I Love You" but she can only say "thank you" and they both start to think about where their relationship is heading. The next day, Penny and the guys are in a bowling match with Stuart and the gang from the comic book store, and since one of their teammates couldn't come they got Wil Wheaton to substitute. Sheldon vows to get revenge for what happened in The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary. During the match, Penny and Leonard are eating, at which point Penny says that she loves chili cheese fries. Since she used the word "love" to describe her feelings for the chili cheese fries, this gets Leonard angry, as she could not use that word to describe her feelings for him. They have a fight, and Penny walks out. This causes the gang to forfeit the bowling game. Sheldon, very distraught that they had to forfeit, gets Leonard and Penny to talk and supposedly patch things up. They go back to the alley where Sheldon and Wil both try to beat each other in the game. Sheldon's team, the "Wesley Crushers" (in reference to Wheaton's character on Star Trek) needs one strike to win or they lose a bet. Wil talks to Penny and tells her that he endured two years of misery with a girlfriend who could not say "I love you" to him. It's Penny's turn to bowl, but she storms out again after Leonard pressures her as she realizes that she will never be able to say "I love you" to him. Leonard realizes it's all over between him and Penny, and so is the game since they had to forfeit again. After the game, Sheldon confronts Wheaton for what he said to Penny, and Wheaton reveals that he intentionally broke up Leonard and Penny so that they would forfeit the match. The episode folds with the four guys walking into the comic book store dressed like Catwoman, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl, since they lost the bet to Wheaton and Stuart.

Title reference: Wil Wheaton's return as a guest star on the show.

Trivia

 * Sheldon mentioned the appropriate ranking of cool mode of transportation is jet pack, hoverboard, transporter, Batmobile and then Giant Ant. However in The Jerusalem Duality, Sheldon said there was a problem with teleportation because he will be destroyed in one location and recreated in another. In other words, the original Sheldon will have to be disintegrated in order to create a new Sheldon although he'll be the exactly the same.
 * In The Middle Earth Paradigm, he declares Halle's costume to be the worst Catwoman costume (second to Penny's, when he mistakes her for dressing up as Catwoman, while she was just a generic cat). In this episode, Raj is dressed as the Halle Berry Catwoman and has learned to like it.
 * Stuart's friends include comic book store regulars Wil Wheaton, who was first seen with him in The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary, as well as the Mystic Warlords of Ka'a Tournament duo Captain Sweatpants and Lonely Larry, all seen together again sans Stuart in The 21-Second Excitation and a subset viewed in The Russian Rocket Reaction (Captain Sweatpants is seen in the background at Wheaton's home). He makes reference to Albino Bob, another of his friends. In The Toast Derivation, he also becomes friends with Zack Johnson and Barry Kripke, with the latter reappearing alongside Wheaton and him in The Stag Convergence.
 * Howard asking Wheaton if he ever hooked up with Whoopi Goldberg may be a nod to Stewie Griffin asking the same question of Patrick Stewart in the Family Guy episode "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven". Unlike Wheaton, Stewart is not offended, answering in the affirmative. Wheaton also played himself there.
 * Sheldon says, "My thoughts are its thoughts. Its holes are my holes." This is a reference to a Vulcan mind-meld.
 * Penny is able to quote Yoda from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Yet, in her ignorance, she will invariably guess Star Wars for anything, as seen in The Vegas Renormalization, The Bozeman Reaction, and The Excelsior Acquisition.
 * David Saltzberg explains on his blog: A typical ant we know and love is about 5mm long and has a mass of about 5 milligrams. The giant ants you might like to have around would be 1000 times longer. Not just longer, but 1000 times wider. Not just wider, but 1000 times taller. To calculate the new mass of the giant ant we have to multiply these all together–a billion times the volume. At the same density, a giant ant would weigh about 5 tons. But its legs would only be wider in two dimensions. They are a million times stronger, but that is not enough–for a creature a billion times heavier. Before taking their first step they would break all their legs, leaving them immoblile and harmless. While mass increases as the cube of size, the function of its structure improves only as the square, hence the name “square-cube law". ... Now we can think back to Sheldon’s dream last episode. He had a dream that he was a giant but didn’t know it because everything else was increased by the same scale. Sheldon said the reason he knew, was because he was wearing size 1,000,000 pants. But at that point, he must have also realized it was a dream. I don’t think Sheldon would be fooled. After all, TBBT will not be found on the long list of TV shows, movies and comics that have violated the square-cube law.