The Re-Entry Minimization

"The Re-Entry Minimization" is the fourth episode of the sixth season of The Big Bang Theory. This episode first aired on October 18, 2012.

Summary
Howard has returned to Earth to a very disappointing welcome. Meanwhile, it's Penny and Amy versus Leonard and Sheldon in a battle of the sexes during game night.

Extended plot
Over dinner, the gang can't wait for Howard to return. Sheldon tells Stuart that he had a good run as the "fake Wolowitz" but an offer for 30% off comic books from Stuart makes Sheldon change his mind and say, "Welcome aboard, old chum." Sheldon also commends Howard with, "he left a boy and returned a boy-size hero." Howard and his fellow s plummet through the atmosphere with Howard alternately praying and screaming. He feels a jerk and says that that wasn't so bad. Unfortunately that jerk was the parachutes opening and they have six more miles to go. Howard starts screaming again. He feels dejected when he finds out that his friends are not waiting for him at the airport at the request of Bernadette. In the waiting room he hears shouts of "Howie, Howie" but the reporters present are covering the arrival of comedian (who doesn't believe that Howard is an astronaut). At Bernadette's (their?) apartment she dresses in a negligee and tells him that it's like their honeymoon since he left right after their. After coughing a few times due to an allergy, she falls asleep on him from the . Later, Howard goes to his mother's house where she doesn't let him in. He hears a man's voice which his mother says is the television and then Howard's dentist, whom she is having an with, hops out the window. Howard's next stop his is Raj's who is very glad to see him. The twist is that Stuart is now living with him and they have tickets to the sold out  sing-along. Howard leaves them to their night out.

At the apartment, Sheldon laments that he wasn't getting to see Howard's expression that night when he gives him his admiration for the first time. Amy and Penny are playing  against Leonard and Sheldon. Sheldon's drawing concepts and guesses are too complicated for Leonard and the girls win. For the word "polish", Sheldon draws things that are like sausage, while Penny waits a few minutes to enjoy his act and then draws a hand, paints the nails and Amy says (nail) polish. Then they tell the boys that they can beat them in any contest. Penny does not want to play "Physics Fiesta" where physics questions are given in since Sheldon just made up the game. Sheldon doesn't want to play, , , or have a since they are bar games and Penny has been going to bars since she was of age. Amy suggests and  using real cadavers. Next, Amy and Leonard try  without their glasses and Amy wins. Penny and Sheldon try a contest where they are spinning around a and then rush over to do a division problem while still dizzy. Penny beats Sheldon at mathematics because he falls over and knocks down his. Next, Penny is with Sheldon who is pinned almost instantly and can't get up. Then Penny has to try and kiss Sheldon. Sheldon asks Amy to do something, so she joins in. Finally it is a standard state fair. After they start, Howard shows up, they all look up with their faces covered with blueberry pie filling, and yell "not now!"

Finally, Howard ends up at a where the waitress recognizes him and offers him a free piece of. Howard starts to tell her his problems and she replies asking whether he wants the cheesecake or not. He starts eating singing "" quietly to himself. A quick sneeze makes him think that he caught something from Bernadette and he says "perfect".

Trivia

 * After Raj mentions that Howard's should be re-entering Earth's atmosphere, he exclaims "The Fantastic Four reunited!" Fittingly, the members of that superhero team are astronauts, led by aerospace engineer Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards). Further references to the Fantastic Four consist of citing issues of the  series. In "The Jiminy Conjecture", Howard wagers his Fantastic Four #48, first appearance of Silver Surfer. In "The Excelsior Acquisition", Leonard ponders whether he should select his copy of Fantastic Four #5, first appearance of Doctor Doom, to be autographed by Stan Lee. In "The Countdown Reflection", Howard gives the guys mint condition issues of Fantastic Four Annual #3 from 1965 (the one where Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Girl get married) as a groomsmen gift before his wedding.
 * When playing Pictionary, Sheldon draws unnecessarily complicated and extraordinarily confusing pictures; he also did exactly the same in "The Bozeman Reaction". His interpretations of others' pictographic representations in the game are similarly convoluted. For instance, when Leonard depicts a on the whiteboard, Sheldon initially inputs that it is an illustration of a  (QGP), specifically   in a quark-gluon plasma. In the quark matter phase diagram, QGP is placed in the high-temperature, high-density regime; whereas, ordinary matter is a cold and rarefied mixture of nuclei and vacuum. This exotic phase, which constitutes the primordial soup of matter that existed only split-seconds after the, consists of a number of point-like constituents – asymptotically free quarks and gluons, collectively termed "partons". Following the rejection of his first answer, he surmises that it must then be an observational rebuttal of the  of the universe, as there is no glass of milk to accompany it. The current standard model of the universe, Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM), assumes that the universe is expanding in accordance with the geometrical term Λ (Lambda) – which represents the  used in .  is then assumed to be the scaffolding that underlies the distribution of visible matter at a large scale across the universe. Leonard's picture, on the other hand, resembles a model of Einstein's static universe, in which spacetime is neither expanding nor contracting.
 * Previously, in "The Hamburger Postulate", Leslie Winkle had corrected the sign of the of  (QCD) appearing on Sheldon's whiteboard, permitting him to show that quarks are asymptotically free at high-energies.

Critics
"It’s no surprise that the comic ambition of the show would have atrophied after six seasons. It’s just a shame when at one stage the writers were so close to crafting something really good." The TV Critic's Review

Quotes
Penny: Boys vs Girls.

Sheldon: That's not fair. Any team that I'm not on has a decided disadvantage.

''(Sheldon doing hand gestures) '' Leonard: Sausage? Unidentified flying liverwurst?

Penny: Oh my god, we're gonna kill them.

Sheldon: He left a boy. He returns a boy-sized hero.

Howard: We did it! We survived!

Mike: That was the parachute. We still have another 6 miles to go.

Howard: AHHHHHHHHH!

Leonard: Sheldon, we haven't won a single game all night. Now either you put your face in that pie or I'm gonna put that pie in your face!